A new 100 000 year old find from South Africa may provide an insight into the culture of early humans. This one is a piece of engraved ochre and can be added to various other examples of pierced shells and geometric carvings that have been dated as being over 75 000 years old. The only explanation for objects like these seems to be human culture of some kind.
Looking at the photographs of these artefacts with my untrained eye I can't help thinking that some of them look fairly innocuous, but then others have clearly deliberate markations - like the one above.
The big question is: What are they for? Are they symbols intended to mean something?
The authors of this paper (Henshilwood et al) are sure that the marks are not notations (record keeping). Instead they believe them to be symbolic and part of a tradition of symbology.
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