Smithsonian – The crisscrossed pattern, drawn on stone 73,000 years ago, wasn’t used as shorthand for #artlovers, but the hashtag-like design may very well have had symbolic intent. The sketch by early humans, unearthed at an archeological dig site in a South African cave, was drawn with a red ochre crayon—and it may be the earliest drawing ever discovered.
Although the crosshatch design is simple, Christopher Henshilwood of the University of Bergen in Norway suspects it was meaningful, especially considering that similar markings have appeared on artifacts from different Stone Age eras and locales. In a study published today in Nature, Henshilwood and colleagues describe the unique characteristics of the newly analyzed artifact. The pattern may be similar to other ancient markings, but its creator made use of a new technique for the era: color drawing.
Look, I’m not here to sugarcoat things and blow smoke up your ass, I’m here to present you cool scientific shit happening in our world so you can go out with your friends and not sound like you spend your free time huffing paint and trying to find different household items to stick your dick in.
There’s no other way to put it; this finding is a big deal. Scientists, more specifically archaeologists, have been obsessed with find cave art and studying the meaning behind the shit they find for a long time. The existence of stuff like this is nothing new. Cavemen and Neanderthals and Hobbits all used to do it, and I’m sure it all meant different things to each and every one of them. That aspect of art hasn’t changed today; you’d be shocked to see some of the garbage people call “art” that sells for thousands of dollars across the world.
The reason this discovery is significant is because it wasn’t a carving scratched into the inner walls of a cave with another stone or a bone or something; these guys were literally making red crayons out of ochre, which I guess is some sort of reddish-brown clay found in Africa. Not only that, they had full fucking art kits.
For example, the cave previously yielded a 100,000-year-old toolkit which was used to manufacture ochre-rich paint. The kit includes two abalone shells used to mix ochre powder, seal fat, charcoal and other liquids. One shell even held a brush with paint still visible on the tip after 100,000 years.
That’s pretty crazy if you ask me. It took me like 5 years of practice to figure out how to draw one of those fancy “S” designs where you criss-cross the vertical lines. These guys had barely just discovered fire and they were down in South Africa mixing up paint and drawing hashtags like some sort of bearded Picasso.
“They took a piece of ochre, knocked a flake off it to sharpen it and used it as a pencil or crayon on a very smooth surface that was previously a grindstone,” Henshilwood says.
As for what the criss-cross drawing means, scientists are still unsure, but they all agree it must’ve meant something, because that same design or pattern or whatever you wanna call it has been found all over the place. It could very well have meant something different to each tribe and/or artist each time it was drawn, but it’s clearly too deliberate to have been by accident.
In my mind, I like to think the sign was a signal of love. You could even call it a love-making beacon. You throw up the hashtag on your cave wall, maybe light a little fire nearby, and all the hottest cavewoman in your tribe know that you’ve had enough lonely nights and you’re ready to turn up the heat. Not the actual heat, because A. they’re cavemen and they don’t have heat and B. this was in South Africa so I’m pretty sure it’s always warm there.
I’m talking about having sex. Making babies. That thing that boys and girls sometimes do, and they definitely did it 70,000 years ago. That much I know for sure.
Lepota and The Hound 