A stone dismissed
by experts as no more than a lump of rock has been identified
as the world's first sculpture and the oldest piece of figurative
art ever seen.
New scientific
data suggests that early humans were producing representations
of life 220,000 years ago, 170,000 years earlier than previously
thought. It is a discovery which could revolutionise our understanding
of human development.
Italian and
American archaeologists used powerful microscopes to prove that
a figurine-like piece of volcanic stone from the Golan Heights
on Israel's border with Syria is in fact a primitive sculpture,
deliberately chiselled and shaped by human hands.
The data from
their examination suggests that the prehistoric object was intended
to portray a human being, probably a woman. Yet, since its discovery
15 years ago, the rock has been disregarded by most academics.
The researchers;
Francesco d'Errico of the French National Centre for Scientific
Research, and April Nowall of the University of Victoria in Canada,
found that the early human sculptor had used some sort of flint
chisel to chip away at a point around 25 per cent down from the
top of the lump of rock to produce a neck.
The archaeologists'
examination also demonstrated that a stone tool had been used
to produce roughly symmetrical grooves on either side of the object
to produce arms, and that other areas had been deliberately abraded
to make what may have been intended as breasts. The base had also
been flattened so that the sculpture could stand upright.
It is the
first time that the object, which probably took between 15 and
30 minutes to make, has been subjected to detailed scientific
examination. But although the findings confound the majority of
academics who had dismissed the object as purely natural, the
research vindicates the Israeli archaeologist Professor Nama Goren
of Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who discovered the stone and
who first suggested that it was a primitive sculpture of a woman.
The sculpture,
which has been widely ignored since its discovery in 1986, is
now likely to be acknowledged by most scholars as the world's
oldest work of figurative art.
Significantly,
this recognition comes at a time when indirect evidence of other
equally ancient artistic activity is coming to light in Zambia,
Kenya and Europe.
At two sites
in Africa, archaeologists have unearthed evidence of pigment production
- deliberately grated pieces of red ochre and manganese. And recently
analysed scraps of bone and elephant ivory from eastern Germany
bear apparently abstract fan-shaped man-made engraved patterns
dating back 350,000 years. In the light of the new scientific
research on the sculpture, it is likely that these, too, will
have to be studied further, as the implications of the German
objects for the evolution of the human mind have also been widely
ignored by the academic world.
Such discoveries
may have a profound impact on our understanding of the evolution
of human thought. Archaeologists have always considered symbolic
thought, as represented by art, to be the exclusive preserve of
homo sapiens, our species. Although symbolic thought only really
blossomed 100,000 years after the final emergence of homo sapiens
some 150,000 years ago, the new research suggests it may have
existed in a simple form much, much earlier - between 200,000
and 350,000 years ago.
Depending
on what further discoveries are unearthed, archaeologists may
have to start rewriting the origins of human thought, with homo
sapiens in the role of developer rather than originator. "We
hope that our research will help change currently accepted views
on the evolution of the human mind," said Dr d'Errico.
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