| 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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