![]() The ability to create and communicate using such symbols, says Christopher Henshilwood, leader of the team that discovered the stone, is "an unambiguous marker" of modern humans, one of the characteristics that separate us from any other species, living or extinct. The scratchings on this piece of red ocher mudstone are the oldest known example of an intricate design made by a human being. Carving the stone was a very human thing to do. But to see it is to immediately recognize it as something only a person could have made. It could have been a religious object, an ornament or just an ancient doodle. Today the stone offers no clue to its original purpose. With a stone point, he etched a geometric design in the flat surface-simple crosshatchings framed by two parallel lines with a third line down the middle. The man picked up a piece of reddish brown stone about three inches long that he-or she, no one knows-had polished. ![]() The sandy cliff top above was covered with a white-flowering shrub that one distant day would be known as blombos and give this place the name Blombos Cave. It was a beautiful spot, a workshop with a glorious natural picture window, cooled by a sea breeze in summer, warmed by a small fire in winter. ![]() Seventy-seven thousand years ago, a craftsman sat in a cave in a limestone cliff overlooking the rocky coast of what is now the Indian Ocean. ![]()
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