World’s first presumed more-or-less art object

Sunday 24th November, 2024 - Bruce Sterling

*Seems to be an anthropomorphic pebble picked up, transported and stored by an Australopithecus hominin in Africa. It’s about three million years old.

.. in Limpopo Province, forms part of the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site (Berger and Hilton-Barber, 2006). A 260 g reddish-brown jasperite cobble excavated at Makapansgat in 1925, first reported by Eitzman (1958) and described in further detail by Dart (1974), is the oldest known manuport, having been transported at least several kilometres (Fig. 3). It was found in a cave in Australopithecus-bearing deposits, which have been dated to ~2.95 Ma (McFadden, 1980). Detailed microscopic study of its surface markings was performed by Bednarik …

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makapansgat_pebble