The Earth Story

Homo erectus: The world’s oldest artist After the recent discovery of the first confirmed Neanderthal art (seehttp://tinyurl.com/q3mudsx and http://tinyurl.com/lycavqd) and the new understanding that paintings in Indonesia are as old as any in Europe (see http://tinyurl.com/mmmjtqq), another stunner has emerged from the mists of time to upset our beliefs on the origins of art, in the form of a carved doodle on a pierced freshwater mussel shell dating from the days of our ancestor/cousin Homo erectus some 430,000-540,000 years ago. As so often happens, the crucial piece was found lurking in a museum drawer, gathered on the Indonesian island of Java a century ago by Eugene Dubois, the initial discoverer of Java man (as erectus was known at the time) and traced via an intriguing digital photograph. The discoverer snapped a whole collection of shells from the initial excavation at its home museum in Holland and noticed these intriguing zig-zag marks that had been gathering dust for a century. It had not been noticed on the initial examination in 1930 because the marks are faint and only came out in the glancing light used to take the photos. Reported in Nature this week, it is the earliest evidence of manmade markings found to date (the next oldest being a 100,000 year old piece of engraved red ochre from South Africa). The shell was dated (using the sand grains embedded within) and the carving was carefully checked, revealing that the markings were intentionally made before fossilisation. When the engraving was made, it would have been more visible because the shell was darker. Weathering wore away the original dark color of the shell.  So are these half-million year old scratches art, or something else? Although the engravings were deliberately created with close attention to detail, it is impossible to say with certainty that it is “art.” Its purpose and meaning are currently unknown, but it implies both manual dexterity and some sort of inner impulse and cognitive capacity, a far cry from the brutish ancestors little removed from monkeys depicted until very recent times. Attempts to duplicate it revealed how intentional it had to be, and the precision of the maker's hand. They also discovered a neat trick, that the mussels were opened using fossil shark's teeth to avoid breaking the shell and filling the meat with crunchy crumbs of shell. The likely culprits first emerged in Africa some 2 million years back and made it at least as far as Java, before speciating in turn into branches on the bush that we label modern humans, Denisovans and Neanderthal. The last Homo erectus remains are a mere hundred thousand years old. I often return to the theme that our cousins back in the distant past shared more of our humanity than we care to admit, as do our existing (and endangered) living cousins such as chimps, gorillas and orang utans. Here is another piece of evidence showing that consciousness goes back a long way, and is not restricted to modern humanity as some illusory pinnacle of evolution. Abstract thought has been with us for much longer than we imagined, and I always wonder what it was like to live in one of their heads, what flavour thoughts and perceptions they had (for one, a much keener sense of smell). I also always wonder what surprise museum collections will turn up next. One often ignored use of gathering these things under one roof with a clearly documented provenance is that one never knows what new and wonderful knowledge the future will be able to obtain from the collection, whether by taking a closer look or through advances in analytical technology.  Loz & JB Image credit: Naturalis, Leiden: Stephen Munro http://www.nature.com/news/homo-erectus-made-world-s-oldest-doodle-500-000-years-ago-1.16477 http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/12/141203142453.htm http://www.news.leiden.edu/news-2014/oldest-engraving-ever-found-on-500-year-old-shell.html http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/dec/04/worlds-earliest-known-engraving-reveals-sophistication-homo-erectus http://ind.pn/1I5AijN Original paper, http://www.nature.com/articles/nature13962.epdf

Haematite cylinder seal These seals were invented in Uruk (in modern Iraq) around 5,500 years ago, and their use spread rapidly throughout the ancient Near East. They were engraved with both images and letters, and had many uses both practical and religious. These varied from administrative (such as marking clay seals, for example on bundles or boxes by customs or tax agents, or on royal orders to be sent around a country as a form of official signature) through magical (as protection amulets for example) or as grave goods.  Most of them have a hole running through them, allowing them to be conveniently worn on a string as a necklace in a similar way to a signet seal ring. The most common material is carved stone, though glass and faience were also used. This example depicts a king with a mace following a goddess with an animal offering for the sun god. The style suggests it came from Sipar, and it measures 16.6x3cm. Loz Dear Readers,  Most of our posts are not reaching you in your news feed due to fb's filtering system. If you wish to enjoy our posts more often, use the following for information on how to go about it: http://tinyurl.com/qgwac8k. Image credit: Hjaltland Collection