5. The oldest art in the world comes from Africa
When you think of the oldest art in the world, naturally you think of prehistoric daubings on European caves, right? Wrong. The oldest art ever found is from the Blombos Cave, Blomboschfontein Nature Reserve, South Africa. There archaeologists found a piece of ochre, marked by a complex pattern of crossed lines, which is at least 77, 000 years old. The excavation’s leader, Christopher Henshilwood, described the rock as ‘a good indication of an ability to think in the abstract, to think in terms of the past, the present and the future, and that’s one of the hallmarks of modern behaviour’.
Interestingly, the date of the art makes it 30, 000 years older than the Lebombo Bone’s tally marks, which suggests the fundamentality of aesthetic experience to Homo sapiens, the species that made the ochre artefact and baboon fibula. Blombos Cave also seems to have been a centre of prehistoric art, long before the ochre carving. In 2008, two ochre-processing kits were found, consisting of bone, charcoal, ochre, grindstones, and hammer stones. The ochre produced was found stored in sea-snail shells. These kits were dated to roughly 100, 000 years ago. Blombos Cave is truly the genesis of art.
