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Blombos Cave

South African cave holding the earliest known evidence of deliberate symbolic behaviour: engraved ochre with geometric cross-hatching, a 73,000-year-old ochre 'drawing' of nine red lines, and shell beads - pushing the origins of abstract representation in Homo sapiens back roughly 30,000 years earlier than comparable European evidence.

Dated events and their evidence

• 73,000 BCE mainstream
  engraved ochre 'drawing', earliest known deliberate abstract mark-making source
• about 100,000 years ago mainstream
  earliest Middle Stone Age occupation with symbolic material culture source

Where

34.4144° S, 21.2225° E

Sources

• https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1211535
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blombos_Cave

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