60,000 Year Old Ostrich Eggs Depict Human Imagination
A research team from the University of Bordeaux has discovered a set of 270 ostrich eggshell fragments from a cave in South Africa depicting what appear to be man-made symbols and patterns.
Headed by Pierre-Jean Texier, the team unearthed the fragments, which represent at least 25 different eggs, from a subterranean location in Howieson Poort Shelter in South Africa. The find’s excitement stems from the richness of what appears to be evidence for abstract thinking in early man; the shells date to 60,000 years ago. Texier is treating the diverse patterns as an “artistic movement” as opposed to potentially written language, studying the limited number of motifs that seem to have been used by the many different people who etched the shells found.
Modern hunter-gatherers in the Kalahari still collect and use ostrich eggs as food, containers and decoration, leading some familiar with the find to speculate that an entire artistic tradition is seem in its barest form in the 270 fragments. The idea that the patterns denote some form of language, such as ownership, also seems to me to be an avenue worth exploring.
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