Cave Art (Thames & Hudson World of Art) by David Bruno

Author:David, Bruno [David, Bruno]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Published: 2017-02-27T16:00:00+00:00

106. 75,000-year-old perforated Nassarius kraussianus shells from Blombos Cave, South Africa.

107. (top) Six hypothetical ways (using modern shells) that the c. 75,000-year-old Nassarius kraussianus beads from Blombos Cave may have been strung. (above) Experiments with modern Nassarius kraussianus shells show how strung shells would result in polishing along their edges and surfaces.

Beyond Africa

As anatomically modern people left the African continent, we begin to find evidence for symbolic behaviour along the dispersal routes eastwards across southern Asia into Australia, and north and westwards into Europe and northern Asia. At first the evidence is patchy, in part because of the test of time, and especially for those areas where research has been limited. It is in Israel, at the doorstep between northeastern Africa and southwestern Asia, that we find the earliest evidence of early modern humans outside Africa. Here, at the rockshelter site of Es-Skhul on Mount Carmel, two perforated Nassarius gibbosulus shell beads were recovered from layers dating to between 135,000 and 100,000 years ago [108]. The shells were gathered from the shore of the Mediterranean some 3.5 km (2 miles) to the north and carried into the cave. They are associated with early modern human remains and are the oldest known shell beads in the world. In the cave of Qafzeh in the Lower Galilee region, 30 km (20 miles) away, human burials dating to around 92,000 years ago have been found, along with a stone flake incised with short parallel lines,11 ochre used for painting12 and perforated Glycymeris insubrica beads made from shells carried 35 km (22 miles) from the Mediterranean – some painted with red ochre – and used as strung ornaments, probably for personal adornment such as necklaces or on garments [109].

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.