The Venus of
Hohle Fels is the world’s oldest figurine to depict the human form. With the possible exception of the Zoomorphic Lion Man sculpture, it’s also the oldest undisputed figurative prehistoric art yet discovered (The Lion Man, however, depicts a non-human or half-human figure).
The 40,000-year-old statuette is about 6 centimeters (2.4 in) tall and carved from mammoth ivory. Like most Venus figurines, it depicts a voluptuous women with exaggerated, pronounced breasts and buttocks, and a
massive, protruding vulva. Like many similar statuettes, this one had no head, but it has a carved ring above the left shoulder with worn surfaces that suggest it was worn as a necklace.
The number of figures found to date and the care our ancestors took in making them suggests that they were extremely important to early humans. Many researchers believe that they served as
fertility totems, but the truth of their meaning is still largely unknown.
The Venus was excavated at the Hohle Fels caverns in the Swabian Jura region near the city of Ulm in southwest Germany, which was also the site of the world’s oldest
musical instruments until new discoveries in 2012. The figure was found in six pieces about 3 meters (9 ft) under the cave floor amid animal debris, worked bone, and ivory and flint-knapping debris.
The
Hohle Fels caverns contain plentiful evidence of prolonged prehistoric human occupation and has been the site of numerous finds, including the Lion Man figure. This sculpture was originally thought to be around 30,000–31,000 years old, but refined carbon-dating of bones found near the figure now put the Lion Man at 40,000 years. It’s also a noteworthy piece because the representation of an imaginary figure in art provides early evidence that humans had already developed
complex pre-frontal cortexes.
Until 2014 the oldest cave paintings known were 30,000–32,000-year-old paintings of
Upper Paleolithic animals found in the Chauvet Cave in the valley of the Ardeche River in France. With little evidence to the contrary, it has been widely believed that an explosion of symbolic artistic thinking in early humans began in Europe around this time.
But a new discovery on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, east of Borneo, challenges this notion. In September 2014, scientists confirmed that some of the cave paintings discovered there could be over 40,000 years old. They consist of stenciled handprints (similar to handprint paintings found elsewhere around the world), and paintings of local animals. One painting of a local animal called a babirusa has been definitively identified as
at least 35,400 years old, making it officially the oldest known work of figurative art.
Art probably developed independently all over the world. There has been other evidence that Europe was not the sole place of origin. The presence of red ochre dye (commonly used in cave paintings) has been found in Israel dating to 100,000 years ago, and paint-making containers have been discovered in Africa that also go back as far as
100,000 years. This last example is also the world’s
oldest known container, as we’ve previously discussed.
The oldest masks ever found are a collection of 9,000-year-old stone masks from what is now Israel during the Neolithic era. They were collected from sites in the Judean Desert and the Judean hills and are currently on display in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.
The masks themselves are stylized faces (at least some of them may have represented
skulls), with holes along the edges that may have allowed for them to be worn. The holes may have alternatively been used to thread hair through them for a realistic effect, or cords to hang them from pillars or altars. Researchers are unsure whether they were worn or used ritualistically, but they note that the carved features seem to be designed with human comfort in mind. For example, the eyes are carved to afford a wide field of vision.
Older cave drawings depict people wearing masks. Archaeologists believe that many were made of biodegradable materials, so they are
lost forever, making the few that we do find all the more valuable.
In 2007, archaeologists studying mollusk shells gathered from the island of Java in Indonesia discovered one that appeared to have etchings on its surface. Others had characteristic holes near where the shells joined together, indicating that someone had used tools on them.
In 2014, a team of researchers confirmed that the shell was probably a tool of some sort. The etchings were the work of humans, probably Homo erectus, who had been thought only capable of using stone tools. Even more astonishing, the
zigzag pattern of the etchings indicated the oldest known example of abstract representation in hominids to date.
The team, led by Josephine Joordens of Leiden University in the Netherlands, dated the shell to be about
500,000 years old. They established that the marks were carved and not accidental by using a microscope to demonstrate that they were made in a single session with sharp turning points at the corners—a sign of confident agency. They also determined that the holes carved in many of the shells were made with shark’s teeth, which were also found at the site. Because the etchings showed unmistakable signs of weathering, a hoax or recent marking of the shells by researchers was ruled out.
Still, it’s premature to call the evidence conclusive. It isn’t clear that Homo erectus had a prominent presence on the island. The carving may have been the later work of Homo sapiens. Until more examples can be found, no firm conclusion can be made, but even if it doesn’t turn out to be intentionally symbolic, it’s at the very least the oldest doodle ever found.
The oldest tools ever found were discovered in Gona, Ethiopia and are 2.5–2.6 million years old. Not only does this make them the oldest tools, they are the
oldest human artifacts in the world to date.
The tools are referred to as Oldowan, after the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzanio, and consist of pieces of sharp-edged rock pounded off of cores. They are used to chop and to scrape
meat from animal bones.
About 2,600 of these tools have been uncovered from the excavation site, but no human remains have been uncovered, leaving the identity of the toolmakers debatable. What is known is that they predate the oldest known remains of genus Homo in the area.
Similar tools have been found in other parts of Africa, with the oldest finds dated at about 2.3–2.4 million years ago.
Source:
http://listverse.com/2014/12/28/10-of-the-oldest-artifacts-in-the-world/
Lance LeClaire is a freelance artist and writer. He writes on science and skepticism, atheism, and religious history and issues, and unexplained mysteries and historical oddities, among other subjects. You can look him up on Facebook, keep an eye for his articles on Listverse, or follow his brand-new sometimes-serious, sometimes-satirical blog on atheism and secular issues at
lleclaire.wordpress.com.
