Detail of the engraving on fossil Pseudodon shell (DUB1006-fL) from TrinilWIM LUSTENHOUWER, VU UNIVERSITY AMSTERDAMThe history of abstract expression continues to stretch back in time. In October, researchers described Neanderthal cave art from 39,000 years ago. And this week (December 3), archaeologists reported in Nature that an engraved shell from Java was the work of a Homo erectus individual 500,000 years ago.
“If correct it certainly pushes back in time the evidence for marking objects in a way that arguably could be considered evidence for symbolic activity,” Curtis Marean, an archaeologist at Arizona State University who did not participate in the study, told Science.
The shell was originally discovered in 1891, but it wasn’t until a few years ago that Stephen Munro of the Australian National University in Canberra, then a graduate student, and Josephine Joordens of Leiden University in the Netherlands, initiated a closer analysis. The zigzag scratches appear deliberate and orderly, the researchers found, and were probably done using a shark’s tooth. Sediments in the shell date back to roughly a half million years ago.
“This forces us to reassess not only the capacities of ...
