Earliest evidence for ochre processing in #WestAfrican #MiddleStoneAge #Senegal c.37 Ka
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305440324002188
Red ochre was gold!
Major study on Lion's Cavern, the world's 'oldest ochre mine' in #Eswatini
'The researchers analyzed 173 samples from 15 Stone Age sites and reconstructed methods of ochre extraction, the use of ochre, and transportation networks, considering local strategies and long-distance exchange. The results point to an intergenerational transmission of knowledge, combined with social exchange and technological learning. Moreover, the team of scientists identified the “Lion Cavern” in Eswatini as the oldest known ochre mining site in the world, dated to around 48,000 years ago.'
#redochre #Africa #MiddleStoneAge #archaeology
https://www.senckenberg.de/en/pressemeldungen/the-lions-den-use-of-ochre-48000-years-ago/
In 'Before The Dawn of Everything', archaeologist #IanWatts questions Graeber and Wengrow's premise that searching for original human society 'can only be a matter of myth-making'. He argues, for Graeber and Wengrow, a ‘single human “us” can only be inferred from ~30,000 years ago'. The actual stretch of time when we became all-singing, all-dancing, language-speaking symbolic culture-bearing humans -- in Africa-- is abandoned as unknowable.
The latest archaeological findings and their interpretation suggest pan-African habitual performance of collective ritual, with a uniform signature of red cosmetic usage, from ~160,000 years ago around the end of speciation, grounding symbolic culture’s first shared imaginaries. While #TheDawnofEverything was clearly intended to be collectively empowering, it marginalises evolutionary theory, the archaeology of our speciation and African hunter-gatherer ethnography. Thereby, it resembles the decried ‘sapient paradox’! That is the fairly racist (!) idea that we got human bodies in Africa but had to reach Europe to show intelligence (or interesting archaeology!)
#archaeology #humanorigins #Africa #MiddleStoneAge #sapientparadox
https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/10.3828/hgr.2022.3
Stingray sand 'sculpture' in South Africa may be oldest example of humans creating an image of another creature
https://phys.org/news/2024-04-stingray-sand-sculpture-south-africa.html #archaeology #SouthAfrica #sculpture #stingray #sand #MiddleStoneAge
And this one is about the genuine #PanAfrican #Revolution -- the revolution that made us #human.
Camilla Power and Ian Watts discuss when exactly was it? How do we know?
#MiddleStoneAge #Pleistocene #Homosapiens #archaeology #redochre #ritual
Still time to sign in on Eventbrite for tonight! 
Oct 24, 18:30 London time with
Radical Anthropologists
Camilla Power and Ian Watts
'On the Human Revolution'
They are speaking LIVE @UCLanthropology (Daryll Forde Seminar Room on the 2nd Floor)
and on ZOOM. Everybody welcome!
Sign into Eventbrite for ZOOM ID (sent out on the morning/pm of the date)
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/radical-anthropology-talks-tickets-707087105567
#humanevolution #culturalevolution #symbolicculture #pigments #ritual #anthropology #humanorigins #femalecosmeticcoalitions #Africa #MiddleStoneAge
Image shows the cover of 'The Human Revolution', edited by the late Paul Mellars and Chris Stringer in 1989.
The first #art was #body art...
Here a review based in #Blombos (S #Africa) #MiddleStoneAge evidence on the origin of personal ornamentation is presented.
* marine gastropods from Blombos Cave dated to between 100 ka and 70 ka.
* Unperforated and naturally perforated shells were collected between 100 and 73 ka.
* previously unrecorded gastropod species was used as bead 70 ka.
The #RadicalAnthro team does not think the authors (d'Errico et al) are getting the relationship right between #MSA ochre #pigment use and beads. We very much doubt initial usage of #ochre was 'utilitarian' and subsequently became symbolic. Take a look at our thread on the #Dapschauskas paper on ochre as a ritual tradition here
https://c.im/@RadicalAnthro/109540854804414843
For us: the first art was body art, and the first body art was #menstrual
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047248423001173
For more #Fediscience of the #HumanRevolution see this 
Our first proper on Mastodon today!
And it's a biggie! When and where did symbolic culture (ritual, art, language, well everything) emerge in the human lineage?
This question lies at the 
of @RadicalAnthro 's research for 30 years. An exciting new paper from a team @ROCEEH (Role of Culture in Early Expansions of Humans) promises some answers.
#redochre #MiddleStoneAge #symbolicculture #ritual #humanorigins
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https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10963-022-09170-2
