Four different methods of dating these pieces reveal them to be at least 99,000 years old. The fact that not just one, but several of these are found with such engravings rule out an accidentally produced natural streaking pattern.

Is it simple doodling or a pre-conceived symbolic representation? Here again, the very numbers and the patterns point to the fact that explicitly symbolic behaviour was taking place in Africa (not only in Blombos, South Africa, but also at Twin Rivers, Zambia) by 100,000 years ago or earlier.

While an open access view of these stones is awaited, for a later, more elaborate engraving dated 70,000 years ago, go to the site: www.videographyblog.com/ages.html.

Balter says, “making sophisticated tools and using symbols both require the capacity to hold an abstract concept in one’s head, and in the case of a tool to “impose” a predetermined form on raw material based on an abstract mental template.”

While this might not have been needed to make simple chopping and scraping tools, abstract mental pictures and symbolism are needed to make skilfully crafted material.

The archaeological discovery of symmetrical tools dated 500,000 years ago puts the period to the arrival of our ancestors, the homo heidelbergensis, who had larger brains than their predecessors, homo erectus. The University of Colorado archaeologist Thomas Wynn is quoted to say that these tools “tell us that the hominid world was changing.”

It was not just stones. The “Schoningen Spears” discovered in Germany, and dated to be 400,000 years old were made of wood. These demanded an elaborate plan of action — starting from chopping wood to shaping the spears outfit, and adding patterns in them. And the Twin Rivers tools of 260,000 years ago, which follow the Middle Stone Age technology show such flexibility, clearly pointing to advanced cognitive ability and symbolic thought. And now we have the beautifully engraved ochre stones made 100,000 years before present.

At 100,000 years ago, we had our cousins Neanderthals as well. Would they have practised symbolic art? We know quite a bit about them — not only their recently decoded genomes, but also their social and community lives (see the book “The Neanderthals” by E. Trinkaus and P.Shipman). That they had music is clear from the flutes excavated from their caves in Slovenia (with holes set precisely for the notes of the octave). They made tools from stone, bone and horns and buried their dead, decorating them with beads and necklaces.

And some have tentatively suggested that the Neanderthals might have had ‘religion’ of some manner. Barring a spoken language (their vocal apparatus was apparently anatomically not as developed as ours, a point that comparative genetics would hopefully clarify), the Neanderthals too appear capable of symbolic art. But there is, as yet, no evidence of their remains found in South Africa or Zambia.

Until recently, archaeological wisdom had it that the ‘creative explosion’ of human art and culture started in the Late Stone Age (40,000 years ago), with the Cro-Magnon people of Europe and their stunning cave paintings at Lascaux and Chauvet in France and at Alta Mira in Spain (see them, for example, at http://archaeologynews.multiply.com/journal/item/339). With the findings described above, we need to revise this ‘Eurocentric’ opinion and push the symbolism clock of human creativity back by at least 60,000 years more.

Balter quotes Charles Darwin, who wrote: “to chip a flint into the rudest tool demands a perfect hand as well adapted to that task as the vocal organs are to speaking.” The quote is relevant since language too is symbolism in operation. And putting thoughts into words and in spoken language is a uniquely human possession. So, was creativity beyond the reach of our ancestors, the great apes?

Apes and monkeys too have been gifted by evolution with opposing thumbs in the palms of their hands, and thus manual dexterity of a type unknown before. We have known for a while that they make some simple tools (creating moist dipsticks out of plant stems to pull out termites from their mounds and eat them — termite kebabs) and indulge in choral singing (the gorilla chants).

More evidence, presented at the recent AAAS meeting, suggests that baboons are able to tell which pictures show similar items, like triangles or dots, and which show different ones. This is the definition of a concept, and the animal is able to do this very well.

And the Duke University researcher Jessica Cantlon showed that when asked to make estimations of numbers quickly, rhesus monkeys were about 80 per cent as good as college students! “It’s much more like estimating than the verbal mathematics you learn in school,” she said. Evolution warns us that we humans should keep our egos in check.

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