The emergence of technology and art leading to the basis of society as we know it today may have happened much longer ago than originally believed.
Scientists have made incredible discoveries that now show humans perhaps evolved at a much faster rate than anyone has previously thought.
A cave found in the Lebombo Mountains in South Africa shows evidence of human life dating back more than 200,000 years, but the surprising discoveries show manmade creations that are at least 42,000 years old.
Things like beads, arrowhead points, wooden dissing sticks, and even an organic material believed to be some sort of arcahic form of glue or tape were all found and all discovered to be far older than any anthropologist could have anticipated.
It was previously believed that such manmade artifacts didn’t enter the planet until 20,000 – 25,000 years ago.
Before that, man had a much more basic set of instincts, known as the hunter-gatherer cultures.
Paleoanthropologist Lucinda Blackwell from the University off Witwatersrand in South Africa writes of the 42,000+ year old humans, “They adorned themselves with ostrich egg and marine shell beads, and notched bones for notational purposes.”
“They fashioned fine bone points for use as awls and poisoned arrowheads. One point is decorated with a spiral groove filled with red ochre, which closely parallels similar marks that San make to identify their arrowheads when hunting,” she added.
