原文链接：These red crayon markings may be the first known human drawing
发表时间：2018年9月12日
作者：Michael Price
分类：考古学
Some 73,000 years ago, a prehistoric Picasso crayoned a red hashtag design on a palm-size flake of rock in a South African cave. The artwork isn’t much to look at by modern standards, but it’s the world’s earliest known example of drawing on a surface, a new study concludes.
大约73000年前，某个南非洞穴里的史前毕加索用石蜡在一块巴掌大的石头上绘制了红色设计。这个艺术成就用现代的标准来衡量并不算太大，但是最新的研究发现它可能是世界现存最早的在物体表面上绘画的作品。
Researchers excavated the jagged flake in 2011 inside the oceanfront Blombos Cave. Once they had rinsed it off, they noticed nine faint red lines crisscrossing one of its surfaces. A chemical analysis revealed the lines were made of ochre, a reddish brown clay powder that can be molded into chunks. In a series of experiments, the researchers tried to reproduce the marks by either ochre paint or ochre crayon—only the crayon matched the lines’ fuzzy edges and striations. The carefully hashed lines, including one that was probably traced over back and forth, suggests it was an intentional design, the researchers report today in Nature.
研究者2011年在布隆伯斯洞窟的海滨挖掘出了这块锯齿状的石头。在将其冲洗干净后，研究者注意到它表面有九条淡淡的纵横交错的红线。化学分析发现这些红线的成分来自赭石，一种可以成型为块状的红棕色粘土。在一系列的实现中，研究者试图用赭石漆或赭石蜡来重现这些标记，最后发现只有赭石蜡符合与原始红线相同的模糊边缘与条纹。研究者今天发表在《自然》上的论文提出这些细致的线条，以及其中的来回往复，表明这是有意为之的设计。
Grains of sand from the same archaeological layer as the rock flake have been dated to the Middle Stone Age, between 79,000 and 75,000 B.C.E. There are earlier examples of human artistry—a similar cross-hatch pattern etched into a piece of ochre in the same cave dates to about 100,000 B.C.E—but this is the first known example of humans drawing on a surface, the authors say. (It’s unclear what the symbol meant.) The find further cements these Stone Age humans as culturally modern and behaviorally sophisticated people, the authors note.
与岩片相同的考古层的砂岩颗粒可以追溯到中石器时代，大约是公元前79000年到公元前75000年之间。作者指出虽然在同一个洞穴中另一个相似线条交叉模式的蚀刻赭石作为更早期的人类艺术可以追溯到大约公元前100000年，但是这个石头是人类第一个在物体表面上绘画的艺术。（目前还不清楚这个符号的具体含义。）这个发现进一步体现了石器时代人类的文化现代性和行为复杂性。
