Jakarta Globe – AFP, Dec 04, 2014
Paris. Anthropologists on Wednesday said they had found the earliest engraving in human history on a fossilized mollusc shell some 500,000 years old, unearthed in colonial-era Indonesia.
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| This handout picture released by the journal Nature on Dec. 3, 2014 shows the detail of the engraving on fossil Pseudodon shell (DUB1006-fL) from Trinil, Indonesia. (AFP Photo/Nature/Wim Lustenhouwer) |
Paris. Anthropologists on Wednesday said they had found the earliest engraving in human history on a fossilized mollusc shell some 500,000 years old, unearthed in colonial-era Indonesia.
The zigzag
scratching, together with evidence that these shells were used as a tool,
should prompt a rethink about the mysterious early human called Homo erectus,
they said.
The
discovery comes through new scrutiny of 166 freshwater mussel shells found at
Trinil, on the banks of the Bengawan Solo river in East Java, where one of the
most sensational finds in fossil-hunting was made.
It was here
in 1891 that an adventurous Dutch paleontologist, Eugene Dubois, found “Java
Man.”
With a
couple of army sergeants and convict labor to do the digging, Dubois excavated
part of a heavy-browed skull, a tooth and a thigh bone.
He
interpreted these as being the remains of a gibbon-like hominid that was the
long-sought “missing link” between apes and humans.
Dubois’
claim excited fierce controversy, as well as jokey images of our distant
ancestors as slack-jawed primates with dragging knuckles.
Paleontologists
eventually categorized the find as a Homo erectus, or “upright human” — a
hominid that according to sketchy and hugely debated fossil evidence lived from
around 1.9 million years ago to about 150,000 years ago.
Reporting
in the science journal Nature, a team led by Josephine Joordens at Leiden
University in the Netherlands, harnessed 21st-century technology to take a new
look at the Trinil shells, now housed in a local collection.
Carbon
dating of sediment found in the shells put their age at between 430,000 and
540,000 years ago.
A third of
the shells were also found to have a curious hole at the base of one of the
bivalve’s muscles.
Sharp-toothed
animals such as otters, rats or monkeys may have bitten into it to get at the
flesh — but a likelier source, said the experts, is H. erectus, which tucked
into the shells for food.
The team
carried out experiments on living mussels of the same mollusc family,
Pseudodon, piercing the shell at the same location with a pointed object.
As soon as
the shell was broached, the muscle was damaged by the tool tip and the mollusc
could be easily opened without breakage.
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| This handout picture released by the journal Nature on Dec. 3, 2014 shows the fossil Pseudodon shell with the engraving made by Homo erectus at Trinil, Indonesia. (AFP Photo/Nature/Wim Lustenhouwer) |
The
scientists then deployed a scanning electron microscope to get a closer look at
the shells.
One of them
was found to have a polished and smooth edge, suggesting it may have been used
as a tool to cut or scrape.
Another had
a zigzag set of grooves incised into it, by a sharp implement such as a shark’s
tooth.
The marks
are at least 300,000 years older than the earliest previously known,
indisputable engravings.
“The simple
zigzag on the shell is the earliest engraving known thus far in the history of
humankind,” Joordens’ colleague, Wil Roebroeks, told AFP in an email.
“But: we
have no clue why somebody made it half a million years ago, and we explicitly
refrain from speculating on it” in terms of art or symbolism, he said.
Francesco
d’Errico of Bordeaux University in southwestern France said the engraving was “the
oldest known graphic expression.”
“The
behavior is deliberate. The individual had the desire to make a zigzag pattern
in a single go,” he said.
But
d’Errico cautioned, “We don’t know why he did it. It may have been a mark of
ownership, a personal code, a gift.”
Geometric
marks are considered to be a sign of cognitive behavior and neuromotor skills
that — until now — have been overwhelmingly attributed to modern man, Homo
sapiens.
Put
together, the new evidence delivers a blow to the stereotype of H. erectus as
lumbering, heavy-handed and stupid.
He was
smart enough to feed himself efficiently from mussels, dextrous enough to use
slim, smooth shells as tools and brainy enough to engrave an abstract pattern
on one of them.
A “richer”
image of this enigmatic hominid results, Roebroeks said.
“We knew
that H. erectus made nice handaxes etcetera,” he said.
“Now we
have this evidence for sophisticated opening of shells and a small zigzag, it
might create a more subtle picture.”
Agence France-Presse
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