Archaeology: 100,000 Year Old Paint Pots at Blombos Cave

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100,000 Year Old Paint Pots at Blombos Cave Oct 14th 2011, 10:07 Reported in Science today are the results of investigations at Blombos Cave, a Middle Stone Age site on the Indian Ocean coast of South Africa. Researchers report that they found two tool kits which the inhabitants of the cave used to make paint pigment from red ochre. The nacre and inside of the Tk1 abalone shell (Tk1-S1) after removal of the quartzite grindstone. The red deposit is the ochre rich mixture that was in the shell and preserved under the cobble grinder. Image courtesy of Grethe Moell Pedersen Red ochre is a natural substance found throughout the world, and used by people or their ancestors to decorate objects, to paint walls, to tattoo one another and in rituals associated with burials. At 100,000 years old, the tool kits from Blombos are the earliest such found to date: but ochre use for pigments dates back at least another 200,000 years before that. The photo essay called 100,000 Year Old Paint Pots at Blombos Cave presents some of the photos provided by the researchers, and some background and context on what they found there. More Information 100,000 Year Old Paint Pots at Blombos Cave: A Photo Essay Blombos Cave Ochre Guide to the Middle Stone Age Blombos Cave Official Site is currently down, and I'm wondering if it isn't just because of traffic Henshilwood C, D'Errico F, Van Niekerk K, Coquinot Y, Jacobs Z, Lauritzen S-E, Menu M, and Garcia-Moreno R. 2011. A 100,000-Year-Old Ochre-Processing Workshop at Blombos Cave, South Africa. Science 334:219-222.

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