The world's earliest known drawing, Blombos Cave
- Date
- c. 73,000 years ago
- Category
- Culture, arts & philosophy
- Region
- Southern Africa (South Africa)
- Era
- Prehistory
- Significance
In 2018 researchers reported a small silcrete flake from the roughly 73,000-year-old levels of Blombos Cave bearing a deliberate pattern of six straight sub-parallel lines crossed obliquely by three slightly curved lines — informally dubbed an ancient 'hashtag'.
Microscopic and chemical analysis confirmed that the lines were drawn with a pointed ochre 'crayon' applied to a deliberately ground surface, rather than being natural marks or the by-product of a utilitarian task. The find is widely described as the earliest known human drawing, predating the previously oldest abstract and figurative drawings of Europe and Indonesia by at least 30,000 years. Crucially, the cross-hatched motif echoes patterns engraved on ochre pieces and ostrich-eggshell containers elsewhere in southern Africa, suggesting a persistent and shared graphic tradition. The drawing strengthens the case that the capacity to store and transmit abstract concepts through made marks — a foundation of later art and ultimately of writing — was present in Africa tens of millennia before it became widespread in the Upper Palaeolithic world.
One piece of history in your inbox, weekly
New empires, events and features as they land — one good email a week. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Related culture, arts & philosophy events
- Engraved ochre and shell-bead ornaments at Blombos Cavec. 100,000–75,000 years ago
- Behavioural modernity and major Out-of-Africa dispersalc. 70,000–50,000 years ago
- Göbekli Tepe – monumental architecture by hunter-gatherersc. 9,600–8,000 BCE
- Upper Paleolithic art and symbolic explosionc. 40,000+ years ago
- World's earliest figurative and narrative cave art on Sulawesic. 51,000 – 45,500 years ago
- Chauvet Cave: early masterworks of figurative cave artc. 36,500 years ago
Further reading
The wider story
The Story of Art
The best-selling art history ever written, from cave paintings to the modern age.
Get it on Amazon →As an Amazon Associate, Human Saga earns from qualifying purchases.