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Apr. 26, 2021 5:00 AM
Archaeologists have found the oldest home in hominin history. Unsurprisingly, it is a cave: Wonderwerk Cave in the Kalahari Desert. Astonishingly, it has been occupied more or less continuously for two million years. Through most of that time, modern humans didn’t even exist.
The archaeologists have also demonstrated the earliest-ever use of fire, a million years ago, and of symbolic thinking half a million years ago in Wonderwerk Cave, report Ron Shaar, Ari Matmon, Liora Kolska Horwitz, Yael Ebert and Michael Chazan in Quaternary Science Reviews.
Among the signs of advanced cognitive ability, the archaeologists believe they have found indications that ocher may have been used there 500,000 to 300,000 years ago – hundreds of thousands of years earlier than thought.
Hebrew U Researchers Unveil Oldest Evidence of Human Activity in African Desert Cave | The Jewish Press - JewishPress com | Jewish Press News Desk | 14 Iyyar 5781 – April 26, 2021 jewishpress.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from jewishpress.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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Few sites in the world preserve a continuous archaeological record spanning millions of years. Wonderwerk Cave, located in South Africa s Kalahari Desert, is one of those rare sites. Meaning miracle in Afrikaans, Wonderwerk Cave has been identified as potentially the earliest cave occupation in the world and the site of some of the earliest indications of fire use and tool making among prehistoric humans.
New research, published in
Quaternary Science Reviews, led by a team of geologists and archaeologists from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HU) and the University of Toronto, confirms the record-breaking date of this spectacular site. We can now say with confidence that our human ancestors were making simple Oldowan stone tools inside the Wonderwerk Cave 1.8 million years ago. Wonderwerk is unique among ancient Oldowan sites, a tool-type first found 2.6 million years ago in East Africa, precisely because it is a cave and not an open-air occurrence, explained
The Wonderwerk Cave in South Africa. (Michael Chazan at the University of Toronto)
Researchers say they have confirmed their theory that humans were active in a cavern in South Africa far earlier than initially thought, dating occupation of the Wonderwerk Cave to 1.8 million years ago, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem said in a statement Monday.
The assessment by the team of geologists and archaeologists from the university and the University of Toronto pushes back the prehistoric past dwelling in the desert cave by nearly a million years.
Whereas ancient humans are known to have been using basic stone tools, known as Oldowan, already 2.5 million years ago, that activity was out in the open. Wonderwerk, meaning “miracle” in Afrikaans, holds the earliest evidence anywhere in the world of such tool use inside a cave.
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