Page 58 - Research & Innovation Report 2020

SCIENCE

100 000 years ago

humans were smart

We tend to underestimate the intelligence of early modern humans who were highly innovative
and capable of creating exceptional geometric patterns.

Humans delight in creating patterns in the sand, and over 100 000
years ago it seems we were no different. People were drawing
triangles in the dunes along South Africa’s southern Cape coast.
They had also mastered how to draw circles compass-style and
sculpted something that closely resembles a stingray between
70 000 and 158 000 years ago.

“We don’t always think of early modern humans or hominins as
being smart but there is so much evidence of their innovations
found on this coast,” says Dr Jan De Vynck, Director of African
Centre for Coastal Palaeoscience (ACCP) at Nelson Mandela
University. “Consider that they had already mastered the use of
fire in a sophisticated way to make heat-treated stone tools at
least 130 000 years ago.”

“Our most recent finds in this same area are two large triangles
on loose slabs of cemented Pleistocene dune surfaces,” says
the ACCP’s Dr Charles Helm. “These examples of palaeoart, or
what we call ammoglyphs – carvings, images or symbols made in
Dr Jan De Vynck

dune sand that are now cemented into rock known as aeolianite
– indicate that early modern humans were capable of creating
exceptional geometric patterns.”

Each side of the larger of the two triangles is about a metre long and
remarkably straight. One possibility the scientists are considering
is that very straight sticks or reeds were used to create them. “This
wasn’t random, it was a well-executed pattern, and it is extremely
difficult to create something so perfect in the sand,” says Helm.

Part of the triangles’ uniqueness is that sand was the original canvas
and Helm says the scientists he is working with are not aware of
anything like this from the period anywhere else in the world .

This discovery by Helm, De Vynck and Helm’s wife, Linda Helm, is
one of the most profound artefact finds of our species worldwide,
created between 80 000 and 140 000 years ago. They chanced
upon the triangles while covering a very rugged stretch of the
Dr Charles Helm coast near Still Bay in search of fossil track sites. Over the past

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