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The oldest known drawing, a cross-hatch in ochre at Blombos Cave, about 73,000 years ago; pierced shell beads worn there a little earlier.
The mechanism
A REFERENCE OUTSIDE THE HEAD — a mark that holds a pattern for someone else to read
How it was checked
- EvidenceT6 PHYSICAL / MANUSCRIPT; Status: ADDED 2026-09-18
- Letter eraTHE DECLARATION AND THE DEEP RECORD the awakening to Babel: dated by ruling and by the record, placed by story where the text gives no date
- Plate — Blombos Cave, South Africa, engraved ochre stone · CC BY-SA 4.0 · source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Blombo.jpg
- SourcesARCHAEOLOGY — Henshilwood et al. 2018 (Nature); beads ~75 ka (Henshilwood 2004); an older engraving at Trinil, 430–540 ka (Joordens 2015)
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