Makapansgat pebble
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The Makapansgat pebble or the pebble of many faces, is a 260 g jasperite cobble with natural chipping and wear patterns that make it look like a crude rendition of a human face and is considered the first manuport. The pebble is interesting in that it was found some distance from any possible natural source, in the context of Australopithecus africanus remains in South Africa. Though it is definitely not a manufactured object, it has been suggested that some australopithecine, or possibly another hominid, recognized it as a symbolic face and fetched it back to camp.[1] If so, it may be a candidate for the earliest example of symbolic thinking or aesthetic sense in the human heritage.
The teacher Wilfred I. Eizman found it in the Makapansgat valley (or Makapan Valley) north of Mokopane, Limpopo, South Africa in 1925.[2] Almost 50 years later, Raymond Dart was the first to describe it in 1974.[3]
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- R. Bednarik: Manuports and very early palaeoart – photograph and text explaining the cobble's significance
- Another photograph of the pebble; contains watermark
- Gallery of unrelated face-shaped stones
