Prehistoric Man in South Africa Made Milk-based Paint 49000 years ago
A paint mixture of ochre and wild bovid milk, possibly from a buffalo or eland or similar animal, was found on a chip of a stone tool dating back 49,000 years in Sibudu Cave, a rock shelter in northern KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The stone tool fragment was found in a rock shelter in South Africa that humans inhabited between 77,000 and 38,000 years ago.
"Although the use of the paint still remains uncertain, this surprising find establishes the use of milk with ochre well before the introduction of domestic cattle in South Africa," Paola Villa of the University of Colorado told PLOS One . "Obtaining milk from a lactating wild bovid also suggests that the people may have attributed a special significance and value to that product."
Villa and researchers from her institution and the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa published the study, which said use of ochre by early humans dates back about 250,000 years in Africa and Europe. Ochre has been used widely by Aboriginal Australians throughout their 65000+ year time on the huge island, and a 30000-year-old ochre mine is the oldest continuously working mine in the world .
But this is the first evidence that paint with milk and ochre has been found to have been used by early people in South Africa.
The paint mixture may have been used as body paint, a practice that has been common worldwide throughout history. The Himba are indigenous peoples living in northern Namibia, who use a body paint made from red ochre and milk fat. The paste is lathered over the entire body and is used to keep the skin hydrated over long periods of water scarcity, and to protect themselves from the extremely hot and dry climate.
A Himba girl covered in body paint made with red ochre and milk fat ( Wikimedia Commons )
“The milk likely was obtained by killing lactating members of the bovid family such as buffalo, eland, kudu and impala ... ” PLOS One said. “The powdered paint mixture was found on the edge of a small stone flake in a layer of Sibudu Cave, a rock shelter in northern KwaZulu-Natal, Africa, that was occupied by anatomically modern humans in the Middle Stone Age … said Villa. While ochre powder production and its use are documented in a number of Middle Stone Age South African sites, there has been no evidence of the use of milk as a chemical binding agent until this discovery.”
Cattle were domesticated in South Africa about 1,000 to 2,000 years ago. It may have been possible for Middle Stone Age hunters to obtain the milk of the wild animals because South African bovids leave the herd when giving birth in an attempt to hide their newborns.
Villa said the dried paint residue on the stone flake may have been there because it was used as an applicator or to mix the ochre and milk. The researchers employed highly advanced technology to determine that casein, the major milk protein, was on the flake.
An international research team led by the University of Colorado Boulder and the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, has discovered a milk-and ochre-based paint on a small stone flake dating to 49,000 years ( University of Colorado )
Ochre was used as a paint by people in South Africa as long ago as 125,000 years. But the practice of grinding up ochre and using it as paint dates back at least 250,000 years in other archaeological sites in Africa and Europe, the researchers said. The natural pigment ranges in color from brown to red to orange to yellow.
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Researchers have seen use of ochre in combination with plant gum or resin to connect shafts to tools, Villa said. “It also may have been used to preserve hides and for body paint, she said, noting that a roughly 100,000-year-old ochre-rich compound blended with animal marrow fat was found at the Middle Stone Age site of Blombos Cave in South Africa,” PLOS One reported. “Body painting is widely practiced by the indigenous San people in South Africa, and is depicted in ancient rock art. While there are no ethnographic precedents for mixing ochre with milk as a body paint, the modern Himba people in Namibia mix ochre with butter as a coloring agent for skin, hair and leather clothing.”
Body painting has been known worldwide from the earliest times on all continents except Antarctica. People in Australia, New Zealand, South America, Europe, North America, some Pacific Islands and Africa still paint their bodies. Also, body paint is used in American Indian ceremonies. It was known in Europe in the Late Stone Age when naked, blue-painted Picts rushed into battle. Some Western people do body painting even when it is not a part of their heritage.
Top image: Prehistoric rock art using ochre paint on a cave wall in Drakensberg, South Africa (Photo by Alessandro Passaré/ Wikimedia Commons )
By Mark Miller