Abbreviations
BCE = Before Common Era (same as BC)
CE = Common Era (same as AD)
BP = Before Present
In this list, I am mostly interested in human creations, however I have included some of the earliest accidental evidences of humanity and culture as I deemed interesting.
3.6 Million Years BP — Oldest Hominin Footprints — Ethiopia
Australopithecus afarensis is the species of the famous and mostly-intact species of pre-human named “Lucy”, found by Donald Johanson in 1974. These footprints, found in Tanzania by Mary Leakey and Paul Abell, gave paleoanthropologists a great deal of quantifiable information about pre-human ambulation.
At 27 meters long,
preserved in solidified volcanic ash, and currently housed in the National Museum of Tanzania, they are not the oldest foot impressions, however by being a long and continuous series of steps, provided ample evidence of evolutionary principles.
500,000 Years BP — Shell Engravings — Indonesia
From Mental Floss
Dutch anatomist Eugène Dubois discovered the first Homo erectus fossils in Indonesia in 1891. At the same time, he found an engraved mussel shell that then remained in a museum drawer for more than a century. In a 2014 study in Nature, researchers dated the engraved lines on the shell to between 430,000 and 540,000 years ago. The findings suggested that H. erectus was capable of sophisticated and complex ideas as well as abstract thought.
78,000 BP — Oldest Known Human Burial In Africa — Kenya
51,000 BP — Oldest Known Patterned Bone Engraving — Germany
40,000 Years BP — Wooden Sculpture — Germany
From Mental Floss
Discovered in 1939 by geologist Otto Völzing, the Löwenmensch figurine is made from mammoth ivory and depicts a half-human, half-lion being. Standing just over a foot tall, it was carved about 40,000 years ago during the Aurignacian period—the same era in which the Chauvet cave paintings were made—and is the oldest non-human figurine ever found. It may represent a deity. The figurine, along with other evidence in the cave, may be the oldest known evidence of religious belief.
40,000 Years BP — Oldest Musical Instruments — Slovenia
From Mental Floss
Our love of music isn’t a new phenomenon. In 2008, a team led by archaeologist Nicholas Conard found a number of flutes in a cave in Southwestern Germany. The tiny flutes were made of mammoth ivory and created about 40,000 years ago by anatomically modern humans in a period of prehistory called the Basal Aurignacian. However, there’s evidence that Neanderthals played music thousands of years before those flutes were created.
Found in Slovenia in 1995, the Neanderthal-made flute was made out of the thigh bone of a prehistoric cave bear. The flute was made about 60,000 years ago and is the oldest known musical instrument in the world. The act of creating a physical instrument, combined with the distinct musical intelligence required to understand concepts like rhythm, tempo, and melody, suggest Neanderthals were more sophisticated than we knew. Finds like these further support the idea that artistic expression isn’t just for Homo sapiens.
43,900 Years BP — Oldest Representational Art — Indonesia
From Mental Floss
The limestone caves of Sulawesi are a treasure trove of art that sheds light on prehistoric cultures. In 2019, researchers found paintings of a hunting scene that was dated to 43,900 years ago using a method that analyzed the age of overlying mineral deposits. In 2021, Australian and Indonesian archaeologists found even older representational art. Depicting prehistoric Indonesian pigs, the art was made using ochre, an inorganic mineral that cannot be carbon-dated. The research team instead dated the calcium build-up—stalagmites and stalactites—beneath and on top of the paintings, showing the oldest painting was created at least 45,500 years ago.
22,000 Years BP — New World Prehistoric Murals — Colombia
From
Mental Floss
Spanning eight miles in southern Colombia, caves in Chiribiquete National Park are covered in vast prehistoric paintings. An estimated 75,000 figures are depicted on the rock walls, many of which are at extreme elevations. Experts aren’t sure how the artists were able to climb so high to create them.
In addition to being beautiful artworks in their own right, the cave paintings are thought to have a deep spiritual meaning. They depict dancing, hunting, and rituals, as well as the prehistoric animals native to the region. Paintings of jaguars may be particularly important. Anthropologists interpret them as symbols of fertility and power, and they may have connections to religions of other, more recent inhabitants of the region, like the Maya and Aztec.
The people that made these paintings were among the very first humans to arrive in the Americas. Scientists estimate the paintings as more than 22,000 years old—which supports emerging theories, based on other archaeological findings, that humans occupied the Americas around 20,000 to 30,000 years ago.
