SOUTH AFRICA CAVE REVEALS 100,000 YEAR OLD PAINT POT

Archaeologists have excavated a 100,000-year-old paint pot including all tools an ancient artist needed in the Blombos Cave in South Africa. Researchers discovered red and yellow pigments, shell containers, and grinding cobbles and bone spatulas to mix up a paste, MailOnline reported.

“This discovery represents an important benchmark in the evolution of complex human cognition,” said head of the archaeology team Professor Christopher Henshilwood, from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. “It shows humans had the conceptual ability to source, combine and store substances that were then possibly used to enhance their social practices,” he added.

Researchers claim that the tool kits were evidence of early technological development, rudimentary knowledge of chemistry and long-term planning. The findings indicate that humans were certainly thinking in a modern, cognitively-advanced way. “It's possible the paint was used to paint bodies, human skin. It could have been used to paint designs on leather or other objects,” Henshilwood stated.

The southern Cape Coast cave, situated 200 miles east of Cape Town, has been attracting scientists with a plethora of treasures since the early 1990s.