【新科学家 2018-09-15期】 最古老的人类绘画

The oldest human drawing

Archaeologists say they have found a 73,000-year-old drawing.

考古学家们声称他们已经找到了一副距今73000年的画作。

From a cursory glance, the lines on this small, brown stone could be mistaken for a natural formation. In fact, it is the first known drawing ever made by human hands.

如果对这块棕色的小石头只是粗略的看两眼，你可能会觉得上面的条纹是因自然而形成。但实际上，它是目前已知最早的由人类创造的画作。

“This is the beginnings of cultural modernity and sophisticated behaviour,” says Colin Renfrew at the University of Cambridge, who was not involved in its discovery.“You would be astonished if you found another animal species producing something like that. It’s the origins of humankind.”

剑桥大学的Colin Renfrew形容这块石头是“文化现代性和复杂行为的开端”，虽然他并未参与此次发现。不过他还表示“如果你发现另一种动物物种会产生类似的东西，你会感到很惊讶。因为这是人类的起源。”

Laboratory analysis shows that the dark red lines, forming a rough, cross-hatched pattern, must have been drawn with a chunk of soft, coloured stone called ochre, possibly one whittled into a simple crayon.

实验室的分析表明，这样的作品是由一块柔软的、富有色彩的石块（我们称之为赭石）制作而成。有可能是将其削为一个简单的赭石笔，用来在石头上创作出暗红色条纹，从而显现出一个粗糙的交叉阴影图案。

Attempts to recreate the pattern using the same materials show that the lines were no careless scrawls but took deliberate effort.“You have to use a lot of pressure and control or it doesn't leave enough ochre,”says Christopher Henshilwood at the University.of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa.

通过使用相同材料重新创建图案，我们可以知晓这些线条并不是无心之举，而是付之于仔细推敲之后的结果。正如南非约翰内斯堡-威特沃特斯兰德大学的Christopher Henshilwood 所说：“你必须使用足够的压力和控制，否则不会留下如此明显的赭石印记”。

Henshilwood and his colleagues dug up the drawing in a South African cave from layers of earth dated to about 73,000 years ago. This makesit nearly twice as old as any previously found Stone Age drawings or paintings by our own species – although it was recently discovered that Neanderthals were painting caves in Spain 64,000 years ago.

Henshilwood和他的同事们在南非的洞穴中发掘出了这幅画作，这些洞穴的历史这些洞穴的历史可以追溯到大约73,000年前。尽管最近在西班牙的洞穴中发现了尼安德特人在64,000年前作画的痕迹，但是比起之前发现的在石器时代所创作的绘画时间来说，几乎早了两倍之多。

Modern humans, or Homo sapiens, evolved in East Africa about 200,000 years ago, before spreading to the north and south of the continent. The Blombos cave, on the south coast, has been excavated for more than two decades, turning up a wealth of material from people living there as far back as 100,000 years ago.

在大约20万年前，现代人类或智人（Homo sapiens）在东非进化，然后蔓延到非洲大陆的北部和南部。位于南海岸的Blombos洞穴已经被挖掘了二十多年，在其过程中，发现了大量早在10万年前就已经居住在那里的人们的一些生活痕迹。

The artefacts uncovered include shell beads and spear tips made from stone and bone. Another provocative find was a painting kit – the paint, made from ochre, charcoal and seal fat, was mixed in large sea snail shells – but so far no paintings have turned up.

已发现的人工制品包括贝壳制作的珠子和由石头和骨头制成的矛尖。另一个令人兴奋的发现是一个绘画工具包，包含了由赭石，木炭和海豹脂混合制成的一种涂料，被存放于大型海洋蜗牛壳中，不过目前为止并未有画作的出现。

The newly found drawing is on a rock just 4 by 1.5 centimetres. It was unearthed in 2011, but, covered in dirt, drew no notice, and was just labelled and stored. Only when the muck was washed off in a search for stone tools years later did a team member notice the markings, triggering microscopic and chemical analysis of the rock and the ochre traces.

最新的发现是在2011年的一块石头上的作品，其面积仅有4cm*1.5cm。由于挖掘出土时被泥土所覆盖，因此并未引起重视，只是做了标记便收藏了起来。直至多年后在寻找石具的过程中清洗掉了渣土，团队成员才注意到了当时的标记，接而对这块石头和在它之上的赭石痕迹进行了微观的化学研究与分析。

Ochre comes in various forms and hues – this particular type would have been about as hard as a child’s colouring pencil, perfect for the job, says Henshilwood. Going by the width of the lines, the tip was a 2-millimetre point that may have been deliberately sharpened.

Henchilwood说，赭石具有各类型的形式和色调 — 这种特殊的类型与儿童的着色铅笔一样硬，非常适合此类的绘画所用。从线条的宽度来说，尖端是2毫米的点，由此可推断出可能是故意将赭石削了尖。

The nine lines extend right to the edges of the rock, suggesting that they were once part of a larger artwork that was later broken up. For most lines, the team could tell the direction of the stroke, because microscopic bumps on the stone surface accumulated ochre on the opposite side to the crayon’s approach. The scribbler must have gone over one line several times in a to-and-fromotion, making it thicker than the rest. “There’s no doubt it was done deliberately,” says Henshilwood.

观察其九条线延伸到岩石的边缘，这表明这个石块曾经是一个较大的艺术品的一部分，后来被分开了。研究团队同时从这些线条中判别出了大致的方向，因为石头表面上的微小凸起在蜡笔接近的相反侧积累了赭石。这个略显粗糙的创作者必须在同一轨迹上重复划出线条，使其比其他部分更厚。”毫无疑问，这是刻意做的。”Henshilwood如此说。

The stone “canvas” also told a story. The drawn-on surface is much smoother than the other sides, and its pits contain tiny traces of a different kind of ochre that is as hard as rock. This indicates it might have initially been used as a grindstone for rubbing the hard ochre into powder, perhaps used for paint (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/ s41586-018-0514-3).

这块石头的“画布”同时也说明了一件事：被绘制的表面比其他侧面更平滑，并且其凹坑包含与岩石一样坚硬的不同类型的赭石的微小痕迹。 这表明它可能最初被用作磨砂石，用于将硬赭石摩擦成粉末，有可能是作为涂料而用（Nature，DOI：10.1038 / s41586-018-0514-3）。

Henshilwood says we don’t know if the original cross-hatch drawing was for decoration or had some symbolic meaning. “If you have a little ochre pencil, perhaps for the first time you are able to store information outside of your brain,” he says. “You can carry it across the landscape and leave a message anywhere.”

Henshilwood表示我们目前尚未明确原始的交叉阴影图是用于装饰，还是具有某些象征意义。他说：“如果你有一只小赭石笔，这或许是你第一次能够在脑外存储信息，而且你还可以带着它游历千山万水，在任何你想留下信息的地方留下一个记号。”

“This shows that the minds of these people would have been very similar to ours today,” says Clive Finlayson of the Gibraltar Museum. “They were able to try to represent something by abstracting something. That suggests cognitive capacities similar to ours.”

“这说明了这些人的思想与我们今天的思想非常相似。”直布罗陀博物馆的Clive Finlayson这样评价：“能够尝试通过抽象来表达某些东西，这表明他们的认知能力与我们的非常吻合。”

Impressive though it is, the drawing isn’t the earliest ever artwork from our species. There are plentiful examples of earlier designs – including similar cross-hatchings – made by etching, a simpler technique than drawing with a crayon.

令人印象深刻的是，这幅画并不是我们物种中最早的艺术作品。 早期的设计有很多例子，包括类似的交叉影线等，是通过比用赭石笔绘制更简单的技术—腐蚀剂蚀刻制作。

The first known etched design was found on a clam shell from Indonesia, dated to half a million years ago – so must have been made by a different species of hominin, Homo erectus.

第一个已知的蚀刻设计是在印度尼西亚的蛤壳上发现的，可追溯到五十万年前，由此可知这个设计的创造者肯定非古人类，而是由另一物种 — 直立人创造而成。