National Geographic News, Reporting Your World Daily

Monday, November 23, 2009

Photo: African Cave Yields Earliest Proof of Beach Living


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Ochre specimens with scrape marks found in a South African cave are believed to have been made by early modern humans who used the red pigment in symbolic behavior.

The specimens were part of a find that suggests early humans learned how to live on the coasts 45,000 years earlier than had been thought.

Photograph courtesy the Mossel Bay Archaeology Project/Nature