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Eswatini in southern Africa is home to the world’s oldest ochre mine. A new study dates that mine to a full 48,000 years ago.
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Ochre is a clay-based pigment that was incredibly popular at that time, and was used in everything from cave paintings to personal ornamental decorations.
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High-tech analysis of the ochre shows that not only was it mined for thousands of years, but a trade network developed around the movement of ochre.
Arguably one of the most charming things about humanity is the emphasis we have placed on art throughout our history. And according to a recent study, we’ve at least held that value for almost 50,000 years.
An international research team discovered that the Lion Cavern in Eswatini in southern Africa is the oldest ochre mine in the world, with prehistoric human interaction with the mine dating back to 48,000 years ago. This wasn’t a one-time usage situation, either—the for thousands of years, spanning the final Middle Stone Age and the Late Stone Age, the cavern was mined for a clay-based pigmentation mineral called ochre. The dedication to its sourcing shows the importance of this substance, which was key to giving cave paintings, body art, and personal ornaments a richness in color.
In a new study published in Nature Communications, a team of researchers from the University of Missouri confirmed that this particular ochre mine is the oldest in the world, offering a glimpse of just how important this naturally occurring mineral was to ancient people.
At Mizzou’s Archaeometry Lab, the team pieced together a geochemical fingerprint of ochre, revealing the material’s origin, how it was formed, and its history. “We take small samples of ochre artifacts and safely make them radioactive by exposing them to neutrons in the reactor core,” Brandi MacDonald, a chemistry professor in the College of Arts and Science at the University of Missouri, said in a statement. “As these radioactive materials start to break down or decay, they emit characteristic energies in the form of radioisotopes—which we can measure using gamma-ray spectrometry.”
The team then added Raman spectroscopy to this mix—a process in which a laser causes the sample’s molecular bonds to vibrate, allowing experts to measure the energy from that vibration and identify the existence of specific minerals inside the ochre. The team also used a scanning electron microscope to get a closer look at the material’s chemical structure and elemental composition, and an optically stimulated luminescence process to date materials by measuring radiation.
Together, the techniques helped uncover the secrets of the ancient ochre, including that it had been transported—sometimes over impressive distances. This implies the strong likelihood that there was an ancient trade network in place for the pigment.
“By comparing the ochre sources with the places where people lived, exchanged, and used those ochres between 2,000 and 40,000 years ago,” MacDonald said, “we can see how their choice of raw materials changed over long periods of time.”
Additionally, the study authors wrote that they’ve helped develop a framework for interpreting regional variations within ochre. “These communities of practice did not develop in isolation and were part of a wider system of relations that were influenced and mediated by social interactions,” the authors wrote.
“This allows us to anchor human activities in time and show how human cognition and social networks developed alongside those activities,” MacDonald said. “Understanding how these people mined, processed, transported, and used ochre provides clues about early technological innovations and helps trace the history of human creativity and symbolism.”
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