Communication · c. 68,000 years ago

Cave art

Hand stencils and painted animals leave images on cave walls that outlast their makers.

Calcite over a hand stencil at Liang Metanduno on Muna Island, Indonesia, yields a minimum age of 67,800 years. The mineral crust was dated, not the pigment, so the image could be older. Later animal paintings include a pig with human-like figures at Leang Karampuang, dated to at least 51,200 years ago.

See it in the living tree Wikipedia Source

Arcs above join it to what it stood on, arcs below to what it led to. The bar places this stretch on the tree's whole timeline.

What it built on 1

Engraved ochre (Blombos) 98k BCE

What it led to 1

Egyptian hieroglyphs 3250 BCE

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Related measurements

The dashed line marks when it first worked.

World population over a million years Latest: 6.27k million people (2000) Source: DeLong 1998, table 'Total World Population' (Kremer series); Kremer 1993, Population Growth and Technological Change: One Million B.C. to 1990, QJE 108(3)