face

When it comes to the origins of human art and symbolic thinking, the timeline is constantly being pushed further back into the deep past. Yet, one small, reddish-brown stone challenges everything we thought we knew about the cognitive abilities of our ancient ancestors. The Makapansgat pebble, a jasperite cobble weighing just 260 grams, bears an uncanny resemblance to a human face. What makes this stone truly extraordinary is not just its appearance, but the fact that it was found in a South African cave alongside the bones of Australopithecus africanus, an early hominin that lived between 2.5 and 2.9 million years ago. The stone bears natural wear patterns and chipping that uncannily resemble a crude human face. Two distinct depressions