Makapansgat pebble

The Makapansgat pebble or Makapansgat cobble (ca. 3,000,000 BP) is a 260-gram, 8.3 cm long, reddish-brown jasperite cobble with natural chipping and wear patterns that make it look like a crude rendition of a human face, in fact at least two possible faces.[1]

The pebble is interesting in that it was found in a cave in Makapansgat, South Africa, 4.8 km (3 miles) from the nearest possible natural source, associated with the bones of Australopithecus africanus in a cave.[2][3] Though it is definitely not a manufactured object, it has been suggested that some australopithecine might have recognized it as a symbolic face, in possibly the earliest example of symbolic thinking or aesthetic sense in the human heritage, and brought the pebble back to the cave. This would make it a candidate for the oldest known manuport.[4]

A local school teacher Wilfred I. Eitzman found it in the Makapansgat, a dolerite cave in the Makapan Valley north of Mokopane, Limpopo, South Africa in 1925. It had been described in literature and featured in the television program The Roots of Art in November 1967, before it gained new attention in 1974 when Raymond Dart (who had first seen it shortly after it was found) published a new interpretation. While Eitzman had already suggested it was brought, because of the resemblance to a face, to the cave, Dart recognized other faces when the stone is viewed from different angles.[5][6][7]

The Makapansgat pebble cannot be seen as art if a usual definition of the term is used, as the object was found and not made. Nevertheless that an Australopithecus may have recognized a face would reveal that the early hominid had some sort of capacity for symbolic thinking, necessary for the development of art and language.[3] Whether the early hominid had really seen this object as a face, as well as whether it had magical speculations towards this object or just enjoyed the pebble, remains unclear.

Factors adding to the uncertainty surrounding the piece is that we do not know exactly where in the cave it was found, nor the Australopithecus species the bones are from, nor whether they had been brought into the cave by animal scavengers.[8]