We know very little, and don't understand the complexity of time and events tha have past, specially when we talk about prehistory. By prehistory I mean dates that are out of C14 range (50+ kya).
Ocher, a red pigment made from hematite, seems to have captivated the imagination of numerous prehistoric groups throughout the world. Its prevalence across millennia of the archaeological record indicates its significance in early cultures, especially in the context of prehistoric mortuary customs.
Derived from iron oxide ore, ocher has been found in association with prehistoric peoples on every continent except Antarctica. In Europe, ocher appears in burials as early as the Middle Paleolithic period. These early evidences were found on Neanderthal skeletons at Le Moustier and La Chapelle-aux-Saints, though its ritual use by this group remains a disputed hypothesis. With the appearance of Homo sapiens sapiens in Europe, the practice of using ocher in burials significantly expanded, both in the number of burials incorporating ocher and the areas in which these burials were found. Dozens of Upper Paleolithic burials with ocher have been excavated in Western, Central, and Eastern Europe and even more sites have been found containing caches of ochre as well as the tools necessary for ocher preparation. Ocher usage in mortuary contexts continued into the Mesolithic, expanding into the region of what is now Denmark and Sweden.
Though the archaeological record of prehistoric man in Asia is still rather sketchy, recent excavations have revealed that ocher use was extensive in Asia as well. Ocher was recently found in burial mounds in Kazakhstan and the Ural Mountains, indicating that it was used in mortuary rituals there at least 2600 years ago. In Thailand, burials sprinkled with red ocher were dated about 4000 B. P. In Siberia, China, and Russia, there are records of ochre-covered skeletons that date back to the Upper Paleolithic.
Australian aborigines may have been using ocher in mortuary practices as early as 30,000 B.P. In New South Wales, a male skeleton, dubbed Mungo III, was found in a shallow grave and stained red with ocher. Numerous burials in northern Victoria, dated between 15,000 and 9000 years ago, have been discovered which contain ocher as well as other grave goods.
In South America, the use of ocher in mortuary contexts has been found in association with some Mayan burials in Guatemala and Belize and ocher is thought to have been used as a pigment for ritual purposes throughout Mesoamerica. An excavation on the Brazilian coast near Rio de Janeiro uncovered nearly fifty burials believed to be more than 6000 years old which were covered with a thin layer of ocher.
The practice of using ocher in burials in North America seems to have arrived along with the first inhabitants of the continent and quickly became a common feature of burials, especially in the northern part of the continent. Burials containing ocher have been found in nearly every U.S. state, in most of Canada, and in northern Mexico. These sites reach back from the earliest indications of human occupation in the New World and continue all the way into historic times. For at least one prehistoric tribe, the abundance of ocher associated with burials among this group earned it the name, the Red-Paint People.
Ocher’s Symbolism
It seems apparent that the use of ocher in burials had symbolic significance to prehistoric peoples. Research on symbolism and color has determined that humans have a cultural preference for red that goes beyond individual preference. This cultural inclination may explain the global popularity of ocher usage. The color’s association with blood may also be a factor in its popularity among aboriginals. It is likely that ocher became symbolic of blood for some groups. This link between ocher and blood is further supported by the fact that hematite gets its name from the Greek word for blood, haema. In addition, ocher may also have been attributed with supernatural abilities. Ocher’s red coloring intensifies under high temperatures, a transformation which may have seemed magical to prehistoric groups.
To understand all of this in a more wider context I recomend
When you have all this in mind, you are even more fascinated when you reed news like this:
A 58,000-year-old ochre powder production site has been discovered at Sibudu, South Africa.
To understand how this is important in the context of early modern human-south Africa-out of Africa theory you must know few base things. On of the key sites is Blombos cave in South Africa.
Blombos Cave is a site at the very tip of South Africa where great strides in understanding the development of modern human beings are being taken these days. While much of the recent press attention has been on the scholarly debate on whether humans evolved once in Africa (the Out of Africatheory), or several times all over the world (the multiregional hypothesis), a quiet revolution has occurred centered on what it means to be human.
For several decades--probably since the discovery of theLascaux Caves in France--archaeologists believed that while anatomically modern Homo sapiensevolved somewhere between 100,000-150,000 years ago, humans didn't actually develop modern behaviors and thought processes until around 50,000-40,000 years ago. This event, known in some scientific circles as the "creative explosion," was announced by what researchers saw as a sudden blossoming of symbolic thought.
What researchers mean by symbolic thought is the ability to identify--and create--representations of things. Thus, the theory went, a species really not much smarter than other hominids of the time suddenly began painting
bison and mammoth on cave walls in France. Evidence of the flowering of modern human behavior is held to including fishing, the manufacture of bone tools, the use of decoration, and the production of art.
Modern Behaviors in Africa
Part of the trouble was, none of the major scientists was really doing much research in Africa—there was a lot to be investigated in France, after all; but in retrospect the neglect of Africa is a little weird, since we've known for a very long time that that's where the earliest humans evolved. Then, evidence of an earlier flourishing of the creative mind began to appear, in southern Africa south of the Zambezi River, dated to the Middle Stone Age, 70,000 years ago and more. Similar artifact collection types—known as assemblages in archaeological parlance—alled Howiesons Poort and Stillbay have been found at sites such as the Klasies River Caves, Boomplaas, and Die Kelders Cave I in South Africa.
These sites included sophisticated bone tools, backed blades, a careful selection of raw material for stone tools and the use of a punch technique; but most of these were controversial in one respect or another. That was until Blombos Cave.
Modern Behaviors at Blombos Cave
Since 1991, South African researchers led by Christopher Henshilwood have been working at the Blombos Cave site. Artifacts found there include sophisticated bone and stone tools, fish bones, and an abundance of used ochre. Ochre has no known economic function; it is almost universally accepted as a source of color for ceremonial, decorative purposes. The Blombos Cave layers containing used ochre are dated 70,000 to 80,000 years before the present. Most recently (April of 2004), a cluster of deliberately perforated and red-stained shell beads dating to the Middle Stone Age has been found, and is being interpreted as personal ornaments or jewelry for the occupants of Blombos.
The best and most likely interpretation of these finds, and numerous others throughout Africa, is that the growth of the human symbolic thought was a slow process that continued throughout the Middle Stone Age in Africa. How that flourishing of creative thought left Africa is still under discussion, but one way may have been through the Southern Dispersal Route.
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