Free Republic

The earliest known drawing made by a human has been found in a South African cave and it looks very similar to a hashtag, the grouping and search feature made popular by the Jack Dorsey-led Twitter. The drawing is basically six red lines crossed by three other slightly curved lines. It appears on a tiny flake of mineral crust measuring only about 1.5 inches long and about half an inch tall. It's evidently part of a larger drawing because lines reaching the edge are cut off abruptly there, researchers said. "Before this discovery, Palaeolithic archaeologists have for a long time...

Archaeological sites suggest climate may not have been directly linked to cultural and technological innovations of Middle Stone Age humans in southern Africa... The Middle Stone Age marked a period of dramatic change amongst early humans in southern Africa, and climate change has been postulated as a primary driver for the appearance of technological and cultural innovations such as bone tools, ochre production, and personal ornamentation. While some researchers suggest that climate instability may have directly inspired technological advances, others postulate that environmental stability may have provided a stable setting that allowed for experimentation. However, the disconnection of palaeoenvironmental records...