Record · Prehistory · Africa
What is the oldest known drawing, and who made it?
Nine ochre lines on a stone flake from Blombos Cave, South Africa, about 73,000 years old, drawn by Homo sapiens and reported in Nature in 2018.
· 71,000 BCCulture & ideas
Articles about culture & ideas across every continent and era, oldest first.
Record · Prehistory · Europe
Who painted Chauvet and Lascaux, and how are the paintings dated?
Aurignacian hunters drew Chauvet about 37,000 to 33,500 years ago; Lascaux was painted about 21,500 years ago. Radiocarbon on charcoal and bone says so.
· 34,000 BC
Record · Prehistory · Central Asia
MA-1, the Mal'ta boy: a Hermitage humerus and a 24,000-year genome
A Mal'ta humerus sampled at the Hermitage in 2009 dated to 24,000 years; the Siberian boy's genome sat between western Eurasians and Native Americans.
· 22,000 BC
Record · Prehistory · Oceania
Twenty-four mud-wasp nests date the Gwion figures to 12,000 years
Radiocarbon dates on 24 mud-wasp nests over and under 21 Gwion figures gave 11,500 to 12,700 years in 2020. A kangaroo painting dated in 2021 is older.
· 10,000 BC
Record · Prehistory · South Asia
What is painted at Bhimbetka, and how are the paintings dated?
Sandstone shelters near Bhopal hold paintings from the Mesolithic to historic times, ordered by overlap, style and weathering; the paint itself is undated.
· 8000 BC
Record · Prehistory · East Asia
Crane-bone flutes from Jiahu, Henan, played again after 9,000 years
Six crane-bone flutes from Jiahu, China, date to 7000-5700 BC. Nature called them the earliest complete, playable, tightly-dated multinote instruments.
· 7000 BC
Record · Prehistory · West Asia
Reeds, lime plaster and bitumen: the statues buried at 'Ain Ghazal
Lime-plaster statues on reed frames, buried in two pits at 'Ain Ghazal near Amman and lifted in 1983 and 1985, then conserved in London and Washington.
· 6750 BC
Record · Prehistory · The Americas
'Almost impossible to establish any relationship': Kennewick Man
A skull found in the Columbia River in 1996 led to a lawsuit, a 2015 genome study and a 2016 law that sent Kennewick Man to five tribes in 2017.
· 6500 BC
Record · Prehistory · Europe
Varna's Copper Age gold: 270 burials by one count, 315 by another
An excavator operator found gold near Varna in October 1972. The cemetery has been counted at 270, 294, 312 and 315 graves and dated two ways.
· 4600 BC
Record · Ancient world · South Asia
Why can't anyone read the Indus script?
About 4,000 Indus texts survive, averaging five signs, with no bilingual text and no agreed language, so no decipherment has been accepted since the 1870s.
· 2500 BC
Record · Ancient world · West Asia
Room L.2769 at Ebla and the palace archive found in 1975
In 1975 Sapienza excavators found Ebla's palace archive at Tell Mardikh, Syria. Scarpa counts over 15,000 pieces in one room, ASOR over 18,000 tablets.
· 2300 BC
Record · Ancient world · West Asia
Who was Enheduanna, the first author whose name we know?
Sargon's daughter Enheduanna, priestess at Ur, names herself in the Exaltation of Inana. Most copies are 500 years later, so her authorship is debated.
· 2300 BC
Record · Ancient world · West Asia
How old is the Epic of Gilgamesh, and how does it end?
Several editions of the Gilgamesh epic existed by about 2000 BC. A king of Uruk loses his friend Enkidu, seeks eternal life and loses the plant of youth.
· 2000 BC
Record · Ancient world · The Americas
Two crossed-hands reliefs at Kotosh: University of Tokyo digs, 1960
Seiichi Izumi's University of Tokyo team dug up two crossed-hands clay reliefs at Kotosh, Peru, in 1960 and 1963; sources disagree on their age.
· 2000 BC
Record · Ancient world · Africa
Clay letters to the pharaoh: the Amarna tablets found in 1887
Around 1887 cuneiform letters from Babylon, Mitanni and Canaan surfaced at Tell el-Amarna. Dealers split them up; Knudtzon's EA numbers put them in order.
· 1350 BC
Record · Ancient world · East Asia
Who made the bronze giants of Sanxingdui, and why bury them?
A Sichuan city cast a 2.6-meter bronze man, giant masks and bronze trees, then broke, burned and buried them in eight pits about 1200 BC. No text says why.
· 1200 BC
Record · Ancient world · East Asia
Why were China's oldest records sold as medicine in 1899?
Anyang farmers sold inscribed Shang divination bones to pharmacies as "dragon bones" until 1899, when scholars read the marks as the earliest Chinese writing.
· 1200 BC
Record · Ancient world · West Asia
Tablets from Ras Shamra, 1929: Schaeffer, Bauer and Ugarit's alphabet
In May 1929 Claude Schaeffer found alphabetic cuneiform tablets at Ras Shamra, Syria. In 1930 Hans Bauer read about 20 of their 26 or 27 signs.
· 1190 BC
Record · Ancient world · The Americas
Seventeen heads, five to fifty tons: the Olmec portraits in basalt
Seventeen Olmec colossal heads are known, from San Lorenzo, La Venta and Tres Zapotes; the first was found in 1862, the last at San Lorenzo in May 1994.
· 1000 BC
Record · Ancient world · The Americas
Twenty shell trumpets in a gallery: Chavín de Huántar, 2001 to 2025
Twenty shell trumpets came from Chavín's Caracolas Gallery in 2001. In 2025 PNAS reported vilca and tobacco alkaloids on six artifacts from Gallery 3.
· 800 BC
Record · Ancient world · Central Asia
Arzhan 2 in Tuva: a man, a woman, 14 horses and 40 pounds of gold
Under the Arzhan 2 mound in Tuva, southern Siberia, a man and a woman of the 7th century BC lay with 33 other people, 14 horses and over 40 pounds of gold.
· 650 BC
Record · Classical world · West Asia
A cylinder from Babylon, 1879: a building text called a rights charter
Hormuzd Rassam dug the Cyrus Cylinder out of Babylon in 1879. The British Museum reads it as a building text; in 1971 it became a human rights symbol.
· 539 BC
Record · Classical world · Europe
Why Did Athens Choose Its Leaders by Lottery, Not Election?
Athens filled most offices, from the Council of 500 to its juries, by lottery with a stone machine, the kleroterion, to keep the rich from taking power.
· 487 BC
Record · Classical world · Europe
Why Did Athens Vote to Exile Its Most Powerful Men — on Broken Pottery?
Athens could vote once a year to exile one man for ten years, his name scratched on a pottery shard (ostracon), as a check on power, not a punishment.
· 487 BC