What's the oldest piece of art

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A.� Two abstract representations engraved on pieces of red ochre. They have just been recovered from Blombos Cave on the southern Cape coast of the Indian Ocean in South Africa, 120 miles east of Cape Town. < xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

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Q.� How old

A.� Luminescence dating has shown that they are about 77,000 years old. Before this, the earliest known forms of art were cave paintings in southern France and northern Spain - and they are a mere 35,000 years old.

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Q.� And what are the paintings

A.� They're engravings, actually.� The surfaces of the red ochre - a type of iron ore - measure two and three inches long and were first scraped and ground smooth. They were then marked with cross hatches and lines.

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Professor Christopher Henshilwood, who helped discover them, said: 'We have no idea what the engravings represent. They are abstract and one is fairly complex. They almost certainly had significance to the makers and this meaning was probably conveyed and is associated with modern syntactical language.'

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Q.� So these are important finds

A.� Yes - revolutionary. Henshilwood said: 'Deliberate depictions, whether abstract or pictorial, signify modern human behaviour. These finds point to Africa as the cradle of both human anatomical modernity and behavioural modernity. The importance is that African people, from whom we are all descended, were modern in their behaviour long before they got to Europe as Cro-Magnons and replaced Neanderthals.'

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They also show that these African ancestors had acquired grammatical speech. 'They would have needed language ... to have been able to explain to other people in the cave what the meaning of these pieces was. Here we have a good indication of an ability to think in the abstract, to think in terms of the past, the present and the future, and that's one of the hallmarks of modern behaviour. People were able to plan,' said Henshilwood.

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Q.� Modern humans

A.� Modern humans evolved - anatomically - in Africa about 150,000 years ago. A group of perhaps as few as 10,000 would go on to populate the planet, displacing Neanderthal man. It is a matter of dispute when Homo Sapiens began to show the patterns of behaviour - art, language and planning - which made them human. One school of thought suggests this began suddenly between 40,000 and 50,000 years ago. Others believe modern behaviour emerged gradually and much earlier. These ochre engravings provide evidence to support that theory.

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Q.� And what about this cave

A.� Blombos Cave is a good source of early evidence of bone tool manufacture and fishing, which both point to modern human behaviour. The ochre pieces were found in 1999 and 2000 near fire hearths and in undisturbed ash and sand. Ochre is frequently found in Stone Age sites less than 100,000 years old and may have been used as a body covering, decorative paint or for tanning hides.

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Q.� All this evidence from two small objects

A.� Yes - and another seven pieces of ochre are still being analysed for possible engravings. They might provide even more of interest.

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Steve Cunningham