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Monday, October 30, 2017

Artifacts of Great Antiquity


Alice C. Linsley

The age of the earth and archaic human populations continues to be debated among Young Earth Creationists in their attempts to prove evolution wrong. Evolution stands on four main pillars: mutation, adaptation, natural selection, and common ancestry of apes and humans. Mutation and adaptation are facts. There is evidence for natural selection, but not sufficient evidence to hold this model as a law of biology. The pillar that should be questioned is common ancestry of apes and humans, for which there is no physical evidence. Even evolutionary paleontologists are having doubts about common ancestry.

From the perspective of anthropology, the deep time record of human activity is evident in the vast number of innovative objects made and used by humans. Here is a short list. Note the 100,000+ custom of burial in red ocher, a symbolic blood covering.

2.5-3.4 million YBP (Years Before Present)
Butchering flints found in Dikika, Ethiopia. This bone shows evidence of butchering.


Evidence of meat consumption 3 million years ago.


1.5 million;YBP
Stone tools found in Saudi Arabia near the Red Sea from a time when the region was much wetter.

700,000 YBP
Lower Paleolithic Age butchering tools found in Greece.

500,000 YBP
The earliest known wood structure found in Zambia.

A large assemblage of hand axes excavated at Stratum 4a and 4b at the Kathu complex in South Africa. Large mammal remains have been identified at both strata.

A trove of hand axes found in central Israel at Jaljulya.

Flint tools discovered in the Tunel Wielki Cave in Poland.

Engraved shell found in Java.



300,000 YBP
Earliest known use of red ocher at site GnJh-03 in the Kapthurin Formation of East Africa, and at Twin Rivers in Zambia.

Humans worked ochre as early as 307,000 years ago at a site called Olorgesailie in Kenya. Archaeologists working there found two finger-sized pieces of ochre that had been worked by humans.


The Rising Star Expedition has recovered remains dating 236,000 to 335,000 years ago. These show the full range of anatomical features found in modern humans. Chambers had small hearths as evidence by the discovery of well-preserved charcoal, ash, and discolored clay. The excavations also turned up many fragments of animal bone.

162,000 YBP
Heat-treated silicrete stone tools at Pinnacle Cave in South Africa.

150,000 YBP
More than 69 000 Stone Age implements have been found at Border Cave in the Lebombo Mountains.
Snail shell necklace found in a cave in Morocco.

130,000 YBP
In 2010, Thomas Strasser and Eleni Panagopoulou found stone tools on Crete dating to between 200,000 and 100,000 years. These are identical to those found in Africa and parts of Europe. More than 2,000 stone artifacts, including hand axes, were collected on the southwestern shore of Crete, near Plakias.

100,000 YBP

Incised red ocher stone found at Blombos Cave, Western Cape, South Africa.

Red ocher burial of young male in Qafzeh Cave, Lower Galilee.

Evidence of human habitation in the area of Bethlehem is well-attested along the north side of Wadi Khareitun where there are three caves: Iraq al-Ahmar, Umm Qal’a, and Umm Qatafa. These caves were homes in a wooded landscape overlooking a river. At Umm Qatafa archaeologists have found the earliest evidence of the domestic use of fire in Palestine.

90,000 YBP
African projectiles

85,000 YBP
Barbed harpoon points (right) were used to spear catfish in Central Africa. Hundreds of bone harpoons have been found at the lake site of Ishango.

78,000-77,000 YBP
Burial of young child "Mtoto" in cave in Kenya.

Mattress of reed and rushes

75,000 YBP
Engraved stone from the Blombos Cave in Southern Africa (below).

70,000 YBP
Python stone in Botswana is the oldest known example of python veneration.

65,000 YBP
The Panga ya Saidi cave system near the coast of East Africa was used for many generations for burial. The oldest bead found in Kenya to date was discovered there.

54,000 YBP
Archaeologists found a 54,000-year-old tooth belonging to a modern human buried at Grotte Mandrin in the Rhone Valley in France. They also found small, sharp stone projectiles that would have been used as spearheads or arrowheads.

50,000 YBP
A boy buried with a seashell pendant and covered in red ocher was found in the Lapedo Valley near Leiria, 90 miles north of Lisbon.
Excavations at the Boker Tachtit archaeological site in the Negev Desert revealed that modern humans and Neanderthals lived together.

Neanderthals and Denisovans lives side by side in Siberia and interbred.
Human settlements in Australia.


45,000 YBP
A man buried at Chapelle-aux-Saints in southern France in red ocher.

40,000 YBP
Rock paintings dating to c.40,000 years ago have been found in caves at Maros in Sulawesi, Indonesia.


37,000-35,000 YBP
A 37,000-year butchering site in New Mexico is evidence of humans in North America.

Lebombo bone, a tally stick, found at Border Cave in Natal South Africa.



Four bodies buried in red ocher at Sunghir in Russia.

Lion Man Statue found in Hohlenstein-Stadel cave, Germany’s Swabian Alps

29,000 YBP
Male ("Red Lady") was buried in red ocher in Paviland Cave, Wales.

23,000 YBP
The "Fox Lady" of Dolni Vestonice, Czechoslovakia, buried in red ocher.

Lake Mungo Woman (LM1) was cremated and her remains were sprinkled with red ocher.

20,000 YBP
A thirty-year-old man buried in Bavaria surrounded by mammoth tusks and submerged in red ocher.

Australian burial sites dating to about 20,000 years reveal pink staining of the soil around the skeleton, indicating that red ocher had been sprinkled over the body. The remains of an adult male found at Lake Mungo in southeastern Australia were copiously sprinkled with red ocher.

19,000 YBP
Lady of El Mirón cave in northern Spain was buried in red ocher. She died around the age of 35.

13,000-11,500 YBP
Red ocher burials found at the Natufian cave site Hilazon Tachtit in Israel. A red ocher mine was found in Lovas, Hungary.

Girl buried in red ocher in the Tanana River Valley in central Alaska.

Oldest known example of a carved totem found in a peat bog in the Urals.

9000 YBP
The oldest known copper artifacts.

8000 YBP
Cemetery at Yuzhniy Oleniy Ostrov in northwest Russia where 177 bodies were found buried in red ocher. Another red ocher burial was discovered in Finland of young girl and a dog or wolf.

7000 YBP
Two skeletons buried in red ocher found at La Braña-Arintero cave in the Cantabrian Mountains of Spain

6200 YBP
The oldest known site of Horite Hebrew worship at Nekhen on the Nile

5000 YBP
Two flexed burials were found in Mehrgarh, Pakistan with a covering of red ocher on the bodies.

Mesopotamian burials which included food for the afterlife.

Early Badarian burials with food offerings to sustain the deceased in the afterlife.

4000 YBP
Horite and Sethite Hebrew funerary texts which have been translated and collected in The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts.


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