We’re part of a team that has spent the past 15 years studying vertebrate tracksites on South Africa’s Cape south coast that date back to the Pleistocene epoch, between 70,000 and 400,000 years ago. During the course of that research we’ve realized that not only could we identify hominin and animal tracks; we were able to recognize patterns that we propose our human ancestors made in the sand: in other words, a new form of paleoart.
Such ancient “sand art” had never been described before, so we coined a new term for it: “ammoglyph” (“ammos” being Greek for “sand”).
In terms of age, two of the probable ammoglyph sites stand out. The oldest was dated to between 149,000 and 129,000 years ago.
Very cool!