Well-aged slabs of art.

Radiocarbon analysis of minute pigment samples taken from two painted rock slabs places their age at a minimum of 3,600 years, providing the oldest direct evidence for cave or rock art in southern Africa. European cave art dates back 30,000 years.

Scientists have surmised, based on the ages of associated finds, that people painted the walls of caves and rock shelters in this region as long as 27,000 years ago (SN: 10/5/96, p. 216). Until now, however, radiocarbon dates for rock-art pigments in southern Africa extended back 500 years at most.

Ongoing radiocarbon studies should continue to push back confirmed dates for southern African rock-art, say Antonieta Jerardino of the University of Cape Town, South Africa, and Natalie Swanepoel of Syracuse (N.Y.) University.

The scientists studied painted slabs unearthed in a burned deposit at Steenbokfontein Cave, located near South Africa's west coast. What remains of one scene shows three pairs of human legs and hips painted in red, with a white robe on one figure. The other depicts four red pairs of human legs and hips, with rows of white lines and dots on one set of knees and ankles.

A fire in the cave caused its walls to crack and dislodged the slabs, resulting in their burial, say Jerardino and Swanepoel in the August-October CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY. The fire destroyed parts of the painted slabs and obliterated any images that had been painted on eight other slabs in the same deposit.