However, critics of the new study call into question whether or not the stone samples were truly made by humans. Or they might have entered North America via the Pacific coast. For humans to be present in the region then, they would have had to traverse Canada before the northern-most part of the continent was a wall of ice-perhaps as far back as 33,000 years ago. In a study published today (July 22) in Nature , researchers describe stone artifacts found in Chiquihuite Cave in northern Mexico that date to the last glacial maximum. ![]() At least 13,000 years ago, those glaciers started to recede, opening up an ice-free corridor that is thought to have been used by early humans who came down from northeast Asia and populated what is now the United States. ![]() ![]() In what is now Canada, two glaciers merged and covered the region with ice thousands of feet thick that stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific. During this so-called last glacial maximum, the ice sequestered water, causing a drop in sea level and exposing land that connected northeast Asia and northwest North America near present-day Alaska. "This diminutive carving supports the hypothesis that the production of 3D representations does not have a single origin.ABOVE: Team members enter the Chiquihuite cave.īetween 26,500 and 19,000 years ago, massive sheets of ice covered Earth’s Northern hemisphere. "Before this discovery, we thought that 3D representations were a recent phenomenon in East Asia," d'Errico said. These new findings suggest that prehistoric humans living in China might have independently developed the concept of three-dimensionally representing the world around them - for instance, the bird figurine has a number of features not seen in other Paleolithic sculptures, such as how it was carved from burnt bone, and how it depicts a bird on a pedestal, the researchers noted. Until now, the carving of small figurines was the only artistic practice left that might have potentially originated in Europe, with examples including statuettes carved from mammoth ivory found in Germany dating up to roughly 40,000 years old. However, increasingly scientists have discovered similarly old artwork elsewhere in the world, such as roughly 44,000-year-old cave paintings found on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. Until recently, the earliest human art was found in Europe. MORE: Researchers find 3,000-year-old Maya structure larger than their pyramids "The artist knew that making a sculpture is a matter of finding the right balance." The artist deliberately added weight to the sculpture by oversizing the tail to prevent the bird from falling forward, d'Errico said. The figurine depicts a songbird on a rectangular pedestal. The location possesses a spring, which "may have attracted prehistoric populations at different times," said study co-author Francesco d’Errico, an archaeologist at the University of Bordeaux in France. ![]() They discovered the artifact in a refuse heap left over from well diggers who removed most of the fifth layer in 1958. Scientists unearthed the miniature carving at the site of Lingjing in China, where previous excavations uncovered 11 layers each of distinct ages, ranging from 120,000 years ago to the Bronze Age. An ancient bird statuette recovered from a refuse heap is the oldest known figurine discovered yet in China, shedding new light on how our ancestors created 3D art, a new study finds.
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