are hesitant to accept the Blombos caves as the first example of actual art.

In September 2018 the discovery in South Africa of the earliest known drawing by Homo sapiens was announced, which is estimated to be 73,000 years old, much earlier than the 43,000 years old artifacts understood to be the earliest known modern human drawings found previously. The drawing shows a crosshatched pattern made up of nine fine lines. The sudden termination of all of the lines on the fragment edges indicate that