Blombos Cave is a limestone cave site in South Africa famous for archaeological discoveries which have altered scholars' conception of the origins of modern thought. Christopher Henshilwood, an archaeologist from State University of New York (Stony Brook), found two pieces of ochre decorated with intricate etching patterns, a collection of necklace beads and bone tools which dated to 77,000 years ago. The artifacts are evidence of symbolic thought in humans, 40,000 years earlier than scientists had originally hypothesized.
Known by Jews as the Cave of the Patriarchs, and venerated by Muslims as the Ibrahimi Mosque, this site is a network of subterranean caves in the city of Hebron in the West Bank, located beneath a large mosque/synagogue compound. Fiercely disputed by these two faiths, the shrine has seen much controversy and violence over the centuries.
The tension remains today. Hebron is a major flashpoint because it’s the only location in the West Bank where Jews, some of them extremists, live among Palestinians. Muslims control about 81% of the compound, and Jews the other 21%. They're kept apart in specially designated areas. The waqf - a traditional "trust" holding land for Islamic religious purposes - controls the site. Tourists are allowed to enter, but security - controlled by the Israeli Defence Force - is very tight.
In 2010, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu provoked controvery by adding the Cave of the Patriarchs to Israel's list of national heritage sites.
Carnarvon Gorge is between Roma and Emerald in remote Central Queensland. It is the most visited feature within the Carnarvon National Park, which has ties to the Bidjara, Karingbal and Kara Kara people of Central Queensland.
Aboriginal rock art on sandstone overhangs is a reminder of Aboriginal people's long and continuing connection with the gorge. Some of the finest Aboriginal rock art in Australia, including ochre stencils, rock engravings and freehand paintings, can be seen at Baloon Cave, the Art Gallery and Cathedral Cave.
The indigenous stencil artists who created sites such as the Art Gallery and Cathedral Cave in the gorge are regarded by some researchers as the best in the world. They developed complex stencilling techniques that have not been replicated elsewhere. Only one full adult body stencil is known to exist in the world, and it can be seen at the Tombs site in the Mt Moffatt section of Carnarvon National Park. It is the largest known stencil, and a good example of the heights to which this form of human expression was taken in Central Queensland.
Purnululu National Park is a UNESCO World Heritage-listed area in Australia's far north-west. It is famous for the Bungle Bungle Range. The national park is home to some of the most amazing geological landmarks in Western Australia, and features extensive Aboriginal rock and cave art.
The Bungle Bungle Range rises up to 578 metres above sea level and stands 200 to 300 metres above a woodland and grass covered plain, with steep cliffs on the western plain. Although the Bungle Bungles were used extensively by Aboriginal people during the wet season, when plant and animal life was abundant, few Europeans knew of its existence until the mid-1980s. The area is rich in Aboriginal art and there are also many burial sites.
Wonderwerk is one of a handful of sites worldwide that show signs of human habitation up to 2 million years ago. It contains dolomitic limestone formations that follow the form known as the Ghaap Plateau Dolomite Formation, and also another rock form called Asbestos Hills Banded Ironstone, dating from the late Archaean to early Proterozoic ages, making them 2.4 billion years old.
But the signs of human life are truly compelling. Oldowan stone tools are present, and there's rock art in several areas of the cave, signifying religious and spiritual practises going back 10,000 years.
According to the World Monuments Fund, which listed the site on its 2010 Monuments Watch List, partial erosion and threats of imminent collapose in certain areas have forced the cave to be closed to visitors.
The Foggini-Mestekawi Cave is a recent discovery in the arid, barren Gilf Kebir plateau in the Sahara Desert of southwest Egypt. It contains some spectacular examples of prehistoric Egyptian rock art, dating from around the time of the last Ice Age, when the climate in the area was much more hospitable and people thrived.
There are scores of silhouettes of human hands, as well as depictions of people engaged in various different acts: hunting, playing games, fishing, swimming, dancing and holding hands with children. Animals are shown too - gazelles, dogs, giraffes and lions - as well as a mysterious creature known as "the beast," which has a bull-like body, no head and the legs of a man. It appears to devour humans, and may have been dreamed up by prehistoric man as a representation of the spiritual transition from life to death.
The Cave of Swimmers is located in the Gilf Kebir plateau of the Sahara, in the far southwest of Egypt, and contains some fine examples of prehistoric Egyptian cave art. The walls are decorated with elegant images of people swimming.
The cave is mentioned in the book The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje, the protagonist in which is Count László Almásy - the man who found the Cave of Swimmers. In the film based on the book, there are scenes set in the Cave of Swimmers, although the cave shown is not the original, but rather a modern film set.
The Gilf Kebir is a barren 7770-square-kilometre sandstone plateau rising 300 metres above the floor of the desert in the far southwest of Egypt. Between approximately 10,000 and 7,000 years ago, water ran through the region, and a prehistoric civilization flourished there. They left their imprint in the form of cave and rock art, found most-notably at two sites: the Cave of Swimmers and Foggini-Mestekawi Cave.
The Cave of Swimmers - which features fine images of tiny people swimming across the walls of the cave - was located by Hungarian Count and explorer László Almásy. He was later fictionalised as the core character in Michael Ondaatje's novel The English Patient, which was adapted into a multi-Academy Award winning movie in 1996. Parts of the book and movie are set in the Gilf Kebir, which during the Second World War was the location of a major British Army base.
Paisley Caves is a collection of eight caves and rockshelters located in the Summer Lake Basin north of Paisley in south-central Oregon (United States). The caves are in the Summer Lake basin at 4,520 feet (1,380 m) elevation and face to the west in a ridge of Miocene and Pliocene era basalts mixed with soft volcanic tuffs and breccias from which the caves were carved by Pleistocene era waves from Summer Lake.
The caves were first excavated in 1938 by Dr. Luther Cressman, founder of the University's Department of Anthropology. Cressman's team trenched caves 1, 2 and 3. They evaluated three stratigraphic levels, examining sediments above Mazama ash, in the ash, and below the ash. (Mount Mazama was a stratovolcano in the Oregon Cascade Range that erupted in approximately 5,677 B.C. with a force estimated at 42 times more powerful than that of Mt.St. Helens in 1980.)
Cressman's team discovered a few human artifacts in apparent association with the remains of extinct late Pleistocene camel, bison, and horses but Cressman's finds were largely ignored because of what was subsequently viewed as a lack of adequate documentation.
Flores is a southern island of Indonesia, with an estimated population of around 1.5 million. Its human inhabitation was largely destroyed by the 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake (aka the Asian Tsunami), but its stunning landscape still make it a popular tourist destination. Yet Flores, and Liang Bua Cave in particular, are most notably known in the anthropological and archaeological worlds for the 2003 discovery of Homo floresiensis, which is commonly given the sobriquet 'Hobbit', a testament to its small height and stature. The discovery, made by an Australian-Indonesian archaeological team, is thought to throw the process of human evolution apart, by dating the species as late as 12,000 years ago - the same time as our own species, Homo sapiens, was living on the planet. And a recent paper from an Australian National University PhD student suggests that Hobbits and humans may well have coexisted in the area.
