Around 73,000 years ago, in a cave now known as Blombos, someone took a pointed lump of iron-rich rock—ochre—and dragged its tip across another rock, leaving behind a pattern of red, crosshatched ...

Archaeologists who excavated a seaside cave in South Africa have discovered what they say is the world's oldest drawing. It is an abstract pattern, a crosshatch of red lines, like a hashtag, on a rock ...