Oldest Carving in East Asia Found. But Its Maker Is a Mystery - National Geographic

Here's perhaps another strike against "the outdated notion that modern humans were the only hominins with the cognitive capacity to think abstractly." Thus Maya Wei-Haas writes about an artifact whose meaning is controversial but whose date ratchets back the previously-held earliest evidence of intentional symbolic carvings in East Asia by a whopping 60,000 years. Just as remarkable to Ancient Egypt fans is the 5,000-year-old Relic from the Great Pyramid Discovered in a Cigar Box in Scotland. Jessie Yeung relates a familiar tale in which an expert uncovers something completely unexpected lying dormant in a museum collection. But there's much more to the coincidence, the import of the object, and its continuing riddles. Brent Swancer takes us on an archaeological journey to see The Mysterious Stone Labyrinths of Bolshoi Zayatsky Island. A spot in Russia's White Sea contains numerous Neolithic spiral mazes and other features whose age and meaning are undetermined. "There are a lot of red flags about this discovery," says Brent of The Strange Mystery of the Enigmalith. Brent's not kidding regarding this archaeological anachronism. (WM)

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from THE ANOMALIST https://on.natgeo.com/34CEiua