“I wouldn’t be surprised in the least if the last common ancestor of Homo sapiens and Neanderthals collected pigment,” Zipkin says. Intentional ochre collection and use, however, may have begun much earlier in our family tree. Numerous sites in Europe and western Asia show that our closest evolutionary kin, the Neanderthals, also used ochre beginning at least 250,000 years ago, although their applications of the material appear much more limited. Goethite (left) and hematite Coldmoon Photoproject/Shutterstock vvoe/Shutterstock Seeing RedĬonfidently dated archaeological sites showing ochre worked by humans now go back more than 300,000 years, close to the emergence of Homo sapiens. It’s possible some of the red ochre we find may have been yellow once.” But a lot of these sites have hearths one atop another. Ochre use became widespread in the Middle Stone Age, a period of about 50,000 to 280,000 years ago, and during this time, Hodgskiss says, “there seems to be a preference for red - a larger percentage of the ochre used was red.

To complicate matters even more, when heated to at least 480 degrees Fahrenheit, yellow ochre’s crystal structure changes and the goethite can transform into hematite, or red ochre. Zipkin contrasts working with specular hematite - a heavy, glittery rock that’s deep purple-red and has a high iron content - with material much lighter in both color and iron content from Kenya’s volcanic Rift Valley: “They’re both ochre, but elementally and chemically they are radically different.” The ochre cliffs of Rousillon, France, are a striking example of the iron-rich rocks, though ochre is commonly found in many forms around the world. But a range of other rocks appear in the archaeological record, from the yellow ochre goethite to the often-dramatic specular hematite, sometimes called specularite. Most people associate the term with hematite, or red ochre, chemically known as Fe2O3. Ochre is most commonly defined by archaeologists as any iron-rich rock that can be used as a pigment. “That’s one of the most annoying things about studying it.” “Ochre is not one thing,” says archaeological scientist Andrew Zipkin of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

“And ochre plays a central role in that debate.” Rock of Ages “The emergence of modern human behavior is one of the most important debates happening now,” says archaeologist Daniela Rosso of the University of Bordeaux and University of Barcelona. Even more intriguing: A handful of researchers now suspect ochre may have actually fueled both brain development and our species’ expansion around the globe. Hodgskiss adds, “We look at the action sequences to see what cognitive abilities were needed: Did it have to be heated? Did it need to be buried in the hearth?”Īnd recent finds in Africa have pushed back the start date for our species’ long love affair with the material, hinting that modern human cognition may have developed much earlier than we thought. Ochre is, in fact, one of the most important proxies researchers have for charting the evolution of human cognition. Ochre, which ranges in color from yellow to deep purple, has been favored by humans longer than any other pigment.

Definition of obsidian color