Eggs Cetera #6 - Hunting for the world's oldest decorated eggs

Duration: 8 mins 40 secs

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Description:	Emptied of their contents and filled with water, ostrich eggshells enabled some of our earliest ancestors to colonise arid areas of Sub-Saharan Africa, making hunting trips into areas where rain rarely falls. Archaeologists have also found evidence that these communities decorated the ostrich eggs they used as flasks. This discovery makes fragments of decorated eggshell some of the world's earliest examples of art and the capacity for abstract thought.

Description:

Emptied of their contents and filled with water, ostrich eggshells enabled some of our earliest ancestors to colonise arid areas of Sub-Saharan Africa, making hunting trips into areas where rain rarely falls. Archaeologists have also found evidence that these communities decorated the ostrich eggs they used as flasks. This discovery makes fragments of decorated eggshell some of the world's earliest examples of art and the capacity for abstract thought.


Created:	2013-10-04 14:13
Collection:	Research Horizons
Publisher:	University of Cambridge
Copyright:	University of Cambridge
Language:	eng (English)

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