Caveman body art.

• Position: Africa - Brief article

When they weren't hunting down supper or sewing coats from animal skins, our early ancestors were having a little fun with body art. Deep in the Blombus Cave, Z00 miles east of Capetown in South Africa, archaeologists recently discovered what appears to be a 100,000-year-old workshop containing tools and ingredients for mixing the first known paint--a red pigment that early humans probably applied to their skin for protection or decoration. They made the paint by using stones to pound a reddish variety of dirt called ocher into a powder and mixing it with bone marrow and charcoal. The earliest cave and rock art began appearing about 40,000 years ago, and the animal paintings on the walls of Lascaux in France...