TARRAGONA, Spain, Dec. 2 (UPI) — Markings found on a schist slab in Spain depict a paleolithic campsite, say researchers who suggest the engraving is the earliest depiction of social gathering.
“Given the social meaning of campsites in hunter-gatherer life-styles, this engraving may be considered one of the first representations of the domestic and social space of a human group,” researchers from the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution wrote in a new paper published in the journal PLOS ONE.
The adorned slab, found near the port city of Tarragona, along the northeast coast of Spain, dates to the Upper Paleolithic, or Late Stone Age, some 13,800 years ago.
Researchers found a total of seven motifs boasting similar characteristics and carved using the same tools over a short period of time. All of them feature a tent-like arc accented by a series of internal, double-rowed lines.
Though it is impossible to prove exactly what the lined arcs depict, the study’s authors say their composition, as well as their “ethnographic and archaeological contextualization,” suggest campsite huts.
“Campsites can be considered the first human landscape, the first area of land whose visible features were entirely constructed by humans,” the authors wrote.
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