Engraved ochres from the Middle Stone Age levels at Blombos Cave, South Africa.

@article{Henshilwood2009EngravedOF,
  title={Engraved ochres from the Middle Stone Age levels at Blombos Cave, South Africa.},
  author={Christopher S. Henshilwood and Francesco d’Errico and Ian Watts},
  journal={Journal of human evolution},
  year={2009},
  volume={57 1},
  pages={
          27-47
        }
}
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An abstract drawing from the 73,000-year-old levels at Blombos Cave, South Africa
TLDR
This cross-hatched pattern drawn with an ochre crayon on a ground silcrete flake recovered from approximately 73,000-year-old Middle Stone Age levels at Blombos Cave, South Africa demonstrates the ability of early Homo sapiens in southern Africa to produce graphic designs on various media using different techniques.
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Africa's Middle Stone Age (MSA) may have lasted almost half a million years, but its earliest expression is not yet well understood. The MSA is best known for innovations that appear in the…
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Reappraisal of radiocarbon age estimates through Bayesian modeling, and the identification of key elements of San material culture at Border Cave, places the emergence of modern hunter–gatherer adaptation, as the authors know it, to ∼44,000 y ago.
Processing ochre in the Middle Stone Age: Testing the inference of prehistoric behaviours from actualistically derived experimental data
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This paper provides a synthesis of the currently known evidence for cross-hatch patterning on stone, ochre and ostrich eggshell from Middle Stone Age Africa, between 100,000 and 60,000 BP. The…
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A large sample of 270 fragments of intentionally marked ostrich eggshell from the Howiesons Poort at Diepkloof Rock Shelter, Western Cape, South Africa attest to an engraving tradition that is the earliest reliable evidence of what is a widespread modern practice.
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References

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TLDR
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