The Lebombo bone is a bone tool made of a baboon fibula with incised markings discovered in Border Cave in the Lebombo Mountains located between South Africa and Eswatini.[1] Changes in the section of the notches indicate the use of different cutting edges, which the bone's discoverer, Peter Beaumont, views as evidence for their having been made, like other markings found all over the world, during participation in rituals.
The bone is between 43,000 and 42,000 years old, according to 24 radiocarbon datings.[2] This is far older than the Ishango bone with which it is sometimes confused. Other notched bones are 80,000 years old but it is unclear if the notches are merely decorative or if they
bear a functional meaning.[3]
The bone has been conjectured[4] to be a tally stick. According to The Universal Book of Mathematics the Lebombo bone's 29 notches suggest "it may have been used as a lunar phase counter, in which case African women may have been the first mathematicians, because keeping track of menstrual cycles requires a lunar calendar". However, the bone is broken at one end, so the 29 notches may or may not be the total number. In the cases of other notched bones since found globally, there has been no consistent notch tally, many being in the 1–10 range.[5]
^Beaumont, Peter B. (1973). "Border Cave – A Progress Report". South African Journal of Science. 69: 41–46.
^Francesco d’Errico et al. (2012) Early evidence of San material culture represented by organic artifacts from Border Cave, South Africa. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences109(33): 13214-13219. It is called a notched bone, illustrated in Fig. 1, 12 d'Errico, F.; Backwell, L.; Villa, P.; Degano, I.; Lucejko, J. J.; Bamford, M. K.; Higham, T. F. G.; Colombini, M. P.; Beaumont, P. B. (2012). "Early evidence of San material culture represented by organic artifacts from Border Cave, South Africa". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 109 (33): 13214–13219. Bibcode:2012PNAS..10913214D. doi:10.1073/pnas.1204213109. PMC 3421171. PMID 22847420. [Layer] 1BS Lower B-C [is dated] between 43 ka and 42 ka.
^Ralf Vogelsang et al. (2010) New excavations of Middle Stone Age deposits at Apollo 11 Rockshelter, Namibia: stratigraphy, archaeology, chronology and past environments. Journal of African Archaeology8(2): 185–218 Richter, Jürgen; et al. (2010). "New Excavations of Middle Stone Age Deposits at Apollo 11 Rockshelter, Namibia: Stratigraphy, Archaeology, Chronology and Past Environments". Journal of African Archaeology. 8 (2): 185–218. doi:10.3213/1612-1651-10170.
^d'Errico, Francesco, Luc Doyon, Ivan Colagé, Alain Queffelec, Emma Le Vraux, Giacomo Giacobini, Bernard Vandermeersch, and Bruno Maureille. "From number sense to number symbols. An archaeological perspective." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 373, no. 1740 (2018): 20160518.
^Beaumont, Peter B.; Bednarik, Robert G. (2013). "Tracing the Emergence of Palaeoart in Sub-Saharan Africa" (PDF). Rock Art Research. 30 (1): 33–54. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2014-02-21. Retrieved 2014-08-30.
The Lebombobone is a bone tool made of a baboon fibula with incised markings discovered in Border Cave in the Lebombo Mountains located between South...
Lebombo may refer to: Lebombobone, an ancient tally stick Lebombo flat lizard Lebombo Mountains, Southern Africa Lebombo monocline, a geological feature...
possible exception of the approximately 40,000-year-old Lebombobone from southern Africa. The Ishango bone was found in 1950 by Belgian Jean de Heinzelin de...
The Lebombo Mountains, also called Lubombo Mountains (Portuguese: Montes Libombos), are an 800 km-long (500 mi), narrow range of mountains in Southern...
The Lebombobone is a baboon fibula with incised markings discovered in the Lebombo Mountains located between South Africa and Eswatini. The bone has...
The earliest counting device was probably a form of tally stick. The Lebombobone from the mountains between Eswatini and South Africa may be the oldest...
counting Hangman (game) History of communication History of mathematics Lebombobone List of international common standards Paleolithic tally sticks Prehistoric...
anthropological artefacts have been conjectured to be tally sticks: The Lebombobone, dated between 44,200 and 43,000 years old, is a baboon's fibula with...
These are indirectly dated. Earliest mathematical artifact, the notched Lebombobone, a possible tally stick or lunar calendar, dated to 44,000–43,000 BP...
to Late Stone Age, Southern Africans developed the bow and arrow. The Lebombobone, which is from the Swaziland and South African mountain region and may...
of redirect targets History of communication History of mathematics Lebombobone – ArtifactPages displaying short descriptions with no spaces List of...
made of mud coils that date from the 3rd to the 2nd Century BC. The Lebombobone from the mountains between Swaziland and South Africa may be the oldest...
quantities. Some historians suggest that the Lebombobone (dated about 43,000 years ago) and the Ishango bone (dated about 22,000 to 30,000 years ago) are...
known prehistoric attempts to quantify time (see Lebombobone). c. 20,000 BC – Nile Valley, Ishango bone: possibly the earliest reference to prime numbers...
in Fort Rock Cave, United States. 44 kya – 42 kya: Tally sticks (see Lebombobone) in Eswatini 42 kya: Flute in Germany 37 kya: Mortar and pestle in Southwest...
"cognitive", and "social". Later, at around 35,000 B.C, another artifact, the Lebombobone, emerged and the encoded information became easier to read. There are...
Border Cave is an archaeological site located in the western Lebombo Mountains in Kwazulu-Natal. The rock shelter has one of the longest archaeological...
S.; Malan, B. D.; Wells, L. H. (January 1945). "3. Fossil Man in the Lebombo Mountains, South Africa: The 'Border Cave,' Ingwavuma District, Zululand"...
Mozambique in the east. Along the eastern border with Mozambique are the Lebombo Mountains, a mountain ridge at an altitude of around 600 metres (2,000 ft)...
largely occur along the major mountain ranges, such as the Drakensberg and Lebombo Mountains. Wintering steppe buzzards occur far more irregularly in Transvaal...
land. The Lebombo born that is estimated to be about 35 000 years the oldest mathematical tool in the world, which is similar to the Ishango bone found in...
Mandla (17 December 2020). "Bribery a huge problem at Lebombo border ― Premier warns cops at Lebombo". The Sowetan. Soweto Live. Retrieved 20 May 2021. Meetsi...
equivalent sedimentary facies to the Clarens Formation are present in the Lebombo Belt, north of Eswatini. List of fossiliferous stratigraphic units in South...
with his followers and his younger brother Mhlabawadabuka for the eastern Lebombo foothills, till they reached the vicinity of upper Tembe river. Around...
FRELIMO, along with 33 others, die when their aircraft crashes into the Lebombo Mountains. 1987 – The United States Navy conducts Operation Nimble Archer...
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