The Lebombo bone is a

bone tool In archaeology, a bone tool is a tool created from bone. A bone tool can conceivably be created from almost any bone, and in a variety of methods. Bone tools have been documented from the advent of ''Homo sapiens'' and are also known from ''Hom ...

made of a baboon

fibula The fibula or calf bone is a leg bone on the lateral side of the tibia, to which it is connected above and below. It is the smaller of the two bones and, in proportion to its length, the most slender of all the long bones. Its upper extremity ...

with incised markings discovered in the

Lebombo Mountains The Lebombo Mountains, also called Lubombo Mountains ( pt, Montes Libombos), are an , narrow range of mountains in Southern Africa. They stretch from Hluhluwe in KwaZulu-Natal in the south to Punda Maria in the Limpopo Province in South Africa in ...

located between

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring coun ...

and

Eswatini Eswatini ( ; ss, eSwatini ), officially the Kingdom of Eswatini and formerly named Swaziland ( ; officially renamed in 2018), is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. It is bordered by Mozambique to its northeast and South Africa to its no ...

. 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 44,200 and 43,000 years old, according to 24 radiocarbon datings. 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. According to ''

The Universal Book of Mathematics ''The Universal Book of Mathematics: From Abracadabra to Zeno's Paradoxes'' (2004) is a bestselling book by British author David Darling. Summary The book is presented in a dictionary format. The book is divided into headwords, which, as the ti ...

'' 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.

References

External links

Images at African Heritage
{{Prehistoric technology, state=expanded Mathematical tools Archaeological discoveries in South Africa History of Africa History of mathematics Bone carvings Archaeology of Southern Africa

See also

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External links