The Lebombo bone is a bone tool made of a baboon fibula with incised markings discovered in Border Cave in the

Lebombo Mountains The Lebombo Mountains, also called Lubombo Mountains, Rivombo Mountains (), 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 ...

located between

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...

and

Eswatini Eswatini, formally the Kingdom of Eswatini, also known by its former official names Swaziland and the Kingdom of Swaziland, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. It is bordered by South Africa on all sides except the northeast, where i ...

. 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. This is far older than the

Ishango bone The Ishango bone, discovered at the "Fisherman Settlement" of Ishango in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is a bone tool and possible mathematical device that dates to the Upper Paleolithic era. The curved bone is dark brown in color, about ...

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. The bone has been conjectured to be a tally stick.

References

External links

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

See also

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External links