Makapansgat pebble

[2] The pebble was found in 1925 in a dolomite cave in the Makapan Valley north of Mokopane, South Africa by local school teacher Wilfred Eitzman.

The pebble and all its markings are formed naturally by geological processes; no traces of artificial modification have been detected.

[1][2][3][4] The pebble had been described in literature and featured in the television program The Roots of Art in November 1967, before it gained new attention in 1974 when Raymond Dart (who had first seen it shortly after it was found) published a new interpretation.

[1] The Makapansgat pebble cannot be seen as art if a usual definition of the term is used, as the object was found and not made.

Nevertheless, that an australopithecine may have recognized a face would reveal that early hominids had capacity for symbolic thinking, necessary for the development of art and language.