It may look like just another random boulder, but this old Spanish rock bears engraved lines that could be an astounding 200,000 years old, according to government officials.
The age of the lines and how they were formed still needs to be verified, but there is a chance this may be one of the oldest symbolic stone carvings made by our human ancestors – at least 100,000 years older than the oldest known cave painting.
The Spanish boulder was excavated at the Coto Correa site in Marbella, Spain, an area that has long been recognized for its significance to prehistoric humans.
The stone is formed of gabbro – a coarse, magnesium- and iron-rich rock formed from slow-cooled magma – and on a relatively smooth section of its reddish-grey surface, two unnaturally straight lines have been carved.
The boulder was first unearthed in 2022 along with stone tools from the lower Paleolithic, linking it to the presence of a human species.
Abstract engravings such as these suggest the ability to record and pass down information – a sign of modern human cognition. While other animals can communicate with each other in many ways that we do, so far evidence of symbolic thinking is unique to humans.
"It confirms the presence of settlers in Marbella during the Early Middle Paleolithic period, a period poorly documented in Spain," explains the Marbella City Council.
Researchers plan to take a 3D scan of the boulder and its engraving to determine if the stone markings were intentional, as well as take multiple small samples to confirm its dates.
If their suspicions are confirmed, Coto Correa could prove a pivotal site in humanity's earliest forays out of Africa.
The markings would then be on par with the earliest known human handprint, dated between 169,000 to 226,000 BCE, which can be seen in the model below.
Found on the Tibetan plateau, the way these prints of children's hands and feet were placed suggests they were not an accidental result of normal walking.
They are the earliest evidence for humans in the area, but whether they were created by Homo sapiens or one of our extinct relatives is impossible to know.
Abstract etchings into bone have also been found in Lingjing China, dating to about 100,000 years old. That they were rubbed with ochre pigment suggests these bone etching were deliberate and had some sort of symbolic meaning.
Such early finds add weight to growing evidence that our ancestral cousins, the Neanderthals or Denisovans, may have left intentional, symbolic marks upon the world before we did.