Oldest Objects on Earth

Time is a funny thing — we throw around phrases like “as old as dirt” without thinking about what that means. Dirt can be anywhere from five thousand to two million years old — older still if you get a bit loosey-goosey with your definition of dirt.

Because of our short human lifespans, we rarely consider the colossal gulf of time between us and our earliest ancestors. Cleopatra, Egypt’s last pharaoh, lived closer to the building of the Empire State Building than to the construction of the Pyramids.

Someone born early enough to witness the Wright brothers’ flight at Kitty Hawk could have lived to see Neil Armstrong take that first step on the Moon.

Time is tricky. Mercurial. It amazes and terrifies in equal measure. So, here are 10 objects that carry ancient, sometimes unsettling histories older than you might expect.

The Oldest Musical Instrument

The Divje Babe Flute – 60,000 years old

Humanity, as a whole, is a bit of an upstart race. We have only existed in our current evolutionary form for about 100,000 years. Imagine the archaeologists’ surprise when they found a damaged but recognisable flute in a cave dating back to around 60,000 years ago, which is roughly 20,000 years before humans made music.

Neanderthals have a bad reputation as brutish and stupid savages; this flute proves that this bias is far from the truth because it was not made by human hands but by our distant cousins, the Neanderthals.

This flute testifies that Neanderthals were every bit as capable of abstract thought and appreciating beauty and music as we are, and were doing it aeons before we even considered doing so.        

The original was carved out of the thigh bone of a young cave bear. Experiments have shown that the placement of the holes makes it almost certain that they were placed with the intent of making music. The flute has been reconstructed, and when played by a skilled flautist, it produces a dreamy, haunting sound.

The Divje Babe flute was discovered in 1995 in a dig above the Idrijca River, near Cerkno, Slovenia. It was found in what is undoubtedly a Neandertal settlement amongst many other artefacts thought to have been Neandertal in origin.

The flute has caused us to stop and reconsider their culture and way of life.      

The Oldest Cave Art

Sulawesi – 51,200 years old

On a warm night, around 51,000 years ago (give or take), a group of planet Earth’s latest creatures sat around a fire and did something extraordinary: they told stories.  We know they did this because they left us their script.

A group of archaeologists working in Sulawesi (an Island in Indonesia) have discovered what is now thought to be the oldest example of cave painting known to mankind. This find predates the previously oldest known cave art by more than 5,000 years, and offers the earliest known evidence of storytelling in visual form.

According to archaeologist Prof. Maxime Aubert, the painting is the oldest clear evidence that humans were capable of abstract thought and complex storytelling over 50,000 years ago.

Adhi Agus Oktaviana, the Indonesian researcher who led the team, emphasised that humans were likely telling stories even earlier. Since words don’t fossilise, art like this is our best proxy for ancient imagination.

A new laser-sampling dating technique made the breakthrough possible. It allows researchers to target minute areas of mineral build-up over the paint, helping them achieve much more precise age estimates than older methods.

The Oldest Writing

The Kish Tablet – 5500 years old

Located on the site of the ancient Sumerian city of Kish, now modern-day Iraq, the Kish Tablet contains the first example of writing in human history. This single limestone tablet signalled something far more significant than its contents could ever tell us: mankind’s transition from prehistoric to historic times.

The Kish Tablet is a fascinating glimpse into the early days of recorded history. It showcases how ancient civilizations worked hard to document and keep their knowledge safe. This tablet really highlights our amazing human creativity in communication and organization.

The exact content of the Kish tablet is unknown. The signs on the tablet, possibly related to proto-cuneiform, are purely pictographic and have not been deciphered or shown to correspond to any currently known human language.

Although we can’t be certain- at least until I get the Delorean back- we can make an educated guess that the tablet was administrative or economic — maybe a receipt, a goods inventory, or a list of offerings. So not narrative or literary — it probably wasn’t a story or myth, just basic records.

What’s ironic is that the tablet was probably just the equivalent of a scratch pad, not an epic love poem or some tale of heroic daring.  Just a list, or maybe even just a training or practice tablet — early scribes learning how to use symbols. 

The Oldest Tools

Oldowan toolkit – 3 million years old

Researchers in Kenya have discovered what they believe are the earliest examples of tools used by human ancestors. The discovery was made in the East African Rift Valley, a region often called “the cradle of civilisation.” This area has preserved many ancient clues about humanity’s early days, including the remains of “Lucy,” an ancient human relative who lived over 3 million years ago. 

A team led by Tom Plummer made the latest discovery on a peninsula called Nyanga. The team found flakes, or little knives, at the dig site. The blades are believed to be some of the first tools ever used on Earth—and after more than 3 million years, they still have a razor-like edge, which is pretty good going. I’m lucky if a razor lasts more than 3 days.

The knives were used back then for exactly the same thing we use them for now: peeling fruit and vegetables and cutting and preparing meat.

The meat in question would likely be hippo. Once our ancestors had butchered the hippo steak with their stone knife, they would tenderise the meat by bashing it with a larger stone, much like we would tenderise a beef steak today. Together, the knives and stones used in food preparation are known as the Oldowan tool kit and are thought to be one of the most important inventions in human history, as they allowed our ancestors to access a whole array of foods that they would never have had access to before, pretty much the same as Uber eats revolutionised culinary experimentation in our own time.

The Oldest Figurine

The Venus of Hohle Fels – 40,000 to 42,000 years old

Discovered in 2008, this 6cm high statue of an exaggerated female form is the very earliest figurine of the human form we have. Carved out of a hunk of mammoth ivory by our Upper Palaeolithic ancestors.

Nicholas J. Conard of the University of Tübingen Department of Early Prehistory and Quaternary Ecology led the dig site where this particular figurine was discovered. Its discovery pushed back the oldest known date of figurative art by millennia.

Typically for Venus figures, the figurine has what can only be described as massive breasts and sexual organs. The Venus of Hohle Fels lacks a head. Instead, an off-centre, but carefully carved ring is located above the figurine’s broad shoulders. The craftsmanship indicates a deliberate emphasis on fertility attributes.

Some scholars have interpreted the figurine as a symbol of fertility or a representation of a mother Goddess. Its exaggerated sexual characteristics (The aforementioned massive boobs and pronounced vulva, as well as wide hips) are believed to emphasise reproductive aspects, possibly serving as a talisman for fertility or survival.

Some researchers have gone even further and say that the figurine may be the first example of erotic art known to mankind

Be it a fertility goddess or a caveman’s spank bank, the Venus of Hohle Fels found a new home at the Prehistoric Museum of Blaubeuren (Urgeschichtliches Museum Blaubeuren) in Germany, where it continues to fuel debate on its origins and the nature of its creator.

The Oldest Computer

The Antikythera mechanism – 2,200 years old

When I say old computer in this context, I’m not talking about your mum’s ageing laptop; I’m talking about an analogue computer made of cogs and gears. This early artefact predates the birth of Christ by between 150 and 100 years, and is the very first example of a mechanical computer.

Comprising at least 30 precision-cut gears that slot together into a box roughly the size of a shoe box (about 34 cm × 18 cm × 9 cm), the Antikythera Mechanism was discovered by sponge divers working off the coast of the Greek island of Antikythera in 1901.  At the time, the Mechanism was so badly corroded that no one paid much attention. It wasn’t until Valerios Stais examined it, that the actual value of the find was discovered.

This ancient mechanism, which models the movements of the five known planets at the time (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn), demonstrates that the ancient scholars who built it were at least 1,000 years ahead of their time.

This remarkable device was able to perform tasks thought impossible at the time, using clever mathematics and ingenious engineering. For example, it could track the Metonic Cycle (19 years, linking lunar months to solar years) and the Saros Cycle (about 18 years, predicting eclipses). It could also track the timing of the Olympic Games.

The Antikythera mechanism proves that either we need to radically reconsider what we thought we knew about ancient sciences, or that there is a time-travelling clockmaker out there somewhere.

The Oldest Tree

The Methuselah Tree – 4,850 years old

In the Bible, Methuselah was said to be almost a thousand years old at the time of his death, and although that’s an impressive age, it shrivels away to nothing in comparison to his namesake.  Clocking in at a mind-blowing 4,850 years old, Methuselah is the oldest tree on earth, having taken this mantle after its elder, a tree called Prometheus, was felled for scientific research in 1964 and found to be more than 5000 years old, potentially meaning that Prometheus was a sapling when Stonehenge was being built.

Both Methuselah and Prometheus are Great Basin bristlecone pine (Pinus longaeva) trees. Methuselah’s exact location was kept a closely guarded secret. However, we know that it’s located within the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest within the Inyo National Forest.  The tree’s precise location was kept a secret until a leak in 2021 for fears that it might be vandalised.

The tree’s immense longevity is thought to be due to a combination of factors, such as its location, about 10,000 feet above sea level, the climate, and a short growing season. Bristlecone pines are extremophiles, meaning they thrive in adversity and love to live in harsh conditions. They live in harsh conditions and high elevations where not much else survives.

As well as its location and the species ensuring it has a long life, the wood of bristlecones is very dense, meaning that it is highly resistant to infestation by fungus and other pests

The Oldest Object in the Known Solar System

The Murchison Meteorite – 7 billion years old

On September 28, 1969, an approximately 220lb (100kg) space rock hurtled into Earth’s atmosphere and exploded over Murchison, Victoria, Australia. This is a remarkable event in itself; most meteorites are only approximately between 100g and 10kg, but the one that tried to upstage Jimi Hendrix wasn’t just massive — it contained some of the oldest material ever found.

This meteorite contained amino acids that drove biologists into a frenzy. Everything that you see here on Earth, from you to a dog to a daffodil, comes from 20 different amino acids. The Murchison Meteorite contained more than 90. This pick-and-mix of life-seeding chemicals contained many not found here on Earth, which, to a biologist, suggests that they formed in space. Some of these compounds hint that life may not be unique to Earth after all.             

The meteorite also contains ancient grains of material, older than our sun, containing microscopic bits of dead stars, which makes this rock a time capsule from the earliest days of our galaxy.

The impact (pardon the pun) of this meteorite on science was immense, it has influenced how some consider that life could have started on earth, that if we draw a line back far enough we end up with the 20 or so amino acids that make up everything having hitched a ride on a meteorite.  It has also confirmed that complex organic chemistry can happen naturally without biological life.

Time is slippery stuff. But these ancient artefacts — from stone knives to star-born rocks — are how we anchor ourselves to it. They remind us how far we’ve come, and how small we still are in the grand scheme of things.