To bring one to surprise the answer may be: 13000 years. And this is not an imaginary answer we go by the announcement made by the researchers at Smithsonian Institution and the University of Florida. They report they have found a 13000 years old bone piece with an image of a mammoth incised over it. This is the oldest among those discovered so far. The discovery is published in the ‘Journal of Archaeological Science’ online.

The discovery was accidental as the fossil hunter James Kennedy found the bone in Vero Beach, FL.  When he was cleaning the bone he saw the marks. He took it seriously and he contacted the University of Florida and the Smithsonian’s Museum Conservation Institute and National Museum of Natural History.

“This is an incredibly exciting discovery,” said Dennis Stanford, co-author of this research. “There are hundreds of depictions of proboscideans on cave walls and carved into bones in Europe, but none from America — until now.”

The incisions are 3 inches long and 1.75 inches tall. The bone is fragment of a large mammalian bone. It may be one of a mammoth, sloth or mastodon. The condition of the bone couldn’t allow them to identify it exactly.

“The results of this investigation are an excellent example of the value of interdisciplinary research and cooperation among scientists,” said Barbara Purdy, professor of anthropology at the University of Florida and lead author of the research. “There was considerable skepticism expressed about the authenticity of the incising on the bone until it was examined exhaustively by archaeologists, paleontologists, forensic anthropologists, materials science engineers and artists.”

Once brought into notice the research team had to assign the bone its proper age. Was it really ancient or not was the question. The site these bone was found is the site where in 1913 and 1916 human bones and bones of extinct ice age animals were found. They compared the marks or the incisions on the bone with others found at the same site. Electron microscope showed that the coloration of the bone and the engraving was not broken. The continuity in the coloration indicated that the drawing was ancient. The tool for the drawing was also not to be metallic.

The discovery tells us that people living in the region of America long-long ago even longer than that described in all the stories were interested in arts. They drew the mammoths on the bones (and elsewhere?).

The drawing of mammoth is in itself a proof that the art is not newer than the time when the mammoths were present on earth.

The piece of bone is now put for display of Florida Mammoth and Mastodons at the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville.

The discovery has confirmed the early 20th century findings of geologist Howard Sellards at the Old Vero. He claimed that people in North America hunted animals at the Beach. The claim has long been disputed.

The discovery is instrumental in opening the chapter about the developed brains of the ice age man. Hope new researches would now further our knowledge about the activities of the oldest of the oldest ‘wise’ man once the chapter is opened by the discovery. And students would again be bothered to study one more section on the prehistoric man.