Lebombo bone

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The lebombo bone is the oldest known mathematical artifact.

It dates from 35000 BC and consists of 29 distinct notches that were deliberately cut into a baboon's fibula. It was discovered within a cave in the Lebombo mountains of Swaziland. The Lebombo bone resembles the calendar sticks still used by Bushmen in Namibia.

The Lebombo bone is a six period measurement tool suggesting a binary worldview. It is a lunar phase counter, possibly to help women keep track of menstrual cycles, but more likely it represents a binary calendar. Binary calendars correlate antithetical realities such as male-female, life-afterlife and summer-winter. As such, binary calendars are metaphysical in nature and reflect the society's mythology.

The binary opposition of the two halves of the year may be portrayed using animal symbols. In South Africa the monozoomorphic symbolism may involve 2 serpents forming a circle. The Lebombo bones suggest that the binary division of the calendar into summer and winter, with spring and autumn as transitional phases, is much more ancient than previously supposed. The pattern is evident among the primordial Tungus-Manchurian hunters who use a binary calendar.^[1]

Binary calendars reflect a worldview in which there are vectors pertaining to the oppositions. One vector is the female principle (birth, new life) which dominates half of the seasons/periods. The opposing vector is the male principle (hunting, execution of judgment) which dominates the other half of seasons/periods. Among arctic peoples binary calendars sometimes involve the opposition of periods of darkness and periods of daylight. The Pueblo clans believe in an underworld that is six months ahead of the real world. In this sense their actual world calendar and the underworld calendar are mirror opposites. This is another characteristic of some binary calendars.

[edit] Citation

• Ed Pegg, Jr., Lebombo Bone at MathWorld.

[edit] See also

• Ishango bone

[edit] References