CHINESE PICTOGRAPH PAINT CONTAINS HUMAN BLOOD:

Zuojiang Hashan pictographs. Internet image, public domain (photograph sharpened with chatGPT).

How well a painted image will last on a cliff or boulder depends upon a number of factors. One factor, of course, is the kind of rock it is painted on, how hard or how soft? Another factor is the weather itself and the sites exposure to it. Is it directly in the Sun’s fading rays, is it in a location that is hit by rain, etc.? Another, and perhaps most important, factor is the composition of the paint itself. Is the pigment durable or fugitive? How thoroughly does the binder in the paint harden and hold on to the rock surface?

Zuojiang Hashan pictographs. Image, science.org.

The images painted in one section of China have long mystified scientists with their clarity and appartent durability. “The Zuojiang Huashan Rock  Art Cultural Landscape was created over the course of nearly 700 years, between the fifth century BCE and the second century CE, by the Luoyue people – a matriarchal, hunter-fisher-gatherer society that lived in southern China. The images are found across 80 sites along a 260-kilometer stretch of river cliffs. Given that the area is battered by regular monsoons, the art is remarkably intact, especially compared with murals made hundreds of years later in other parts of the country.” (Sagar 2026) Normally, frequent monsoon rains would be thought to doom painted images to quick destruction.

These painted images, however, act very different – they are exceedingly durable. “The pigments are so firmly bonded to the bedrock that when peeling occurs, it is the limestone layer itself that detaches along with the pigments,” says Meng Wu, a chemist at Shandong University.  “The material stability of this art has long been an unsolved mystery.” (Sagar 2026)

Zuojiang Hashan pictographs. Internet image, public domain.

“These paintings are bound to the rock so well that scientists had to use electric drills to scrape off samples for testing, which revealed that the paint contained lime, red clay, and blood from women who’d just given birth.” (Spitz 2026) The most surprising component of the paint used was blood, which came from both humans and animals. “The human portion contained two proteins that were linked to pregnancy, breastfeeding, and female reproductive biology. Therefore the team concluded that these proteins likely came from women who had very recently given birth, and that the blood came from routine postpartum bleeding.” (Spitz 2026) This is a likelihood, not a certainty, as the proteins in question are not totally unique to women and childbirth. Much of the durability of the red paint is due to the lime and red clay ingredients setting up in a reaction much like cement. Then, adding the proteins from blood, we can expect this to only enhance the durability of the paint.

As the Luoyue creators of this rock art are believed by historians to have been a matriarchal society, the use of postpartum blood in the paint may have had a deeply spiritual significance to the people. Therefore the act of creating the rock art may have also involved significant ritual contexts. At least that makes a great deal of sense.

NOTE: One image in this column was retrieved from the internet with a search for public domain photographs. If any of these images are not intended to be public domain, I apologize, and will happily provide the picture credits if the owner will contact me with them. For further information on these reports you should read the original reports at the sites listed below.

REFERENCES:

Sagar, Soumya, 2026, Were these ancient rock images painted with human blood?, 12 August 2026, https://www.science.org online. Accessed online 13 August 2026.

Spitz, Ella, 2026, Scientists Just Uncovered The Secret Behind The Durability Of China’s Ancient Huashan Rock Art: Human Blood, AllThatsInteresting.com, 29 July 2026, https://allthatsinteresting.com/china-huashan-rock-art-blood. Accessed 13 August 2026.

MILK PAINT IN MIDDLE STONE AGE - SOUTH AFRICA:

The question of tools and materials used to create rock art has received another fascinating contribution with the discovery of a small piece of flat rock with a red ocher pigment on it from a rock shelter in northern KwaZuluNatal province in South Africa that had been occupied by humans during the Middle Stone Age, from roughly 77,000 to 38,000 years ago. An analysis of it found casein, a protein from milk, mixed with the pigment. Casein has long been used as a binder in paint, and the milk itself would provide the liquid vehicle to mix the paint in. Indeed milk paint is a category of do-it-yourself paint that has a long history and it is still sometimes used to give furnishings an antique look. Casein is also a popular binder in glues, being an important component in many white carpenter's glues. A report in the online science journal PLOS/one, and picked up by Smithsonian.com, reported the discovery and analysis recently.

Stone flake with milk paint, Sibudu, South Africa.

University of Colorado Museum, Boulder, Colorado.

"The researchers, led by Paolo Villa, a curator at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History, first found casein, a protein found in milk, in a smear of reddish paint on the edge of a stone. The milk would have helped the powder of ochre bind together into a paste that people may have used to paint stone, wood or their bodies. The researchers figured that the mixture was paint, rather than adhesive because milk doesn’t stick that strongly unless the proteins are mixed with lime and heated." (Fessenden 2015:1)

"Gas chromatography/mass spectrometry, proteomic and scanning electron microscopy with energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM/EDS) analyses of residue on a stone flake from a 49,000 year-old layer of Sibudu (South Africa) indicate a mixture of ochre and casein from milk, likely obtained by killing a lactating wild bovid. Ochre powder production and use are documented in Middle Stone Age South African sites but until now there has been no evidence of the use of milk as a binder. Our analyses show that this ochre-based mixture was neither a hafting adhesive nor a residue left after treating animal skins, but a liquid mixture consisting of a powdered pigment mixed with milk; in other words, a paint medium that could have been applied to a surface or to human skin. The significance of our finds also lies in the fact that it establishes the antiquity of the use of milk as a binder well before the introduction of domestic cattle in South Africa in the first millennium AD." (Villa et al 2015:1)

Milk is seemingly a good choice for mixing paint because it combines the vehicle with a very effective binder for the resulting paint. It is interesting that this was so long before the domestication of cattle, and acquisition of the milk would have depended upon hunting or trapping a lactating bovid. Visit these sites for the complete story of this fascinating discovery.

REFERENCES:

Fessenden, Marissa

2015    In South Africa, People Painted with Cow Milk Long Before They Domesticated Cattle, http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/south-africa-people-painted-milk-cattle-were-domesticated-180955852/#xBRRpwG4Z2gKsSLx.99, July 9, 2015.

Villa, Paola, Luca Pollarolo, Elaria Degano, Leila Birolo, Marco Pasero, Cristian Biagioni, Katerina Douka, Roberto Vinciguerra, Jeannette J. Lucejko, and Lyn Wadley,

2015    A Milk and Ochre Paint Mixture Used 49,000 Years Ago at Sibudu, South Africa, PLOS One (online journal), June 30, 2015.

THE EARLIEST PAINTING IN NORTH AMERICA?

Trampled skull of Bison antiquus with arrow pointing to red painted

zigzag line. httpwww.ou.educasarchsurcountiesharper.htm .

In 1994 a candidate for the title of earliest painting in North America was discovered in northwestern Oklahoma. In 1992, Dick James, a game warden in the Cooper Wildlife Management Area, had shown Oklahoma Archaeological Survey archaeologist Lee Bement a site where large bones (which proved to be bison antiquas) were caving off a sandy bluff near the Beaver River. During that first trip, there were no signs that people had a hand in the deaths of the bison whose bones were eroding from the cliff. However, another trip to the site brought the find of a spear point, left by Folsom hunters more than 10,000 years ago. Since that discovery, a meticulous excavation of the site has uncovered three bison kill episodes.

After the first event of driving the bison into this gully, they took one of the skulls and painted a thunderbolt on it before placing it, nose-first, into the gully where bison from the second drive trampled it. That skull, possibly the oldest painted object ever found in North America, is now on exhibit at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History in Norman, OK.

Folsom points from Cooper Site. httpwww.arrowheads.

comindex.phpcomponentcontentarticle400-the-cooper-

site-folsom-bison-hunting-on-the-souther-plains.

Bement subsequently described this discovery in his book Bison Hunting at Cooper Site (1999:37). “I was removing dirt from an articulated leg, the bones of which lay across the eye orbits of a skull. As the forehead of this skull was uncovered, a brilliant red zigzag line was exposed. – The zigzag of red stood in stark contrast to the bleached white skull surface and was visible from all areas of the bone bed. To say that there was an instant of incredulous awe does not quite describe that moment of discovery.”

Analysis of the paint has shown that it contains a majority of iron oxides and hydroxides (Bement 1999:51) which give it an intense red not found in the surrounding soil. Concentrations of these minerals are reported found in sandstones and shales in the area (probably in concretions) which were a possible source for the minerals in the paint.

The circumstances of the Folsom artist selecting a skull from the first bison kill, painting the red, zigzag lightning symbol on it, and placing it in a position in the arroyo prior to the bison drive that became the second kill, strongly indicates that this very early example of art played a role in some ritual thought to affect the success of the subsequent hunt. While not exactly rock art, this discovery can shine light on possible uses of early imagery which would include rock art images and symbols, and in any case it can stake a claim toward being the oldest known painting in North America. Additionally, we have to ask; if this example of paint survived more than 10,000 years should we not assume that some examples of pictographs painted in protected places might not have such great age as well?

References:

Bement, Leland C.
1999     Bison Hunting at Cooper Site, Where Lightning Bolts Drew Thundering Herds, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman.

Goins, Charles Robert, and Danny Goble
2006      Historical Atlas of Oklahoma, Fourth Edition, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman.

http://www.ou.edu/cas/arch/sur/counties/harper.htm