More than a hundred thousand years ago in what is now eastern China, an ancient human relative decided to carve a bit of bone. Surrounded by the fragmented skeletons of butchered animals, the ancient engraver chose a tidbit of rib hardened from its time under the sun and carved seven nearly parallel lines, highlighting them with a smear of vibrant ochre pigments.

Now, these straight lines are making waves among paleoanthropologists, who believe that this tiny fragment, along with a second engraved bone found nearby, provide the oldest evidence of intentional symbolic carvings yet found in East Asia. If so, the find would beat the previous record holder by some 60,000 years, the team reports in the journal Antiquity.

The branch