Where ancient DNA rarely survives, antelope protein preserved with ochre pigment offers clues to the technical skills and possible symbolic practices of early humans.
A 60,000-year-old ochre-rich surface in South Africa still holds traces of an antelope protein, preserving a clue to how early humans used the mineral pigment. Ochre is a naturally occurring, iron-rich material that can be ground into a colored powder. Researchers identified type I collagen, a structural protein found in animal tissues, from the common eland, Taurotragus oryx. The finding provides molecular evidence that animal-derived materials were associated with ochre use during the Middle Stone Age.
The protein could reflect two different activities. People may have deliberately mixed animal-derived materials into the ochre, or eland hides treated with the pigment may have been present at the site. Evidence of organic components mixed with ochre has been extremely rare, particularly in Africa, so recovering these traces offers a way to investigate materials that are no longer visible in the archaeological record.
Matching ancient proteins to an antelope
The surface was found at the Kilpdrift Complex, a Middle and Later Stone Age archaeological site within the coastal cliffs of South Africa’s De Hoop Nature Reserve. A team from Kyushu University, Universitetet i Bergen, and the University of Copenhagen examined archived sediment samples from the site to search for preserved proteins. Their findings are published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
To detect those traces, the researchers turned to paleoproteomics, the large-scale analysis of ancient proteins. This growing field in archaeology and paleontology examines proteins preserved in materials collected at archaeological sites. Here, it allowed the team to look for biological evidence within the ochre-rich sediments.
The researchers extracted proteins from the samples and analyzed them using liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry, or LC-MS/MS. They then compared the resulting protein fragments with entries in large protein databases and a custom collagen reference database to identify the animal they came from. Those comparisons identified collagen from the common eland.
Reconstructing Stone Age life through proteins
The association between eland materials and ochre adds evidence of the complex technical behaviors of early Homo sapiens, with possible symbolic roles as well. Although the traces do not establish exactly how the materials were used, they open another route to studying the place of pigments and animal-derived materials in early human daily life.
The successful recovery also demonstrates that ancient proteins can be identified in archaeological sediments even in challenging African environments where ancient DNA rarely survives. Paleoproteomics could therefore help archaeologists investigate biological materials whose visible remains have disappeared.
Reference: “Palaeoproteomic investigation of archaeological sediments associated with ochre use in the Middle Stone Age of southern Africa” by Zahra Haghighi, Takumi Tsutaya, Elizabeth C. Velliky, Simon Armitage, Christopher Miller, Meaghan Mackie, Francesco d’Errico, Gaudry Troche, Jesper Olsen, Karen van Niekerk, Christopher Henshilwood and Enrico Cappellini, 1 October 2026, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.
DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2025.3300
This work was supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant no. (PUSHH) 861389, in part by the Research Council of Norway, through its Centres of Excellence funding scheme, SFF Centre for Early Sapiens Behaviour (SapienCE) (grant no. 262618), in part by Grand Programme de Recherche ‘Human Past’ of the Initiative d’Excellence (IdEx) through the University of Bordeaux, in part by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (grant-in-aid for scientific research no. 202170033), in part by Novo Nordisk Fonden (grant no. NNF14CC0001), in part by the Talents Program of the University of Bordeaux (grant no. 191022_001), in part by the European Research Council (grant no. (Quanta) 951388), in part by H2020 European Research Council (grant no. (BACKWARD) 101021361) and in part by the Japan Science and Technology Agency FOREST program (grant no. (JPMJFR233D)).
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