Scientists believe they have discovered the oldest known drawing... and it looks like a hashtag

The oldest known drawing has been discovered on a small fragment of rock in South Africa, scientists have said.

It is about 73,000 years old and shows cross-hatch lines on stone made with red ochre pigment.

The small fragment, which some say vaguely looks like a hashtag, was found in Blombos Cave on the country’s southern coast.

The find is "a prime indicator of modern cognition" in our species, scientists who discovered the drawing said.

An "ochre crayon" was used to etch the drawing onto the stone.

"The abrupt termination of all lines on the fragment edges indicates that the pattern originally extended over a larger surface," said archaeologist Christopher Henshilwood.

The pattern was probably more complex and structured in its entirety than in this truncated form."

He added: "We would be hesitant to call it art. It is definitely an abstract design and it almost certainly had some meaning to the maker and probably formed a part of the common symbolic system understood by other people in this group."

Other Blombos Cave artefacts of a similar age included ochre pieces engraved with abstract patterns resembling the one drawn on the stone as well as ochre-covered shell beads.

Blombos Cave artifacts dating from 100,000 years ago included a red ochre-based paint.

"All these findings demonstrate that early Homo sapiens in the southern Cape used different techniques to produce similar signs on different media," Henshilwood said.

"This observation supports the hypothesis that these signs were symbolic in nature and represented an inherent aspect of the advanced cognitive abilities these early African Homo sapiens, the ancestors of all of us today."