The oldest pigment

We are entering autumn, and among the earth tones and dry leaves, ochre stands out. It is a warm and peaceful color that transports us to distant and exotic places such as the cities in the deserts of North Africa, Siena, the medieval city of golden stones in Tuscany, or the colonial streets of Mexico and South America with their earthy tan facades.

Ochre is the oldest natural pigment because it is abundant in the earth’s crust. That is why we find it in the prehistoric man cave paintings of all over the world.  The earliest archaeological site with more than 5 kilograms of this pure mineral was found in Kenya and dated around 285,000 years ago. We generally associate ochre with golden yellow, but the truth is that there is a vast range of shades ranging from yellow to red and brown, and that can even reach violet or blue depending on the different amounts of iron oxide combined with other minerals present in the earth.

Scientists suppose that Paleolithic men and women used it to cover all or part of their bodies, whether to adorn themselves or assimilate with the rest of the clan they belonged to. Maybe to protect themselves from the sun or insects, as many animals do, and to take advantage of the healing and disinfectant virtues of the mud. It is believed that they tanned animal skins with it and made glue with a hot mixture of resin and wax to hold the handles of their weapons and tools.

Red ochre was widely used throughout Egyptian history to decorate the walls of tombs – men had their skin painted red and women yellow – and to write and draw on papyrus and make cosmetics and decorate pottery.

Speaking of ceramics: we observe the yellow or reddish ochre color in the Bizen pottery of Japan, which since medieval times, uses a slow firing method that can last up to 15 days and produces pieces of iron hardness. Those found in India, on the banks of the Ganges from 2000 B.C. The pots and hundreds of pre-Columbian objects of the Mochica culture of northern Peru with pieces exclusively in cream and red ochre tones.

In Australia, a continent with enormous quantities of ochre, it was considered by the aborigines as a precious commodity for its mercantile value and used for bartering with white settlers.

It is said that ochre is, in all its range, the color that humanized us because it helped humans of tens of thousands years ago, to create a symbolic language through the artistic representation of animals and signs when they only had gestures and guttural sounds to express themselves.