Colour strongly shapes our perception of the world and plays a main role in the emergence of language and in the transmission of information. It has been shown that systematic use of ochre, along with other cultural traits that reflect cognitive complexity, disappear and reappear from the archaeological record, suggesting that cultural transmission follows discontinuous trajectories that to this day are unknown to us. Understanding when humans started using colour and how this feature evolved may therefore be instrumental to understand the evolutionary paths followed by members of our lineage towards cultural complexity. The earliest secure evidence for ochre use is found at 300.000-year-old archaeological sites from Africa and Europe. It usually consists of iron-rich rocks characterized by a red, orange, yellow or brown colour and/or streak, modified by grinding, scraping and knapping to produce red or yellow powder, ochre residues adhering to different types of artefacts or sediment stained with ochre or rich in ochre microfragments. Around 160 ka, ochre use becomes a recurrent feature. Although analyses of ochre collections have become increasingly frequent, there is still very little information on the first instances of ochre use and on how this cultural feature evolved through time. Most cases of early evidence for colour use by different human fossil species were recovered during excavations conducted several decades ago, when ochre was not documented systematically. Excluding a few recently studied cases, there is often a lack of evidence to support the anthropogenic nature of these findings. The aim of this paper is to summarise what we know on ochre use during the Lower Palaeolithic / Early Stone Age (ESA) and Middle Palaeolithic / Middle Stone Age (MSA), review techniques currently used for the analysis of this material and highlight analytical and theoretical issues surrounding this complex cultural feature.

中文翻译：

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颜色的最初用途：我们知道什么？

颜色强烈地塑造了我们对世界的看法，并在语言的出现和信息的传输中发挥着主要作用。研究表明，对赭石的系统使用，以及反映认知复杂性的其他文化特征，在考古记录中消失又重现，这表明文化传播遵循着我们至今仍不了解的不连续轨迹。因此，了解人类何时开始使用颜色以及这一特征是如何进化的可能有助于理解我们世系成员向文化复杂性发展所遵循的进化路径。最早使用赭石的可靠证据是在非洲和欧洲具有 30 万年历史的考古遗址中发现的。它通常由以红色、橙色、黄色或棕色和/或条纹为特征的富含铁的岩石组成，通过研磨、刮擦和敲击进行改性，产生红色或黄色粉末、粘附在不同类型人工制品上的赭石残留物或沾有赭石或富含赭石微碎片的沉积物。大约 160 ka 时，赭石的使用成为一种反复出现的特征。尽管对赭石收藏品的分析越来越频繁，但关于赭石使用的最初实例以及这种文化特征如何随时间演变的信息仍然很少。大多数关于不同人类化石物种使用颜色的早期证据案例是在几十年前进行的挖掘过程中发现的，当时没有系统地记录赭石。排除一些最近研究的案例，通常缺乏证据来支持这些发现的人为性质。