Archaeologists have made a surprising discovery in a South African cave that seems to double the time humans have been artists.

A group of researchers from Australia, France, Norway and South Africa have Norway unearthed artifacts from the Middle Stone Age in the Blombos cave, which lies on a high cliff 200 miles east of Cape Town -- tools and ingredients used in an early formula for paint, according to reports from The New York Times.

South Africa boasts several wonderfully diverse caves that range from enormous underground arenas and rock-strewn zigzag channels. There are also world heritage sites like the Sterkfontein, Cango Caves and Cradle of Humankind, where fossils are plentiful.

Ten years ago, researchers found implements made from animal bones and well-carved stone spearheads. They collected numerous ochre stones, including two engraved with interwoven triangles and horizontal lines.

The Times report stated that this occurred "75,000 years ago, some 40,000 years before the creative explosion of self-adornment and cave paintings once thought of as the sudden origin of human self-expression."

The Journal of Human Evolution published findings of the team led by Christopher S. Henshilwood of the University of Bergen in Norway, who have been working extensively at the Blombos Cave site.

"Artifacts found there include sophisticated bone and stone tools, fish bones, and an abundance of used ochre, which has no known economic function. It is almost universally accepted as a source of color for ceremonial, decorative purposes."

"The Blombos Cave layers containing used ochre are dated 70,000 to 80,000 years before the present. Just recently, a cluster of deliberately perforated and red-stained shell beads dating to the Middle Stone Age has been found and is being interpreted as personal ornaments or jewelry for the occupants of Blombos," an article in the Journal explained.

Archaeologists revealed that in the workshop remains, they saw the earliest example of how developing Homo sapiens processed ocher, one of the first pigments in wide use.

The early humans may have applied the concoction to their skin for protection or simply decoration. "Perhaps it was their way of making social and artistic statements on their bodies or their artifacts," the investigators said.