Oldest Extant Tiling Artefacts

Geometrically engraved piece of ochre block. Christoper S. Henshilwood Creative Commons Legal Code

From the pictures, I am very far from convinced! All we have here is a series of lines loosely described as rhombuses. Encyclopedia Britannica states ‘A crosshatch design’. Is a tiling intended? A prevalent theme here from the BBC report is of conceptual thought or symbolism. Significantly, tiling (or tessellation) is not discussed or even implied. A tiling? Not to me in the normal sense of the term.

60,000 years

Inscribed ostrich shell fragments found in South Africa

Ostrich Shell Fragments found in South Africa

From the pictures, I am far from convinced! All we have here is a series of lines at various angles. Is a tiling intended? A prevalent theme here of the accompanying text is of conceptual thought or symbolism. Significantly, tiling (or tessellation) is not discussed or even implied. A tiling? Not to me in the normal sense of the term.

'12,000-15,000 BC'

‘Mammoth tusk with an engraving of (many) irregular hexagons and is dated ‘12,000-15,000 BC’ and ‘about 21,000’. (The authorities differ in their dating.) 

Mammoth Tusk, Eliseevichi, Russia

A mammoth tusk, described as a ‘fish’, with hexagonal scales. The artefact was found in Eliseevichi, Russia (midway between Moscow and Kiev), and was excavated in 1935. Whether the artist intended a broad regular hexagon is unclear, bearing in mind the limitations of the tools of the day and curved surface. The tusk is in the collection of the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, Russia, of which I investigated their website, with a Google translation of the text, below. The tusk is described as a fish in the museum catalogue (with the tiling as scales), although save for the body I can see very little fish resemblance:

A plane stylized image of a fish, for the manufacture of which a longitudinal cleavage was used from the outer surface of a mammoth tusk. Its shape resembles the shape of the body of a freshwater fish, and in a small extension at the narrow end, a caudal fin is guessed. A series of eleven longitudinal, slightly diverging to the sides from the center to the edges of the furrows indicate the rays of the caudal fin. Right the part is covered with a honeycomb ornament that imitates fish scales, the left - zigzag ornament.

To the best of my knowledge, this has not been discussed in the mathematical literature as a tiling, but rather before in different contexts, as art (and curiously) medically, but they do not seem to  have recognised the historical significance of the tiling and indeed mathematical aspect. This is surely one of the oldest mathematical artefacts per se, on a broad par with the Ishango Bone, between 18,000 BC and 20,000 BC! Or am I missing something?

13th century BC

Elamite Temple at Chogha Zanbil (Wikipedia, Tile)

One of the earliest uses of tiles can be found in the Elamite Temple at Chogha Zanbil, which dates from the 13th century BC.