The optical absorption spectrum from 0.1 to 1.5 eV photon energy is present
ed for extremely lightly oxygen doped crystals of La2CuO4. Crystals grown b
y two different methods have different low temperature spectra and differen
t temperature dependencies. However, at room temperature the spectra are ne
arly identical, suggesting that they result from the optical absorption of
free isolated holes in the two dimensional antiferromagnetic CuO2 square la
ttice.