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THE WORLD’S OLDEST known cave art was crafted by Neanderthals more than 20,000 years before modern humans arrived in Europe, showing that our extinct cousins were capable of symbolic thinking just like us, international researchers have said.
The report in the journal Science is based on new technology that reveals the most accurate age yet of ancient cave paintings at three different archaeological sites in Spain.
“This is an incredibly exciting discovery which suggests Neanderthals were much more sophisticated than is popularly believed,” said co-lead author Chris Standish, an archaeologist at the University of Southampton.
“Our results show that the paintings we dated are, by far, the oldest known cave art in the world.”
Since they were created some 64,000 years ago – at least 20,000 years before modern humans arrived in Europe from Africa– “they must have been painted by Neanderthals”, he added.
Using mainly red pigments and sometimes black, groups of animals, hand stencils, engravings, dots, discs and geometric designs are depicted in the cave paintings at La Pasiega in the northeast, Maltravieso in the west and Ardales in the south of Spain.
These symbolic renderings point to an intelligence that was previously thought to be uniquely the realm of modern humans.
“The emergence of symbolic material culture represents a fundamental threshold in the evolution of humankind,” said co-lead author Dirk Hoffmann of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
“It is one of the main pillars of what makes us human.”
New technology
Plenty of evidence already exists to debunk the myth that Neanderthals were knuckle-dragging brutes, and instead were capable of decorative impulses and rituals, like burying their dead.
But cave paintings were one of the last bastions that appeared to differentiate anatomically modern humans from Neanderthals, who died out some 35,000 years ago.
“Recent years have seen studies that show Neanderthals made extensive use of ornamental objects, potentially built structures, and on the whole, appear far more capable of symbolic cognitive processes than has historically been regarded,” Adam Van Arsdale, associate professor of anthropology at Wellesley College, told AFP.
“These results suggest that cave painting, also, fails to distinguish Neanderthals and modern humans,” said Van Arsdale, who was not involved in the study.
He said the findings reflect “some impressive technical developments in dating techniques in cave contexts, issues that have always posed a challenge for our understanding the timing of key events in human evolution”.
He added: “As a new and technically challenging method, it will be good to see these results replicated by others.”
To date but not destroy
Until now, figuring out the age of cave drawings without destroying them has been difficult.
The new approach is based on obtaining a minimum age for cave art ”using Uranium-Thorium (U-Th) dating of carbonate crusts overlying the pigments,” explained Hoffman.
The technique of U-Th dating is based on the radioactive decay of uranium isotopes into thorium.
It can determine the age of calcium carbonate formations going back as far as 500,000 years, much further than the widely used radiocarbon method, said the report.
More than 60 tiny samples, less than 10 milligrams each, were analysed from the three caves.
A second study, also published this week by Hoffmann and colleagues, determined the age of an archaeological deposit located at the Cueva de Los Aviones, a sea cave in southeast Spain.
“This cave contained perforated seashells, red and yellow colourants and shell containers including complex mixes of pigments,” said the report.
U-Th dating found the flowstone covering the deposit to about 115,000 years, older than similar finds in south and north Africa associated with Homo sapiens.
The dating shows they came from a time when Neanderthals lived in western Europe.
“According to our new data Neanderthals and modern humans shared symbolic thinking and must have been cognitively indistinguishable,” said Joao Zilhao, a researcher from the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies in Barcelona who was involved in both studies.
Future studies could reveal many more caves where art was likely done by Neanderthals, said study co-author Paul Pettitt of Durham University.
“We have examples in three caves 700 kilometres apart, and evidence that it was a long-lived tradition. It is quite possible that similar cave art in other caves in Western Europe is of Neanderthal origin as well,” he said.
“Neanderthals created meaningful symbols in meaningful places. The art is not a one-off accident.”
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Wow these poor souls are the collateral damage of Angela Merkel & Peter Sutherland’s forced population replacement policy.
@Chris M.: NGO’s aren’t helping these economic migrants. Their hands have just as much blood on them. The question is why is rich Africa failing economically?
@Danny foley: because it’s the third world and it’s resources are being exploited by the first world
@Chris M.:
This was migration from Somalia and Ethiopia into Yemen – nothing to do with mama merkel this time.
@Chris M.:
ahhaha , fake account who’s too much of a pussy to stand behind what he believes in
The cruel sentiments of some of the Irish commenters, disregarding of the suffering and deaths of fellow human beings, seeking to score points of billious prejudice off human tragedy, is beyond shocking.
@Tony Daly: just like you man, they got the shotgun, you got the briefcase
@Tony Daly: What on earth are you raving about this time?
@Frank Cooney: “the world is helping these people”
No.
The world is exploiting these people. While their leaders may be corrupt, so are many of ours and of course companies that get rich from it.
Fact is that we are all responsible for the turmoil in Africa, so if a few try to cross from the hellhole we created that is our fault, no?
You can remove your blame by researching and not purchasing from companies which exploit impovished nations.
@Andy K: Oh, and lets not forget all those countries bombing Africa for decades (hint: they are not only being bombed by third world countries).
@Tony Daly: agreed Tony. It’s disgusting. You have to hope that it’s not representative of our population
How bad must Somalia be for people to be desperate to get to Yemen?
@methodical2020:
hmm you seemed to have missed russia’s continued destabilization of Ukraine in your indignation of happenings around the world
@Stephen Coveney: Ukraine is not in Africa….
It will not stop, the majority are now economic migrants wanting a better life.
The traffickers / murderer are only one part of it..
Africa on the whole is corrupt and poorly run..
Countries that once thrived are now desolate.
Until Africa is sorted, the migration across the med will stay at this level for year’s to come…
I don’t care anymore.
have your say