Earliest Ancient Cave Paintings Made by Neanderthals, Not Humans, New Discovery Indicates
Some of the very earliest cave wall paintings were not made by early Homo Sapiens, after all, it turns out. Neanderthals were marking cave walls with their own art some 64,000 years ago, as some researchers discovered using improved dating techniques.
These caves, located in Spain, were analyzed using newly developed radioactive dating tools, which placed these pieces of prehistoric art at about 64,800 years old or even older. That implies that they have been present some 20,000 years before modern humans arrived in the area, as Reuters pointed out.
With humans arriving in Europe from Africa much, much later, this cave art predates any other piece of evidence humans may have left in these parts. Moreover, this new finding suggests that the extinct Neanderthals were more similar to humans in cognitive abilities than previously thought.
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"What we've got here is a smoking gun that really overturns the notion that Neanderthals were knuckle-dragging cavemen," Alistair Pike, one of the co-leaders of the research as well as an Archeology professor at the University of Southampton, said about the findings.
The study was published in the journal Science on Thursday, Feb. 22. The results from the team's research now place these Spanish cave paintings as the first example of prehistoric art attributed to Neanderthals.
The now-extinct Neanderthals were the closest relative to early modern humans, according to current evolution theories. For a long time, they were seen to be the more primitive, backward cousin to Homo Sapiens.
"Painting is something that has always been seen as a very human activity, so if Neanderthals are doing it they are being just like us," Pike added. These cave art at La Pasiega, Maltravieso and Ardales, which feature hand-like shapes, lines, dots and round shapes, would take very human-like skills, including choosing pigments and finding the right spot to start painting on.
