Oldest Cave Art in the world found

Wibbs

And it predates modern humans... A study published in Science has determined through dating of the carbonate overlay that cave art found in three separate Spanish sites is at least 64,000 years old. One handprint comes in at 66,000 years old. This predates the known appearance of modern humans in Europe* by about 20,000 years, so it follows it would have to have been produced by Neandertals.


An example of one artwork.

They suggest that other sites in Europe where similar art is found and has always been thought to be the oldest of modern human work might also be of Neandertal origin.

Another study published yesterday looked at pierced and "painted" shells and pigments in another Spanish cave and concluded that at 115-120,000 years old they predate any modern human symbolic material so far found by 20,000 years(Blombos Cave South Africa).

Added to the stone "circles" discovered in France dating to 175,000 years old it seems symbolism and abstract thought wasn't just our preserve.



Maybe our great modern human explosion of art around 40-50,000 years ago mostly centred within Europe was because of contact with Neandertals and an "arms race" of symbolism kicked off, a race we won. And we may have won it because of one serious advantage over them; we were less tribal, less xenophobic. One group of Neandertals might have made "art" but it was a symboliser of that particular group, so it would make no sense for another group to copy that. EG we have evidence of eagle talon and feather jewellery in one group in Italy, but nothing like that anywhere else. In the Channel Islands there were two groups of Neandertals living beside each other and no evidence of any trade at all.

One incredible feature of our symbolism and a feature rarely pointed out is that in the earliest days of it and across a huge swathe of land from the Mediterranean through France and Germany to the alps it's the same. The same cave art, the same portable art(Venus' and the like). It's one set of cultural reference points. An Austrian could well have understood the symbolism, maybe even the language of a Spaniard. They also traded within this corridor across the same distances.

As modern history has shown when one such cohesive homogenised culture comes up against localised and isolated cultures the latter get swamped. Maybe they went extinct not because of war, or disease or better tools, but because we out arted them? It's certainly another selective pressure worth considering.





*Known appearance is the thing here. I personally suspect modern humans could have made earlier forays into Europe. It seems they got as far as Australia around 65,000 years ago. The first cave art site might well have been one such very early European foray. I'd be more sure of Neandertal authorship if similar older dates came back from more northerly sites that didn't show associated modern human material until much later. The French stone structures can't be doubted however. At 170,000 years old they couldn't be modern human in origin.