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According to a study published on Monday, Neanderthals, long considered immature and barbaric, did map stalagmites in a cave in Spain more than 60,000 years ago.
Since the publication of a paper in 2018, this question has been plagued by paleoarchaeology circles. Attributing the ocher red pigment found on the stalagmite dome of Cueva de Ardales to our extinct “cousin” species.
The date indicates that this artwork is at least 64,800 years old and was made when modern humans did not inhabit the African continent.
But this finding is controversial. “A scientific article says these pigments may be a natural substance.” This is the result of iron oxide flow, Francesco d’Errico, a co-author of the new paper in PNAS magazine, told AFP.
A new analysis shows that the composition and position of the paint are inconsistent with natural processes-instead, the paint is applied by spraying and blowing.
More importantly, their texture does not match the natural samples taken from the cave, which indicates that the pigment comes from an external source.
More detailed dating shows that these pigments were used at different points in time, more than 10,000 years apart.
According to d’Errico of the University of Bordeaux, this “supports the hypothesis that Neanderthals have come here many times over a period of thousands of years, marking the caves with paint”.
It is difficult to compare the “art” of Neanderthals with frescoes made by prehistoric moderns. For example, the frescoes found in the Chauvie-Pondac caves in France are more than 30,000 years old.
But this new discovery adds more and more evidence that the Neanderthal lineage went extinct about 40,000 years ago, and that they were not the crude relatives of Homo sapiens that have long been portrayed as Homo sapiens.
The team wrote that these paints are not “art” in the narrow sense, “but are the result of graphic actions aimed at continuation of the symbolic meaning of space.”
The cave structure “played an important role in the symbol system of some Neanderthal communities”, although the meaning of these symbols is still a mystery.
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