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Did Neandertals Paint Early Cave Art?

sciencehabit writes "Dating experts working in Spain, using a technique relatively new to archaeology, have pushed dates for the earliest cave art back some 4000 years to at least 41,000 years ago, raising the possibility that the artists were Neandertals rather than modern humans. And a few researchers say that the study argues for the slow development of artistic skill over tens of thousands of years — not a swift acquisition of talent, as some had argued."

13 of 126 comments (clear)

  1. Re:mdash by girlintraining · · Score: 4, Funny

    It may now be considered proper to spell and pronounce Neandertal with a 't' not a 'th' sound, but 'mdash' is still normally written as 'â"'.

    Us Neandertal autor is are offended by your racial oppression of our linguistic atred of the 8t letter of the alpabet.

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  2. Re:Over hyped by arth1 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The artwork dates to when neanderthals were in Europe, but not before the earliest evidence of homo sapiens in Europe.

    It seems unlikely that the art was done by neanderthals, and if it was it was probably done by neanderthals imitating homo sapiens. (there is a reason that "to ape' means to copy.

    I make this assumption based on the fact that cave art seems to show up with other evince of homo sapiens, but there have been no finds of cave art that are dated earlier than any evidence of humans.

    You come across as very prejudiced and biased - and also wrong.
    TFA states that this happened at least 41,000 years ago, and the oldest human (Homo Sapiens Sapiens) remains found in Europe is no more than 36,000 years old.

    Another issue is that you can't apply a dualistic "either/or" - humans of European heritage have from 1-4% Neanderthal DNA. While this isn't a significant portion, it does show that interbreeding was possible and happened, and there must have been fertile individuals who were 50% of each.
    But based solely on the age, the evidence points more towards Neanderthals than modern man.

  3. Re:mdash by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Neandertal is a valley close to Düsseldorf, Germany. In 1901, an orthographic reform changed the name from Neanderthal to Neandertal ("Tal" is German for "valley"). The Neanderthal man however had been discovered long before and keeps his original name with the "th".

  4. Re:Probably not by Hognoxious · · Score: 4, Funny

    Maybe the Neanderthals couldn't verbalize their ideas very well so they learned to draw them?

    Ug sees bear advancing towards Og.
    Ug pulls out a piece of ochre and starts scribbling frantically.
    Og looks puzzled.
    Bear eats Og.
    Ug sighs and walks away.

    Now we know why they're extinct.

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  5. Re:Of course ... by ChunderDownunder · · Score: 5, Informative

    Vandals didn't enter Spain until 409 AD.

    This article is about art dated to roughly forty millennia before they arrived.

  6. Re:We’re not alone by Osgeld · · Score: 4, Insightful

    theres a bit of difference tween a chimp ploping paint strokes in a semi random fashion to make modern "art" and the cave paintings clearly depicting characters doing specific actions. When Congo starts drawing his family actively hunting a beast and roasting it over a fire then I will concede your argument.

  7. Re:Probably not by jd · · Score: 4, Interesting

    There is also very little in common between the earliest cave art attributed to Homo Sapiens and any of the cave art attributed to Neanderthals - very different styles, very different formats, very different in nature all round.

    The paintings in France also include proto-writing next to the paintings, but no such symbols exist here.

    Most important of all, the paintings attributed to Neanderthals include fish that Neanderthals ate at the time and Homo Sapiens did not.

    So if Neanderthals are present and Homo Sapiens are not, we've opportunity taken care of.
    Neanderthals had been mucking around with ochre at the time, Homo Sapiens didn't utilize it for a long time after, so that's means.
    The pictures show Neanderthal food not Homo Sapien food, which gives motive.
    No proto-writing and no utilization of the 3D nature of the rock surface means no continuity with the French cave paintings, so Homo Sapiens are sans continuity.

    I'd say that nails it.

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  8. Irrelevant by toriver · · Score: 4, Funny

    The cave paintings are long out of copyright, and as we all know, only works under copyright hold any value.

    Yours,
    The entertainment industry organizations.

  9. Re:Over hyped by lanswitch · · Score: 4, Informative

    The oldest evidence of modern humans in Europe is over 43.000, not 36.000 years old. There is no evidence that the Neandertal was responsible for the Aurigniac, but a lot of evidence that connects the Aurigniac with modern humans.

    http://dienekes.blogspot.nl/2012/05/43000-year-old-aurignacian-in-swabian.html

  10. Re:mdash by zephvark · · Score: 5, Informative

    It may be appropriate to note that Germans typically don't pronounce "th" as Americans do. It's like "we" versus "whee", the "h" part is an aspiration mark. A common spelling error, for English-speaking Germans, is to put a "th" in where a "t" sound belongs. Neanderthal has always been pronounced Neandertal, they just changed the spelling.

  11. Re:No! by Runaway1956 · · Score: 4, Funny

    "Dating experts working in Spain"

    I haven't figured out what dating experts know about neanderthals. Yeah, sure, some early "modern humans" may have dated some neanderthals. In fact, there have been a few reports that we all have neanderthal genes in our makeup. But, today's dating experts? What do they know about neanderthals? Maybe - just maybe - those dating experts know something about Spaniards, but forget the neanderthals.

    --
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  12. Re:Over hyped by ColdWetDog · · Score: 4, Informative

    If Neanderthals and humans could mate and have fertile offspring, then why aren't they considered the same species?

    Because 'species' is a loaded word.

    The species problem

    tl;dr - Complicated natural phenomena are hard to reduce to a single word.

    --
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  13. Re:mdash by Mindcontrolled · · Score: 4, Informative

    Ehem, sorry, as a native German speaker I feel the need to add that the h in "th" is not an aspiration marker. Phonetically, there is no difference between"t" and "th" in German. It's just a relic of orthography. Both are pronounced as unvoiced alveolar plosive /t/.

    --
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