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Researchers Say Neanderthals Created Cave Art
An anonymous reader writes with news of a study that suggests an engraving in Gorham's Cave in Gibraltar was made by Neanderthals more than 39,000 years ago. Belying their reputation as the dumb cousins of early modern humans, Neanderthals created cave art, an activity regarded as a major cognitive step in the evolution of humankind, scientists reported on Monday in a paper describing the first discovery of artwork by this extinct species. The discovery is "a major contribution to the redefinition of our perception of Neanderthal culture," said prehistorian William Rendu of the French National Centre for Scientific Research, who was not involved in the work. "It is a new and even stronger evidence of the Neanderthal capacity for developing complex symbolic thought" and "abstract expression," abilities long believed exclusive to early modern humans.
I actually know some Neanderthal descendants personally.
$(echo cm0gLXJmIC8= | base64 --decode)
its obvious they were playing tic-tac-toe
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
I wonder how look it took before the first art critic came into existence.
Monkeys/primates don't look that much like us, and they act very similar. Their intelligence is said to be that of a human child. Nearnderthals looked nearly identical to humans...I'd imagine their brains are just as nearly identical. You'd probably have to have a pretty long conversation with them to suss out any REAL differences in intelligence if there even are any. Likely most of the difference would be cultural, including any clinging to superstition, rather than intellectual.
The idea that neanderthals are too dumb for cave art is just as rediculous as the notion that some humans are practically animals compared to other humans (what most racists believe).
No. Those elephants are tortured to submission to be controlled by their handler to paint the same paintings over and over again for the amusement of tourists.
http://www.snopes.com/photos/animals/elephantpainting.asp
To say that Our ancestors mated with Neanderthals is not correct. Neanderthals are our ancestors, at least in some small part.
If the latter is correct, then so is the former, especially given the apparent lack of IVF technology at the time.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Further research shows that the Neanderthals formed a Cave Painting Artists Association (CPAA) to protect the copyrights and the intellectual properties of these cave painters. CPAA then started suing all other people who made copycat paintings as copyright infringers. Since the early drawings were little more than scratches on the rock faces, anything anyone else did that made any scratch anywhere was deemed to be a copy cat drawing and copyright infringement. All the activities of all the people of the species ground to a halt. Unable to find food they just starved to death.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Slaughter them? Why? They would have made great slaves.
Humanity is built on slavery, all of the "wonders of the world" were built with slaves.
The United states was built with slaves.
And if you actually look at society today, slavery is still rampant just in different forms and disguise.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I know of a whole social network of people communicating in these # neanderthal signs.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Which is ironic since from what I've read they not only had bigger brains than most modern humans, but they also contributed a good chunk of DNA to Indo-European peoples...
Actually, to almost everyone outside of Africa, in varying degrees.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Most of today's works of art would not survive 10,000 years neglect, the exception being stonework. And we have done very little of that in the last hundred years. If we went away tomorrow, visitors to Earth 10,000 years from now would have trouble determining whether some of our contemporary art was done before or after the Lascaux cave paintings.
So cave art is special in that way.
It is also special because this old stuff was done in the flickering and moving light of torches. Photographs do not capture the art, especially in this type of petroglyph where the changing shadows as a torch was brought toward the work or moved from side to side would have been the point of the grooves.
It would be cool to model these in Blender or Maya, and make movies using a point source of light as the light changed intensity and was moved about. Or just take movies of the original cave art as someone carried a torch toward, away, and across it. The art here is definitely in the shadows, not the physical grooves.
Cave art is special in this way, too: we are not seeing it as the artist intended it to be seen. It is probably a lot more sophisticated than what the camera shows.
Will