Neanderthals used to be perceived as unsophisticated and barbaric, but several discoveries show that they had some more elevated activities than previously thought.
A recent discovery depicts some painted stalagmites in a Spanish cave over 60,000 years ago.
The discovery took the world by surprise back in 2018 after a paper linking red ocher pigment, and the stalagmitic dome to the extinct “cousin” human species was made public.
Dating revealed that the piece of art is at least 64,800 years old, and it was made back when modern humans did not live in Europe.
However, there was some fierce debate surrounding the discovery. Some suggested that the pigments on the stalagmites may be a natural occurrence due to iron oxide flow, according to Francesco d’Errico, the co-author of a recent paper published in the journal PNAS.
However, recent discoveries suggest that the pigments are not consistent with natural processes. Instead, the pigments seem to have been applied via splattering and blowing.
The texture didn’t match biological samples elevated from caves, implying that the pigments originate from an external source.
Advanced dating suggested that the pigments were applied at various points in time, more than ten thousand years apart.
That detail “supports the hypothesis that the Neanderthals came on several occasions, over several thousand years, to mark the cave with pigments”, according to d’Errico, from the University of Bordeaux.
It’s a long stretch to compare Neanderthal “art” with modern human art, but it is undoubtedly a stepping stone in the cultural evolution of the species.
This new study adds to the concept that the Neanderthals, which went extinct over forty millennia ago, were not the boorish human-like spawns they are usually portrayed as.
Though the painted stalagmites can’t be labeled as art, they are something special among the legacy left by Neanderthals.
