Spanish researchers say they found evidence that Neanderthals can make art. It challenges the idea that art began with modern people who took over them.
The canvas is a quartz-rich granite pebbles excavated from a rock shelter in central Spain in 2022 and dates back to 42,000 to 43,000 years. Pebbles measured over 8 inches long have curves and indentations, resembling human faces.
In the middle of its surface is a single red dot with a nose, researchers added in a study published Saturday in the journals of archaeology and anthropology that looks like a non-centered object, not a tool.
“From the beginning, I could say it was unique,” said David Alvarez Alonso, the paper’s lead author.
Analysis showed that the red dots consist of ochre, a natural globe pigment. The next step was to determine how it reached it.
Although invisible to the naked eye, the red dot was confirmed as a fingerprint by Spanish forensic police, leaving “unquestionably” that it was intentionally applied to the stone with a finger soaked in Alvarez-Alonso, an archaeologist at the University of Compontense in Madrid.
Researchers assume that fingerprint-based Neanderthals are probably adult males and perceive pebbles as resembling faces – a psychological phenomenon known as the paraidoria – perfecting the depiction, creating “one of the oldest known abstractions of human faces in prehistoric records.”
“It would be a clear act of symbolization. It’s clearly very simple yet meaningful,” said Alvarez-Alonso.
The findings are “double exceptional” as they are the “most complete” Neanderthal fingerprints ever identified, apart from the partial ones discovered so far.
The Neanderthals, a distinct species that had been extincted 40,000 years ago, lived with early modern people in Europe, Asia and the Middle East and at least part of their existence. The species, characterized by a large nose and a relatively short, stocky body, are very closely associated with humans or Homo sapiens.
Neanderthal ruins do not provide clear evidence of lower intelligence than modern humans, some scientists argue.
The stone is “one of the small but growing discoveries that refer to the existence of symbolic behavior among Neanderthals,” said Alvarez Alonso.
However, it is “a clear isolated object with no known similarities” and can be used for comparison, he added.
“We should not attempt to draw a direct analogy between the Neanderthal and Sapiens worlds,” he said, as Neanderthals did not create a visually symbolic system that was as complex and diverse as those developed by Homo Sapiens, “we should not try to draw a direct analogy between the Neanderthals and Sapiens worlds.”
“These pebbles do not solve the mystery, but they provide another clue that suggests the existence of complex minds: they can create symbols,” he said.
