Earliest cave art belonged to Neanderthals, not humans: Study

Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

“It is one of the main pillars of what makes us human.”

Plenty of evidence already exists to debunk the myth that Neanderthals were knuckledragging brutes, and instead were capable of decorative impulses and rituals, like burying their dead.

But cave paintings were one of the last bastions that appeared to differentiate anatomically modern humans from Neanderthals, who died out some 35,000 years ago.

“Recent years have seen studies that show Neanderthals made extensive use of ornamental objects, potentially built structures, and on the whole, appear far more capable of symbolic cognitive processes than has historically been regarded,” Adam Van Arsdale, associate professor of anthropology at Wellesley College, told AFP.

“These results suggest that cave painting, also, fails to distinguish Neanderthals and modern humans,” said Van Arsdale, who was not involved in the study.

He said the findings reflect “some impressive technical developments in dating techniques in cave contexts, issues that have always posed a challenge for our understanding the timing of key events in human evolution.”

He added: “As a new and technically challenging method, it will be good to see these results replicated by others.”

Until now, figuring out the age of cave drawings without destroying them has been difficult.

The new approach is based on obtaining a minimum age for cave art “using uranium-thorium (U-Th) dating of carbonate crusts overlying the pigments,” explained Hoffman.

The technique of U-Th dating is based on the radioactive decay of uranium isotopes into thorium.