As long as you are entertaining the idea of various non-human possibilities ...
Posted on 06/15/2012 8:47:02 AM PDT by dead
The famous paintings on the walls of caves in Europe mark the beginning of figurative art and a great leap forward for human culture.
But now a novel method of determining the age of some of those cave paintings questions their provenance. Not that they're fakes — only that it might not have been modern humans who made them.
The first European cave paintings are thought to have been made over 30,000 years ago. Most depict animals and hunters. Some of the eeriest are stencils of human hands, apparently made by blowing a spray of pigment over a hand held up to a wall.
But now scientists are suggesting those aren't human hands, at least in some caves in Spain.
Alistair Pike, an archaeologist at the University of Bristol in England who used a novel technique to get new dates for some of those paintings, says they're older than people thought, and they may just predate the arrival of humans in Europe.
"What we are saying is that we must entertain the possibility that these paintings were made by Neanderthals," Pike says. Those were humans' closest relatives, but they are not our species.
Pike says some of these paintings in Spain are at least 40,800 years old. At that time, Neanderthals had been running around Europe for 200,000 or 300,000 years. Modern humans had just arrived from Africa.
Pike concedes that maybe modern humans arrived in Europe with palette and pigment in hand, ready to paint up the town.
But the paintings could be even older. Pike's technique dates the age of the calcium carbonate that naturally forms in layers on top of the paintings. It's kind of like nature's shellac. Obviously the paintings had to be made before the first layer formed.
Archaeologist Joao Zilhao from the University of Barcelona is part of the team that did the work. He says his gut tells him it's Neanderthal art.
"We can't be 100 percent certain that they did it," Zilhao says. "I think that there is a strong probability. My point is the evidence for symbolic behavior among the Neanderthals already exists."
Neanderthals did perform ritual burials. They made decorative beads and other ornaments. Pike also notes that DNA evidence now suggests that modern humans and Neanderthals interbred.
"Why should it be surprising that Neanderthals produced art?" Pike says.
It does surprise archaeologists like Pat Shipman, who has spent a lifetime studying symbolic behavior. She wonders why Neanderthals waited until about the time humans arrived to get the itch to paint.
"OK, Neanderthals had been there for 300,000 years, and they're not doing this," Shipman says. "If they are not doing it before, why would they suddenly start doing it at that point?"
Ancient Neanderthals challenge us to think about our role as the sole humans on Earth today. A decorative shell ornament attributed to Neanderthals. Study: Neanderthals Wore Jewelry And Makeup
The discovery suggests that early relatives of humans were capable of symbolic thinking.
Shipman notes long before humans made the trek from Africa to Europe, they had been making all sorts of symbolic artifacts — ocher hash marks on stone or symmetrical marks on ostrich eggs.
"I find it easiest to assume that people who are already doing that moved into more figurative representations than thinking that an entirely other species of people suddenly came up with making figurative art," Shipman says.
The research appears in the journal Science. Pike says he needs to find paintings a few thousand years old than he has so far to make his case for Neanderthal art. He and his Spanish colleagues are headed back to find it.
“Zog Jones cooks his meat.”
“Maybelle, ever since we painted handprints of the kids on that there cave wall, tourism has been WAY up.”
Well why not art, Al Gore also invented the internet.
As long as you are entertaining the idea of various non-human possibilities ...
I think it might be more than 4%.
Who hasn’t seen those short low-browed guys with long arms and back hair walking down the street and thought or said, “Now THAT’s a neanderthal”?
“Neanderthals ARE humans and Europeans carry their DNA”
The article says that we were seperate species and then that we interbred. It has to be one or the other, right? Neanderthals were a sub-specias of homo sapian sapian.
Far Side: “Hey, look what Thag do!”
exactly!
-Is she really going out with him? -
Pretty women out walking with gorillas down my street
From my window I'm staring while my coffee grows cold
Look over there! (Where?)
There's a lady that I used to know
She's married now, or engaged, or something, so I am told
Is she really going out with him?
Is she really gonna take him home tonight?
Is she really going out with him?
‘Cause if my eyes don't deceive me,
There's something going wrong around here
Tonight's the night when I go to all the parties down my street.
I wash my hair and I kid myself I look real smooth
Look over there! (Where?)
Here comes Jeanie with her new boyfriend
They say that looks don't count for much
If so, there goes your proof
Is she really going out with him?
Is she really gonna take him home tonight?
Is she really going out with him?
‘Cause if my eyes don't deceive me,
There's something going wrong around here
But if looks could kill
There's a man there who's more down as dead.
Cause I've had my fill
Listen you, take your hands off her head
I get so mean around this scene
Is she really going out with him?
Is she really gonna take him home tonight?
Is she really going out with him?
‘Cause if my eyes don't deceive me
There's something going wrong around here
Thats why we cook our meat to this day, just to keep up with the Jones.
Are wolves and coyotes generally considered the same species or even sub-species of each other?
Mia culpa.
So easy, a caveman could do it.
Walking around the Smithsonian Museum of Modern Art I saw many pieces which I assumed had been made by lemurs. Or perhaps cows who had sat in some semi-gloss latex.
This is a HOAX to garner more grants for research.
For thousands of years, humans didn't do a lot of things, then suddenly we started doing them. Every innovation has its time and its reasons.
Remember when the young monkeys started washing their food in water to remove the grit? Why didn't the older ones figure that out? And why did they not join in on the discovery right away?
There are dozens of examples of animals not doing something for thousands of years and then one day...
Looks to me like they were trying to claw themselves out of one of those prehistoric fishes. ;)
Uhh, that’s Joe Jackson.
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