Oldest known cave paintings yield big surprise: Neanderthals may have been first artists
Alistair Pike
The discovery brings researchers one step closer to understanding how it is that humans developed art and language and religion — the types of symbolic and cultural expressions that have always been thought to elevate humans from other species  said archaeologist  Alistair Pike  of Britain’s University of Southampton  who was part of the research team.
“It’s almost the definition of being human ”  Pike  told The Washington Post. “It’s how we define ourselves as different from other animals and primates  having language and cultural expression. There’s been a lot of work trying to understand where in Homo sapiens’s lineage did we first become symbolic individuals?”
Perhaps   Pike  said   it  started with Neanderthals.
Still  Stringer stressed that there is still not definite proof of Neanderthals’ ability to make figurative art — of animals and people — because the animals the researchers found on the paintings in Spain have uncertain origins.  Pike  said  it  was not entirely clear whether humans may have stumbled upon the Neanderthal paintings and simply added to them with the vague animal drawings  or if they were a part of the original Neanderthal designs; the researchers have not yet dated them   he  said.
The discovery that they did not  in fact  need the help of modern humans puts Neanderthals and humans on a more level playing field   Pike  said  given that tens of thousands of years ago  modern humans weren’t all that sophisticated either. The end goal with this research  he said  is to understand how the brain became wired for symbolic expression — but that’s going to require a lot more cave discoveries.
“If we’re going to try to find out when we started thinking like humans  we’re going to have to go back further in time ”  Pike  said. “What we’re interested in is when the brain became modern  and that’s a really difficult thing to get at. You can see how big it was by looking at the size of the skull  but it’s really hard to know how it was wired inside. If the use of symbols and symbolic behavior can be used as a proxy for how the brain was wired  then we can understand how the brain evolved.”
The Neanderthals went extinct about 5 000 years after humans arrived in Europe. The suspected causes have ranged from climate change that affected available food to competition with modern humans. As research moves forward   Pike  said  it may be useful to keep in mind that perhaps humans and Neanderthals were not as different as we thought.
“There’s always been a sense that all this expression  this art  arrived with modern humans  and Neanderthals might have been copying them in the very late period of their existence ”  Pike  said. But wouldn’t it be interesting if it was in fact the other way around? Modern humans may have landed on the moon — but they started out in the same place as Neanderthals.”
"The discovery brings researchers one step closer to understanding how it is that humans developed art and language and religion — the types of symbolic and cultural expressions that have always been thought to elevate humans from other species  said archaeologist  [TGT] of Britain’s University of Southampton  who was part of the research team.
“It’s almost the definition of being human ”  [TGT]told The Washington Post. “It’s how we define ourselves as different from other animals and primates  having language and cultural expression. There’s been a lot of work trying to understand where in Homo sapiens’s lineage did we first become symbolic individuals?”
Perhaps   [TGT]said   [TGT]  started with Neanderthals.
Still  Stringer stressed that there is still not definite proof of Neanderthals’ ability to make figurative art — of animals and people — because the animals the researchers found on the paintings in Spain have uncertain origins.  [TGT]said  [TGT]  was not entirely clear whether humans may have stumbled upon the Neanderthal paintings and simply added to them with the vague animal drawings  or if they were a part of the original Neanderthal designs; the researchers have not yet dated them   he  said.
The discovery that they did not  in fact  need the help of modern humans puts Neanderthals and humans on a more level playing field   [TGT]said  given that tens of thousands of years ago  modern humans weren’t all that sophisticated either. The end goal with this research  he said  is to understand how the brain became wired for symbolic expression — but that’s going to require a lot more cave discoveries.
“If we’re going to try to find out when we started thinking like humans  we’re going to have to go back further in time ”  [TGT]said. “What we’re interested in is when the brain became modern  and that’s a really difficult thing to get at. You can see how big it was by looking at the size of the skull  but it’s really hard to know how it was wired inside. If the use of symbols and symbolic behavior can be used as a proxy for how the brain was wired  then we can understand how the brain evolved.”
The Neanderthals went extinct about 5 000 years after humans arrived in Europe. The suspected causes have ranged from climate change that affected available food to competition with modern humans. As research moves forward   [TGT] said  it may be useful to keep in mind that perhaps humans and Neanderthals were not as different as we thought.
“There’s always been a sense that all this expression  this art  arrived with modern humans  and Neanderthals might have been copying them in the very late period of their existence ”  [TGT] said. But wouldn’t it be interesting if it was in fact the other way around? Modern humans may have landed on the moon — but they started out in the same place as Neanderthals.”"