U-Th dating of carbonate crusts reveals Neandertal origin of Iberian cave art

Abstract

The extent and nature of symbolic behavior among Neandertals are obscure. Although evidence for Neandertal body ornamentation has been proposed, all cave painting has been attributed to modern humans. Here we present dating results for three sites in Spain that show that cave art emerged in Iberia substantially earlier than previously thought. Uranium-thorium (U-Th) dates on carbonate crusts overlying paintings provide minimum ages for a red linear motif in La Pasiega (Cantabria), a hand stencil in Maltravieso (Extremadura), and red-painted speleothems in Ardales (Andalucía). Collectively, these results show that cave art in Iberia is older than 64.8 thousand years (ka). This cave art is the earliest dated so far and predates, by at least 20 ka, the arrival of modern humans in Europe, which implies Neandertal authorship.

Aspects of human physical and behavioural evolution during the last 1 million years

“…() have reported a Neanderthal geometric engraving from Gorham's Cave (Gibraltar) dated to > 39 ka. Recently, Hoffmann et al () may have pushed back the origins of cave art in Iberia by another ~20 ka, long before the presence of H. sapiens in Europe. If accepted, this new dating evidence would certainly suggest that Neanderthals were capable of producing painted cave art, and we may now need to re‐evaluate other cave art sites in terms of their authorship.…”

“…If accepted, this new dating evidence would certainly suggest that Neanderthals were capable of producing painted cave art, and we may now need to re‐evaluate other cave art sites in terms of their authorship. However, this is an ongoing debated topic with responses to the Hoffmann et al () paper coming from Aubert et al . () and Slimak et al .…”

Molecular archaeology of the human brain

“…This notwithstanding, our workflow unraveled neurogenetic selection for complex neurocognitive traits in archaic hominin brains, like social interaction and communication, hand motor control, working memory for faces along with symbolic thought and abstract thinking (33). These findings delineate a critical neurogenetic framework for archaic cognitive abilities inferred from ancient art (45,46). Strikingly, our computational neuro-archaeological data provide initial neurogenetic evidence that all ancient hominin and AMH lineages evolved networks for language.…”

Bone tools, ornaments and other unusual objects during the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition in Italy

“…The probable use of naturally pierced bivalves as ornaments and the use of pigments are documented in two Mousterian sites in Spain, Cueva Antón and Cueva de los Aviones (Zilhão et al, 2010) recently re-dated to120-115 ka (Hoffmann et al, 2018a). Furthermore, some cave paintings in Spain (La Pasiega, Maltravieso, Ardales) have been re-dated to 60 (Hoffmann et al, 2018b) or to 47 ka (Slimak et al, 2018) allowing their possibly assignment to Neandertals like the deeply engraved lines in a hash-marked pattern on the bedrock of Gorham's Cave at Gibraltar (Rodríguez-Vidal et al, 2014). Bones showing notches and incisions are also documented in Europe, as, for example, a schematically engraved bone found in the Final Mousterian layer of Bacho Kiro (Bulgaria) (Kozlowsky, 1982), a raven bone with notches retrieved in the Micoquian layer of Zaskalnaya VI (Crimea) (Tsvelykh et al, 2014;Majkić et al, 2017) and a hyena femur with a set of incisions and a cave bear cervical vertebra showing subparellel marks respectively recovered in the Mousterian sites of Les Pradelles (France) (d' Errico et al, 2018) and Pešturina Cave (Serbia) (Majkić et al, 2018b).…”