Rethinking Neanderthals: Neanderthals as Original European Cave Artists?

Figure 1: Cave Art Believed to Have Been Created by Neanderthals, with additional pieces by humans

 

Neanderthals are typically considered the failed hominid ancestor who could not survive along early Homo sapiens.  Popularly identified as big, dumb, and clumsy the term Neanderthal is considered an insult, but the reality is that Neanderthals were anything but.  Subsequent discoveries have demonstrated that Neanderthals were avid artisans who created jewelry, cared for their ill, buried their dead with potentially elaborate mortuary rituals, and even successfully bred with anatomically modern Homo sapiens.  A study that came out earlier this year has caused a reexamination of the species by making a fairly lofty claim: that Neanderthals are the artists of the earliest cave paintings in Europe.  This blog post will discuss the evidence that supports this claim, as well as the implications these results have on our understanding of both Neanderthals and what it means to be human.

Cave paintings in Europe have fascinated scholars for decades.  When originally discovered in the 1800s they were initially written off as a hoax, but as more and more paintings were discovered the nay-sayers could no longer successfully argue against their authenticity.  They have been widely studied in regards to the subject matter and potential meaning.  The cave paintings depict abstract images, such as lines and geometric shapes (Figure 1); hand prints; human figures; and animals that were presumably eaten by the artists themselves.  Many of the cave paintings exist in the dark, uninhabited recesses of the cave, leading scholars to believe that these are the earliest symbolic artistic depictions created by man. 

Well, perhaps not man anymore.  In early 2018 a group of scholars published a pair of ground breaking studies that were the first to chronical successful dating of the cave images and provide inferences on who created them: Neanderthals.  Cave paintings were created with mineral based pigments, such as with red ochre and magnesium.  Because of their inorganic composition the pigments could not be dated using the popular radiocarbon dating technique, which requires organic material to date.  A new method, uranium-thorium dating, is a trace element method that utilizes the calcite deposits formed around the cave paintings and directly from the pigments.  This method is more accurate, as well as does not damage the integrity of the paintings (Figure 2).  A total of three caves throughout Spain were dated, and each produced dates that demonstrated they were created at least 20,000 years before the European arrival of anatomically modern Homo sapiens.  The hominid species that were definitively present, however, were the Neanderthals, which led the investigators to conclude that it was they who created the cave paintings.

Figure 2: Dirk Hoffman and Alistair Pike using the new method

This notion of Neanderthals creating the cave paintings is not necessarily far-fetched.  Neanderthals produced several pieces of art, including necklaces and musical instruments.  This means that they could have created the cave paintings, which is a revolutionary idea as it reopens the debate about whether or not Neanderthals were human and what exactly it means to be human.  This debate has been ongoing for quite some time, with those who feel that Neanderthals are humans promoting the notion of changing their taxonomic classification to Homo sapiens neanderthalensis.  Also, if Neanderthals did make the cave paintings then it means that they were far more creative and symbolic thinkers, which was not seriously considered previously.  There are, however, some scholars who remain skeptical of this conclusion that Neanderthals were the cave painting artists.  They argue that the dates of the cave paintings do not directly identify any specific artists, and that it is premature to call Neanderthals or humans the original artists.  They instead call for more studies into the matter to determine who specifically created these pieces.         

Regardless of the new debate that this study opens up it is clear that this study has provides us additional insights into cave paintings.  We now have a clearer idea of when these cave paintings were created, although we may not be any closer to who made them.  It is also causing a reanalysis of who Neanderthals were, as well as what it means to be human.  All good science is not about answering questions but coming up with new and better ones, and this study definitely does that.  Here’s to more study and results in the near future.

References

Greshko, M. (2018, February 22). World's Oldest Cave Art Found—And Neanderthals Made It. National Geographic.

Jones, J. (2018, February 23). So Neanderthals made abstract art? This astounding discovery humbles every human. The Guardian.

Joyce, C. (2018, February 22). Cave Art May Have Been Handiwork Of Neanderthals. NPR.

Marris, E. (2018, February 22). Neanderthal artists made oldest-known cave paintings. Nature.

Standish, C., & Pike, A. (2018, May 22). It’s Official: Neanderthals Created Art. Retrieved from Sapiens: https://www.sapiens.org/archaeology/neanderthal-art-discovery/