Cave drawings in Spain re-dated to Neanderthal age – the oldest cave art in the world!

One of over 600 images covering the walls and ceilings in the Grotte de Lascaux (Lascaux Caves), nr. Montignac, Dordogne, France: a fine example of early cave art

Studies of cave art and shell artifacts found in Spain has recently dated the works to c. 115,000 BC, long before the the arrival of Homo sapiens in Europe some 60,000 years later. So, who produced the works? There can only be one answer: Neanderthal man.

The discovery challenges scientific theory that Neanderthals – our ape-like sister species which became extinct some 40,000 years ago, leaving Homo sapiens as the ancestors of modern man – lacked the skills of early man and evidences that they were capable of producing early art, developed symbolic thought and may even have spoken a complex language. The discovery is reported in New Scientist, February 2018

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24th February 2018/by Barbara