Did Neandertals Paint Early Cave Art?

sciencehabit writes "Dating experts working in Spain, using a technique relatively new to archaeology, have pushed dates for the earliest cave art back some 4000 years to at least 41,000 years ago, raising the possibility that the artists were Neandertals rather than modern humans. And a few researchers say that the study argues for the slow development of artistic skill over tens of thousands of years — not a swift acquisition of talent, as some had argued."

Re:mdash

[JustOK]

And yet they can.

Re:mdash

[Anonymous Coward]

Neandertal is a valley close to Düsseldorf, Germany. In 1901, an orthographic reform changed the name from Neanderthal to Neandertal ("Tal" is German for "valley"). The Neanderthal man however had been discovered long before and keeps his original name with the "th".

Re:Of course ...

[ChunderDownunder]

Vandals didn't enter Spain until 409 AD.

This article is about art dated to roughly forty millennia before they arrived.

Re:Over hyped

[lanswitch]

The oldest evidence of modern humans in Europe is over 43.000, not 36.000 years old. There is no evidence that the Neandertal was responsible for the Aurigniac, but a lot of evidence that connects the Aurigniac with modern humans.

http://dienekes.blogspot.nl/2012/05/43000-year-old-aurignacian-in-swabian.html [blogspot.nl]

Re:mdash

[zephvark]

It may be appropriate to note that Germans typically don't pronounce "th" as Americans do. It's like "we" versus "whee", the "h" part is an aspiration mark. A common spelling error, for English-speaking Germans, is to put a "th" in where a "t" sound belongs. Neanderthal has always been pronounced Neandertal, they just changed the spelling.

Re:mdash

[schroedingers_hat]

TWENTY DASH SEVEN DASH CHARACTERS OUGHT TO BE ENOUGH FOR ANYONE STOP

Now to avoid the lameness filter comma I apostrophe m going to have to say something productive mdash or at least make a more extended version of the parent apostrophe s joke stop carriage return Nope nothing productive comes to mind stop

Re:mdash

[JustOK]

And yet, you're wrong.

Re:Over hyped

[ColdWetDog]

If Neanderthals and humans could mate and have fertile offspring, then why aren't they considered the same species?

Because 'species' is a loaded word.

The species problem [wikipedia.org]

tl;dr - Complicated natural phenomena are hard to reduce to a single word.

Re:mdash

[Mindcontrolled]

Ehem, sorry, as a native German speaker I feel the need to add that the h in "th" is not an aspiration marker. Phonetically, there is no difference between"t" and "th" in German. It's just a relic of orthography. Both are pronounced as unvoiced alveolar plosive /t/.