Did Neandertals Paint Early Cave Art? 126
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."
mdash (Score:2, Funny)
And a few researchers say that the study argues for the slow development of artistic skill over tens of thousands of years mdash; not a swift acquisition of talent, as some had argued.
It may now be considered proper to spell and pronounce Neandertal with a 't' not a 'th' sound, but 'mdash' is still normally written as '—'.
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Ellipsis that apostrophe s some editing comma slash dot period
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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
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slashdot can't display a proper ellipsis, just try using … in a comment.
Re:mdash (Score:4, Informative)
And yet they can.
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And yet they can.
Yet they can.
FTFY. Just because they can, doesn't mean they should. What does that spurious "And" add to the meaning of that sentence? Nothing.
Re:mdash (Score:4, Informative)
And yet, you're wrong.
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It's a nice echo of "And yet it moves" attributed to Galileo, albeit fictitiously.
Nothing wrong an "And" at the start of a sentence, or even a whole work, e.g. Blake's Jerusalem ("And did those feet ...")
P.S. Captcha: writable
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Nice reference to an awesome piece of music to sing. It gives me chills just remembering how it felt to belt it out.
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Now I get the feeling that linguistic prescriptivists are even more wrong than biblical literalists and climate denialists put together.
FTFY.
Would you tell a compiler:
there's irrelevant crap at the beginning of this statement but this's the important part: if( x > y ) { ...
No? Then why do it to human beings? If you feel the need to use "And" at the beginning of a sentence, perhaps you haven't actually finished the sentence prior to it. That's what it says to me.
Do you wish to communicate, or just make your writing look "pretty" in your eyes?
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It's obvious that the idea of connecting two thoughts is too complex for you.
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Would you tell a compiler:
there's irrelevant crap at the beginning of this statement but this's the important part: if( x > y ) { ...
Yes. I call it "indentation" ;-)
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And now I want to chime in that posting incorrect claims about English doesn't make some random retarded smartass slashdotter a "linguistic prescriptivist".
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"And" should never be used to start a sentence?
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That's pedantry of a kind up with which I refuse to put.
Re:mdash (Score:5, Funny)
It may now be considered proper to spell and pronounce Neandertal with a 't' not a 'th' sound, but 'mdash' is still normally written as 'â"'.
Us Neandertal autor is are offended by your racial oppression of our linguistic atred of the 8t letter of the alpabet.
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Us Neandertal autor is are offended by your racial oppression of our linguistic atred of the 8t letter of t h e alpabet.
Alphabet Humour Fail !!
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That's just a spelling error you insensitive clod! :)
Re:mdash (Score:5, Informative)
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:mdash (Score:5, Informative)
Re:mdash (Score:5, Informative)
Grammar critics and art critics: (Score:2)
http://www.cartoonstock.com/newscartoons/cartoonists/jdi/lowres/jdin551l.jpg [cartoonstock.com]
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Mdash may be the name of the artist.
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And a few researchers say that the study argues for the slow development of artistic skill over tens of thousands of years mdash; not a swift acquisition of talent, as some had argued.
It may now be considered proper to spell and pronounce Neandertal with a 't' not a 'th' sound, but 'mdash' is still normally written as '—'.
They may be able to paint but they can't spell for shit.
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Neandertal is and has always been the correct spelling. It's nothing new. It's from the German, from the place where they were first discovered, the Neander Valley, or Neander "Tal" ('Tal' means valley in German). However, in German it is common and appropriate to combine words to form compound nouns, as Fahrrad, (from 'fahrt', a trip, and 'rad', wheel) or Schadenfreude (from 'Schade', sadness, and 'Freude', joy). Hence, the words are combined to form the place-name of Neandertal. The spelling with the 'h' is anglicized, technically Neandertal is correct, inasmuch as it is the original name, from the original language.
Why not educate yourself before correcting other people's spelling, smart-ass...
Ouch. Fortunately my education is on my side on this one. The Germans can spell and pronounce the name of their valley however they want, but the scientific name of the Neanderthals is "Homo Neanderthalensis", and when using the name outside of the scientific community either way is acceptable, although the hard 't' sound and spelling has only entered popular usage relatively recently. You can look it up on wikipedia if you want - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal [wikipedia.org]. If it makes you feel better you can
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"Living language" is not an excuse to be sloppy and inaccurate. Some things don't matter, some do. Typos are OK though.
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"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."
--James D. Nicoll
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; it implies a novel (to me) usage of 'crib', 'house' or 'whore'. Or is this specifically an Americanism that didn't make it's way out of the place under Hayes Rules?
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Schadenfreude (from 'Schade', sadness, and 'Freude', joy).
Not accurate. "Schaden" just means "harm" or "damage". And in this context, a better translation for "Freude" would be "pleasure".
Neandertal is and has always been the correct spelling. [...] The spelling with the 'h' is anglicized, technically Neandertal is correct, inasmuch as it is the original name, from the original language.
Not correct. It used to be 'Neanderthal' in German before the spelling reform of 1901. This spelling has been kept in some places, e.g. for the local train station. The English speaking world has just kept the old spelling, which is consistent with the scientific name.
Difficult to say (Score:2)
Possibly somewhat impossible to determine, but it should precipitate further inquiry into potential points of cultural exchange between species.
Perhaps neanderthals are the key to making Linux the most popular desktop... now we'll never know.
Of course ... (Score:3, Funny)
There have been vandals as long as there have been things to vandalise ...
Neanderthals lived in social groups so there were Neanderthal kids being dragged around by Neanderthal parents and this was before the internet and even before TV ... you work it out - bored kids + pristine cave walls !
Re:Of course ... (Score:5, Informative)
Vandals didn't enter Spain until 409 AD.
This article is about art dated to roughly forty millennia before they arrived.
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Another fun fact: Women were the artists (Score:3)
Over hyped (Score:3, Interesting)
The artwork dates to when neanderthals were in Europe, but not before the earliest evidence of homo sapiens in Europe.
It seems unlikely that the art was done by neanderthals, and if it was it was probably done by neanderthals imitating homo sapiens. (there is a reason that "to ape' means to copy.
I make this assumption based on the fact that cave art seems to show up with other evince of homo sapiens, but there have been no finds of cave art that are dated earlier than any evidence of humans.
Also, the theory of complexity of art is obviously pulled out of said scientists arses . Scientists that claim that an drawing of a circle as art predates recognizable drawings of the physical world are obviously more recent need to take a look at the verifiable date of the Mona Lisa, and any single geometric shape at a MOMA and explain why their hypothosis that directly contradicts verifiable data about artwork should be viewed as anything other than B.S.
Re:Over hyped (Score:5, Interesting)
The artwork dates to when neanderthals were in Europe, but not before the earliest evidence of homo sapiens in Europe.
It seems unlikely that the art was done by neanderthals, and if it was it was probably done by neanderthals imitating homo sapiens. (there is a reason that "to ape' means to copy.
I make this assumption based on the fact that cave art seems to show up with other evince of homo sapiens, but there have been no finds of cave art that are dated earlier than any evidence of humans.
You come across as very prejudiced and biased - and also wrong.
TFA states that this happened at least 41,000 years ago, and the oldest human (Homo Sapiens Sapiens) remains found in Europe is no more than 36,000 years old.
Another issue is that you can't apply a dualistic "either/or" - humans of European heritage have from 1-4% Neanderthal DNA. While this isn't a significant portion, it does show that interbreeding was possible and happened, and there must have been fertile individuals who were 50% of each.
But based solely on the age, the evidence points more towards Neanderthals than modern man.
Re:Over hyped (Score:5, Informative)
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]
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What evidence? What I see in that article is speculation and begging the question by presuming that a set of infant teeth is from h. s. sapiens and then using that as evidence for h. s. sapiens were present at that time.
Wikipedia has this (I know better than to take Wikipedia as gospel, but they have some references too):
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If Neanderthals and humans could mate and have fertile offspring, then why aren't they considered the same species?
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If Neanderthals and humans could mate and have fertile offspring, then why aren't they considered the same species?
Because nobody other than high school biology teachers uses that definition of species since the discovery of ring species.
Re:Over hyped (Score:5, Informative)
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:Over hyped (Score:4)
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By many, they are considered the same species. That is why you will see some people refer to modern humans as Homo sapiens sapiens, and Neanderthals as Homo sapiens neanderthalensis.
When we can consider Chihuahuas, Old English Sheepdogs and Irish Wolfhounds the same species, I certainly don't see why we can't consider Neanderthals human too.
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we can consider Chihuahuas, Old English Sheepdogs and Irish Wolfhounds the same species
All dogs and wolves are, by some definitions at least, considered the same species because they can collaborate in producing a fertile descendant. Chihuahas can't mate with Great Danes, but the Chihuaha can mate with a smallish dog, which mates with a medium-sized dog, which mates with a largish dog, which mates with a Great Dane, and that's enough to make them the same species.
If we killed all the dogs in the world except the Chihuaha and the Great Dane, the survivors would be two separate species. In othe
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Not entirely true about the dogs.
There is an obvious awkward/physical problem with having a Chihuaha having Great Dane puppies but not the other way around. A Great Dane could have Chihuaha puppies without issue after fertilization.
Natural selection would have it sort out one way or the other in the wild.
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From the other end of the same (zoom) telescope, the term "Anatomically Modern Human" is used a lot, particularly in areas where the "modern/ Neanderthal" dichotomy is not established. As a descriptive term, it's much less loaded than implying species membership, breeding isolation and a whole host of other criteria. And if your AMH skeleton is later found to have (say) 40%
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dear moderators: if you cant detect blatant racist (Score:2)
idiocy and pseudoscience, then i have to wonder if the slashdot system itself has some kind of inherent internal flaw.
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It is "racism" to notice that at a certain period in history one race made achievements in civilization that another did not? But one thing is for sure, we can always count on psuedo-intellectuals like yourself raising the "racism" smokescreen in lieu of intellegent discussion of the topic.
Well, if neanderthals DID paint those cave walls.. (Score:4, Funny)
Probably not (Score:1)
Neanderthals were in Europe by themselves for hundreds of thousands of years without making caving paintings. We're to suppose that they happened to pick up the habit just when modern humans moved into the area. That would be a massive coincidence. It's possible, but unlikely.
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Um, it looks like they may have started making cave paintings about 5000 years before modern humans moved into the area.
I know that at a distance 5000 years may not seem like much, but in fact a lot can happen in 5000 years.
Re:Probably not (Score:5, Interesting)
There is also very little in common between the earliest cave art attributed to Homo Sapiens and any of the cave art attributed to Neanderthals - very different styles, very different formats, very different in nature all round.
The paintings in France also include proto-writing next to the paintings, but no such symbols exist here.
Most important of all, the paintings attributed to Neanderthals include fish that Neanderthals ate at the time and Homo Sapiens did not.
So if Neanderthals are present and Homo Sapiens are not, we've opportunity taken care of.
Neanderthals had been mucking around with ochre at the time, Homo Sapiens didn't utilize it for a long time after, so that's means.
The pictures show Neanderthal food not Homo Sapien food, which gives motive.
No proto-writing and no utilization of the 3D nature of the rock surface means no continuity with the French cave paintings, so Homo Sapiens are sans continuity.
I'd say that nails it.
Also, that isn't artwork (Score:2)
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These Neanderthal artifacts, though, obviously involve nothing more than picking up a spray can and spraying it around his hand.
And who made the spray can? Mr. Homo Sapiens? They didn't even have bronze yet - no way they're going to make a steel can.
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Re:Also, that isn't artwork (Score:4, Interesting)
The handprints, perhaps, but the pictures of fish were somewhat more stylized and were definitely not stencil-based. I'd consider those abstractions and therefore art at its most simplistic. Much more crucially, though, it's stuff with a totally different intent.
If you're saying the Neanderthal pictures were extremely simplistic and lacked any obvious "thought"* - they were depictions at a very mechanical level - then I'd totally agree. If you're saying the French pictures showed enormous thought and mindfulness - even in the kiddy training area (there was a section set aside to train kids on painting) - then again I'd totally agree. There was an incredible level of sentience involved.
If we go apples-to-apples, there were sections of the French caves that had hand paintings. But they showed awareness and no small amount of ingenuity. Several would have required platforms to be set up, for example. Not easy in such a confined space.
And, yes, if IQ is generalized as the ration of what a person can think/know vs what you'd expect of them, we can get a feel for their IQ. I'd consider proto-flipbook animation, haziness to depict motion, and relief to convey stereoscopic images to be well above the 48% above the average person of the time, and an IQ of 148 is all MENSA requires. So if you want to call the French painters geniuses I'd have to agree.
*Given that Neanderthals diverged from homo sapiens so far back, it is possible that their thought processes are too alien for modern humans to comprehend, that we're looking for the wrong signals, the wrong visual cues. It is possible. Unlikely, though, but possible. Doesn't really alter the conclusion, though, which is that it wasn't a Homo Sapien mindset. Whatever it was or wasn't, it wasn't that. This raises an intriguing side-question, though - how WOULD we recognize art from an alien mind?
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Where did you get the 5,000 year figure? The article itself cites clear evidence of human habitation in Europe 41,600 years ago, which is before the earliest painting's date of 40,800 years ago. There are sites even earlier than that. Plus, there is a fundamental problem in that preservation events are rare, so humans were no doubt in the area long before we'd ever find evidence of them.
Meanwhile, Neanderthals had been around in Europe for 300,000 years. Even if your number were right, for 98.3% of their ex
Re:Probably not (Score:5, Funny)
Ug sees bear advancing towards Og.
Ug pulls out a piece of ochre and starts scribbling frantically.
Og looks puzzled.
Bear eats Og.
Ug sighs and walks away.
Now we know why they're extinct.
or we haven't discovered them yet. (Score:2)
just pause for a moment and consider the possibilities.
Motivation (Score:2)
We’re not alone (Score:1)
Re:We’re not alone (Score:5, Insightful)
theres a bit of difference tween a chimp ploping paint strokes in a semi random fashion to make modern "art" and the cave paintings clearly depicting characters doing specific actions. When Congo starts drawing his family actively hunting a beast and roasting it over a fire then I will concede your argument.
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Arguing something isn't art isn't left to critics, it's left to idiots who don't understand what art is. If it means something to someone, it's art.
So the term 'art' is meaningless, then. Good to know.
"Art" is a term that is far too generic to have the meaning you want it to have, yes. You want to be able to objectively define something as being significant, but this is not possible. Not everyone agrees with you on what is beauty, on the importance of different subjects, or on what is crass. It is, by definition, subjective.
For example, If I've had a particularly emotional experience sometime in my life, certain visuals could be associated with the event. Years later, I might see a painting that shar
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not swift (Score:2)
well, IMO that makes since, trying to eat while not being eaten kind of trumps cave art in my book of priorities in the ages before cultivation. Of course that all depends on the definition of swift ... thats a bit open ended considering the time scales involved. IE a handful of generations, or a handful of centuries?
Stop asking questions in the title. Its anoying. (Score:1)
Either you have something to say or you don't. "Could it be?" articles instantly give the impression that your on the same ground as "Did aliens build the pyramids?" which will be followed (after an hour of time wasting) with "we may never know."
No. (Score:2)
Dating experts, eh? (Score:3)
Irrelevant (Score:5, Funny)
The cave paintings are long out of copyright, and as we all know, only works under copyright hold any value.
Yours,
The entertainment industry organizations.
Re:Irrelevant (Score:4, Funny)
obviously, we need to make copyright longer, to keep people from making changes to our heritage!
Re:Irrelevant (Score:4, Funny)
Windows 8 (Score:1)
For sure they did! Microsoft used a time machine to get a neanderthal for designing metro!
Finally NT=Neanderthal Technology becomes true!
The cave art is fake anyway (Score:1)
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Get some confirmation. (Score:2)
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As always with real-world samples, the bigger question is whether you've got an appropriate sample. In this case, some of the paintings have a partial overgrowth of calcium carbonate (which will pick up some uranium during deposition, then hopefully "close" as a system). This is the material that you sample, and it gives y
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Wouldn't be the first examples of art (Score:3)
Autistic Cavemen... (Score:1)
Don't know much about Art... (Score:2)
knowldege doesnt die (Score:1)
Re:No! (Score:5, Funny)
"Dating experts working in Spain"
I haven't figured out what dating experts know about neanderthals. Yeah, sure, some early "modern humans" may have dated some neanderthals. In fact, there have been a few reports that we all have neanderthal genes in our makeup. But, today's dating experts? What do they know about neanderthals? Maybe - just maybe - those dating experts know something about Spaniards, but forget the neanderthals.
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I haven't figured out what dating experts know about Neanderthals.
I think the question "How many Neanderthals have you successfully dated to this day?" should settle that.
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Rouge
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No, but they did form the Tea Party ;-)
Why do you malign Neanderthals thus?
I think the evidence points to them having very high political ideals - for one thing, they did not have lawyers.
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They also invented (or co-invented) music, were willing to explore the possibilities Europe had to offer, and ate grains with their meat.
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nonsense, crackers are manmade.
I've yet to see any crackers made with assburgers attached, yet.