Did Humans Make These Ancient Cave Paintings? | National Geographic

We've come to Asturias to sample small calcite deposits on top of cave art. And we can date when these formed so we can get an age for when the paintings were done. Already in Spain we have dated art that is 15,000 years older than previously thought. But it's also the oldest art that we have in Europe, dating to at least 41,000. And what's interesting about that date is that we can't tell at the moment whether in fact it means it was painted by Neanderthals or whether it was painted by the earliest modern humans to arrive in Europe. Modern humans evolved around 200,000 years ago in Africa. But we don't find them using things that express their symbolic thoughts until maybe 100,000 years ago. So the earliest paintings that we have are actually found here in Europe. And there's a really interesting question as to why it was in Europe that painting started rather than in Africa when modern humans had been around for a very long time. And there are several reasons why this might be. One is that Europe was populated by Neanderthals at the point at which modern humans arrived. And they may have had to reorganise themselves into different social structures in order to survive, in order to compete for resources and food. And therefore they would need means of maintaining social cohesion. And that could be through new religious practices that required the painting of caves, for example. We're also interested in whether or not human symbolic behaviour coincides, for example, with language. Or whether human symbolic behaviour in fact dates right back to the point at which we start looking like humans, in which our skeletons look like they do today. And then we're also interested in whether or not Neanderthals themselves could be producing art. And the dating of this will tell us whether or not they are made by modern humans or made by Neanderthals. It is big news, but it's big news I think because people have dismissed Neanderthals as symbolic individuals. But elsewhere in Spain we find evidence for Neanderthal use of pigment, perhaps as body adornment, make-up if you like. So it wouldn't be too surprising to find out that they also painted caves.