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| Media commentators have been eager to paint Neanderthals as artists - but why? |
But were these paintings done by Neandertals or the modern humans who replaced them? From the headlines you would think it was the Neandertals.
Taken together with other recent publications, summarised in the image of Google search results below, the Spanish results suggest the habit of producing art in various forms went back to the earliest appearance of modern humans in Europe.
This is only about 5,000 or 10,000 years after people also reached Australia. Why then did the media grab the idea that the paintings might have been made by Neandertals, who were replaced by these artistic modern humans in Europe?
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| Google Search Results |
Recent improvements in radiocarbon dating have shown modern humans were in southern England more than 41,500 years ago, that people left flutes and figurines in Swabia more than 38,000 years ago, engravings in the Dordogne region about 36,500 years ago, and paintings around 35,000 years ago at Chauvet Cave, west of the Rhone valley.
Taken together there is now no doubt there were distinct types of art in Europe close to 40,000 years old, and generally not associated with Neandertals.
Yet the headlines on at least four continents relating to the new Spanish results asserted that Neandertals could have been responsible for the art.
The big split
Neandertals became distinct from modern humans about 350,000 years ago but died out within a few thousand years (at most) of the arrival of modern humans.
They produced very little (if anything) in the way of art, but modern humans in Europe went on to produce several different forms of art over most of the next 30,000 years. In Australia, art may have arrived with the first people and was certainly being produced by different Aboriginal groups into the 20th century.
The media coverage of the latest Spanish results is all the more surprising given it relies on a throwaway line at the end of the Science paper on the Spanish cave art dating: “it cannot be ruled out that the earliest paintings were symbolic expressions of the Neandertals”, though no evidence is produced.
Remains of the day
Neandertal remains were first discovered in 1829, 30 years before the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, but it was not until five years later that anyone suggested they were a different species from ourselves. The status of Neandertals has been the subject of varying interpretations, like the more recently discovered Homo floresiensis.
Interpretations of fossils and their relationships to us are not easy and, where Neandertals are concerned, they depend more than we would like to admit on attitudes that are often not expressed.
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| First reconstruction of Neanderthal Man, 1888 Wikimedia |
But as is to be expected, the story is not quite as neat. The earliest paint has been found in South Africa dated to 100,000 years ago, far away from Neandertals and long before modern humans in Europe.
Recent discoveries tend to suggest more overlap between the species in stone and bone tools, art and ornaments. But against this, there have been very few dated fossils and early attempts to provide dates were distorted by the fact that the supposed transition between Neandertals and modern humans occurred at about the period when radiocarbon dating ceases to be useful.
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| Neanderthals and Humans KRT/AAP |
Close scrutiny sometimes shows, as here, that evidence showing modern behaviour among Neandertals is thin, so why did one journalist – according to a colleague of mine who was interviewed about the Spanish cave art – say he “really, really wanted" to write a story that Neandertals created the art? Why did so many news outlets happily rush to this same, somewhat flawed, conclusion?
The reasons lie partly in our ambivalent relations with creatures that are like us but not quite the same. Perhaps the most obvious are dogs, which are like us because they attend assiduously to our blandishments, or bears which can have a similar body plan and proportion, yet are dangerous, so we infantilise them as teddy bears.
And then there are imaginary creatures such as yetis, hobbits, trolls, and gods, invented to remind us where the boundaries of humanity lie.
Perhaps the media’s fascination arises from the fact archaeologists and biological anthropologists are testing which side of that boundary Neandertals lie.
About the Author
Iain completed his Ph.D at Cambridge based on Spanish Palaeolithic fauna and economy, and has since carried out research and publication on the Spanish Palaeolithic and on Australian prehistory. He has published extensively on the archaeology of language origins. He conducts research on all aspects of archaeology including painted caves in Northwestern Queensland and consultancy in Queensland, N.S.W. and Western Australia. His current research interests include rock art and the narrative of Australian archaeology.
Iain Davidson has received funding from the ARC, AIATSIS, and AINSE. He has conducted archaeological research on Spanish cave art. He is affiliated with the University of New England, Flinders University, University of Queensland and Harvard University.
This article was originally published at The Conversation.
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