Neanderthal Art, Engravings and Jewelry | Early European History And Religion

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NEANDERTHAL ART

20120205-Vulva images in La Ferrassie.jpg
Vulva images in La Ferrassie cave
At the time that Neanderthals disappeared, modern humans were creating elaborate cave paintings and sophisticated bone ornaments. It had long been long thought that the reason equivalent Neanderthal works had not been found was because Neanderthals were not as advanced as modern humans. In recent years examples of cave art in Europe have been found that appear to pre-date modern humans and thus must have been created by Neanderthals who occupied Europe before modern humans arrived.

Examples of Neanderthal art that have been found include perforated and grooved animal teeth, and ivory rings. A carved and polished ivory tooth from a baby mammoth, and elk and wolf teeth with holes that may have been worn as pendants were found in a French cave near Arcy-sur-Cure. It seems likely that Neanderthals may have made art such a carved wood or created rituals dance or produced some other kind of art that has are not been preserved. In 2021, scholars writing for the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, described an engraved giant deer phalanx, at least 51,000-year-old, at the former cave entrance of Germany's Einhornhöhle. They argued the engraved bone "demonstrates that conceptual imagination, as a prerequisite to compose individual lines into a coherent design," existed in Neanderthals.

Neanderthals carved bone and archaeologists think Neanderthals also likely carved wood, which has not survived. The 51,000 year old engraved deer bone described above was made long before Homo sapiens arrived in the region. It's been hailed as one of the earliest symbolic carvings ever found, although what it symbolizes isn't known. Recent discoveries suggest that Neanderthals also created cave art. The carvings on a cave wall in France were made up to 75,000 years ago — many thousands of years before Homo sapiens arrived in Europe. And there is the 130,000 year old necklace described below.[Source: Tom Metcalfe, Live Science, February 3, 2024]

The presence of lumps of pigment found at some Neanderthal sites has led some scientists to speculate they practiced decorative body art. Scientists found dozens of pieces of sharpened manganese dioxide at a French Neanderthal site called Pech de l’aAze, which they speculate could have been used to as black crayons to color animal skins or produce body art. In 2002 a Neanderthal artist's palette of ochre was discovered in a Romanian cave. A Neanderthal site in Spain revealed pigment-stained mollusk shells that might have been worn as jewelry. Erik Trinkaus, a professor of physical anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis, said: "We now have a series of examples of different kinds of pigment use in archaeological contexts that can only be associated with Neanderthals." [Source: Nikhil Swaminathan, Archaeology magazine, Volume 65 Number 5, September/October 2012]

Websites and Resources on Prehistoric Art: Chauvet Cave Paintings archeologie.culture.fr/chauvet ; Cave of Lascaux archeologie.culture.fr/lascaux/en; Trust for African Rock Art (TARA) africanrockart.org; Bradshaw Foundation bradshawfoundation.com; Websites on Neanderthals: Neandertals on Trial, from PBS pbs.org/wgbh/nova; The Neanderthal Museum neanderthal.de/en/ ; Hominins and Human Origins: Smithsonian Human Origins Program humanorigins.si.edu ; Institute of Human Origins iho.asu.edu ; Becoming Human University of Arizona site becominghuman.org ; Hall of Human Origins American Museum of Natural History amnh.org/exhibitions ; The Bradshaw Foundation bradshawfoundation.com ; Britannica Human Evolution britannica.com ; Human Evolution handprint.com ; University of California Museum of Anthropology ucmp.berkeley.edu; John Hawks' Anthropology Weblog johnhawks.net/ ; New Scientist: Human Evolution newscientist.com/article-topic/human-evolution

Neanderthal Art Show They Were More Than Dim-Witted Brutes

World's oldest flute, 60,000 years old, made by Neanderthals, SEE WORLD'S OLDEST MUSIC: FLUTES, NEANDERTHALS. LITHOSPHONES: europe.factsanddetails.com

Chip Walter wrote in National Geographic: “Very little evidence remains that they engaged in symbolic behavior. But the traditional view of Neanderthals as brutish beings incapable of such behavior has been slowly chipped away. Having never reached the population densities that may have triggered the appearance of symbolism in Africa, Neanderthals may never have had much need for it, or revealed it in ways we don’t yet understand. [Source: Chip Walter, National Geographic, January 2015 ]

“For decades the debate over the Neanderthals’ ability to rise to the standards of their successors centered on a site in France called Grotte du Renne, where artifacts normally associated with Upper Paleolithic modern humans—bone tools, distinctive stone blades, and pierced and grooved animal teeth probably worn as pendants—were found along with Neanderthal remains. Some researchers reasoned that although the Neanderthals may have been responsible for this tool tradition (known as the Châtelperronian), they were still a species capable only of emulating the fancy craftsmanship of their new modern human neighbors, not inventing it on their own.

“The more we learn about Neanderthals, including their ability to interbreed with our direct ancestors, the more the “copycat” explanation for the Châtelperronian sounds like special pleading. The record for Neanderthal symbolic behavior elsewhere may be faint, but it is discernible. Some scholars argue that Neanderthal skeletons found in France and Iraq were deliberately buried. Cut marks recently found on bird-wing bones hint that Neanderthals used feathers for ornaments up to 50,000 years ago, and a crisscross pattern engraved at least 39,000 years ago in the rock of a Neanderthal cave in Gibraltar suggests they could think abstractly. And a single red disk painted on a wall in El Castillo Cave in Spain was recently dated to about 41,000 years ago, tantalizingly close to a time when only Neanderthals are known to have been in western Europe. Perhaps they, not us, were the first cave artists.”

65,000-Year-Old Neanderthal Art Works

Red ochre pigment discovered on stalagmites in the Caves of Ardales, near Malaga in southern Spain, were created by Neanderthals about 65,000 years ago, making them possibly the first art works on earth, according to the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) journal. According to Reuters: Modern humans were not inhabiting Europe at the time the cave images were made. Pigments were made in the caves at different times up to 15,000 and 20,000 years apart, the study found, and dispel an earlier suggestion that they were the result of a natural oxide flow rather than being man-made. [Source: Jon Nazca and Mariano Valladolid, Reuters, August 8, 2021]

“Joao Zilhao, one of the authors of the PNAS study, said dating techniques showed that ochre had been spat by Neanderthals onto the stalagmites, possibly as part of a ritual. "The importance is that it changes our attitude towards Neanderthals. They were closer to humans. Recent research has shown they liked objects, they mated with humans and now we can show that they painted caves like us," he said. Wall paintings made by prehistoric modern humans, such as those found in the Chauvet-Pont d’Arc cave of France, are more than 30,000 years old.

Images in La Pasiega Cave

The four caves in Spain with Neanderthal art are: 1) La Pasiega: with a red ladder shape, at least 64,800 years old; 2) Ardales: with painted rock ‘curtains’, at least 65,500 years old; 3) Maltravieso: with hand stencils, at least 66,700 years old; 4) Aviones: with painted seashells dated to 115,000 years ago. [Source: Ian Sample, The Guardian, February 22, 2018 |=| ]

Ian Sample wrote in The Guardian: “At La Pasiega cave near Bilbao in the north, a striking ladder-like painting has been dated to more than 64,800 years old. Faint paintings of animals sit between the “rungs”, but these may have been added when Homo sapiens found the caves millennia later.

“In Maltravieso cave in western Spain, a hand shape – thought to have been created by spraying paint from the mouth over a hand pressed to the cave wall – was found to be at least 66,700 years old. At the Ardales cave near Malaga, stalagmites and stalactites that form curtain-like patterns on the walls appear to have been painted red, and have been dated to 65,500 years ago. What the creators sought to express with their efforts is anyone’s guess. “We have no idea what any of it means,” said Dirk Hoffmann at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig. |=|

57,000-Year-Old Neanderthal Engravings and Symbols

In a study published in June 2023 in PLOS One, Jean-Claude Marquet of France's University of Tours and his colleagues asserted that Neanderthals used complex combinations of lines, dots and swirls in soft rock to create detailed images at the cave of La Roche-Cotard in Indre et Loire, France around 57,000 years ago. Matthew Rozsa wrote in Salon: Although some experts speculated that the symbols could have been made accidentally, by animals or by humans after the cave's excavation in 1912, Marquet and his team conducted experiments to determine whether they were made with actual artistic intention. To demonstrate this, they created 3D models of the caves using a technology known as photogrammetry, attempted to recreate symbols in similar parts of the caves using instruments available to Neanderthals, and ran through every conceivable scenario that could have led to those markings appearing in those caves. [Source: Matthew Rozsa, Salon, June 27, 2023]

Their conclusion? At least eight panels in the caves contain markings with intentional patterns and shapes, and were clearly created by human or human-like hands. Given the careful and precise nature of how they were created, they could not have been put there for some utilitarian purpose, such as scooping out large quantities of rock. Examples of engravings discovered in the Roche-Cotard cave include: 1) the "circular panel" (ogive-shaped tracings) and 2) the "wavy panel" (two contiguous tracings forming sinuous lines).

This means that those eight panels were "a seemingly organized set on the longest and most regular wall away from the cave entrance" and a "deliberate composition, and is the result of a thought process giving rise to conscious design and intent." Additionally, they found that some of the stone tools in the cave were Mousterian, a Middle Paleolithic culture that is known for its skillfully crafted flake tools. Although the researchers could not directly date the engravings (or finger flutings, as "engraving" here means rock manually removed by fingers), they used optically stimulated luminescence dating to determine that the minerals in the sediment were at least 57,000 years ago before the cave was sealed off, give or take 3,000 years.

“Although the finger tracings at La Roche-Cotard are clearly intentional, it is not possible for us to establish if they represent symbolic thinking,” the authors wrote in the study. “Nevertheless, our understanding of the relationship between Neanderthals and the symbolic and even aesthetic realms has undergone a significant transformation over the past two decades and the traces preserved in the cave of La Roche-Cotard make a new and very important contribution to our knowledge of Neanderthal behaviour.” [Source: Moira Ritter, Miami Herald, June 23, 2023]

39,000-Year-Old Neanderthal Hashtag in Gorham’s Cave

hashtag engraving

Archaeologists working in Gorham’s Cave in Gibraltar announced in 2014 they found an engraving that they suggested was a work of art or an image of symbolic meaning. Jon Mooallemjan wrote in the New York Times magazine: “The excavation had worked through” a “narrowed rear chamber of the cave years earlier and discovered, at the end of the 2012 season, an engraving on the floor: a crosshatched pattern of 13 grooves in the bedrock. A tide of specialists flowed into Gorham’s. They determined that the engraving was made at least 39,000 years ago and ruled out its having been created inadvertently — left over after skinning an animal, say. In controlled experiments, it took between 188 and 317 strokes with a flint tool to create the entire figure. “What we’ve always said,” Finlayson explained, “is it’s intentional and it’s not functional. You can call that art, if you like.” ||*||

Sci-News.com reported: “An unnatural-looking series of lines carved into the bedrock of the cave was discovered by a team of archaeologists led by Prof Clive Finlayson of the Gibraltar Museum in July 2012. According to a new analysis carried out by the team and reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the abstract engraving covers an area of 15 by 20 centimeters and consists of eight deep lines forming an incomplete criss-cross pattern, obliquely intersected by two groups of short, thin lines. [Source: Sci-News.com, Sep 24, 2014]

“Finlayson and his colleagues ruled out the possibility that the engraving was from cutting meat or animal skins. “The engraved pattern differs strikingly from deep alteration cracks and other networks of natural fissures present on the exposed surfaces of the fine-grained lime-dolostone of the cave,” they said. “Experimental replication shows that the most of the lines were made by repeatedly and carefully passing a pointed lithic tool into the grooves, excluding the possibility of an unintentional or utilitarian origin.” A layer of sediment that once covered the engraving contained Mousterian artifacts. This means that it must be at least 39,000 years old. “This engraving represents a deliberate design conceived to be seen by its Neanderthal maker and, considering its size and location, by others in the cave as well,” the scientists concluded.

Neanderthal Jewelry

Perforated shells were found in Spain's Cueva de los Aviones sea cave estimated to be 115,000 and 120,000 years ago are regarded as one of the oldest examples of jewelry. Researchers believe these served as body ornamentation for Neanderthals. In 2013 researchers, in the journal PLOS One, said hey found a fragment of a fossil marine shell in northern Italy's Fumane Cave covered in a red pigment and determined that "the object was modified and suspended by a 'thread' for visual display as a pendant." A 2010 study in the journal PNAS similarly found evidence of shells and shell fragments being used as ornamentation. . [Source: Matthew Rozsa, Salon, June 27, 2023]

Neanderthals in Europe appear to have worn pigment-stained seashells as necklaces 50,000 years ago according to a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Jennifer Viegas wrote in Discovery News: “The colorful mollusk shells, which date to 50,000 years ago, were recently found in Murcia Province, Spain. Since the shells were painted 10,000 years before modern humans are believed to have settled in Europe, this leaves little doubt that Neanderthals made the still eye-catching pieces. [Source: Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News, January 8, 2010 ^|^]

“Humans in Africa at the time created comparable objects, so lead author Joao Zilhao and his team believe both groups of hominids were on equal intellectual footing. Neanderthal "intelligence was no different from ours," Zilhao, a professor of paleolithic archaeology at the University of Bristol, told Discovery News. "Their societies had the same kind of band level organization documented among contemporary hunter-gatherers and inferred from prehistoric ones," he added. ^|^

“Although most of the stained shells were perforated, the researchers think the holes occurred naturally, and that Neanderthals preferentially gathered the necklace-ready objects on nearby beaches. A paint cup and ground up coloring agents were also found near the stained shells. One particularly well-preserved shell had a natural red coloration on one side while its reverse was painted with an orange pigment made out of the minerals goethite and hematite.

“Such "artwork" indicates Neanderthals possessed symbolic thinking, a skill most often attributed to our species. Zilhao explains that "age, sex, family, clan affiliation, status" and more can all be communicated by things like jewelry and tattoos, which Neanderthals are also believed to have sported. Was it just a coincidence that humans in Africa were also making similar body ornaments during the Middle Paleolithic? Zilhao and his team think not, and intriguingly propose that cultural exchange and interbreeding occurred between the two groups. "Neanderthals (and) early humans in Europe, Africa and Asia never ceased to be connected by networks of genetic and cultural exchange," Zilhao said. "Innovations, therefore, would have traveled across such networks." ^|^

Discovery of Early Neanderthal Jewelry

jewelry from Kaprina, Croatia

In the 1990s,delicately carved bones, ivory rings, and pierced teeth were found in a cave in central France. Franz Lidz wrote in Smithsonian magazine: moderns. . The research team, led by Jean-Jacques Hublin, proposed that the remains were of Neanderthals and that these objects used for personal ornamentation reflected the acculturation of the Neanderthals by modern humans. The Upper Paleolithic tools and pendants discovered with the Neanderthal oddments had been found deeper at the site than a deposit with the earliest signs of modern humans. Elsewhere in France, the same types of tools and ornaments were likewise found to predate the earliest evidence for sapiens. Zilhão believes this pattern implied that the Neanderthal layer had formed before moderns had even reached France. Nonetheless, Hublin’s team argued that the bling was created by Neanderthals who must have come into contact with sapiens and were influenced by or traded with them. [Source: Franz Lidz, Smithsonian magazine, May 2019]

“That infuriated Zilhão. “Views of the Neanderthals as somehow cognitively handicapped were inconsistent with the empirical evidence,” he says. Zilhão conferred with Francesco d’Errico, a prehistory researcher at the University of Bordeaux. “It seemed obvious to us that Neanderthals had created these things and that therefore archaeologists should revise their thinking and their current models.” Zilhão and d’Errico met at the Sorbonne in Paris to see the material for themselves. To the surprise of neither, the jewelry didn’t look like knockoffs of what Europe’s earliest modern humans had made, using different kinds of animal teeth and different techniques to work them. “After just a day’s look at the evidence, we realized that neither ‘scavenger’ nor ‘imitation’ worked,” Zilhão says. “You cannot imitate something that does not exist.”

In 2010, Zilhão reported that he had found solid signs that Neanderthals were using mollusk shells in a decorative and symbolic way. Some of the shells found in a Spanish cave were stained with pigment; some were perforated, as if to accommodate a string. Subsequent dating showed them to be 115,000 years old, which ruled out modern humans.

130,000-Year-Old Neanderthal Eagle Jewelry

Neanderthals also appear to have made jewelry from white-tailed eagles. Archaeology magazine reported: More than 100 years ago, eight eagle talons were excavated from a famous Neanderthal site called Krapina, and subsequently left in a drawer at the Croatian Natural History Museum in Zagreb. Davorka Radovčic took over as curator there in 2015, and she discovered the talons while reexamining the museum’s collections. She noticed several deep cut marks and evidence that the talons had been strung together as a necklace. The talons have been dated to about 130,000 years ago, predating the arrival of Homo sapiens in the area by about 50,000 years. The talon necklace is now thought to be the earliest known symbolic Neanderthal artifact. [Source: Zach Zorich, Archaeology magazine, July-August 2015]

Researchers compiled data on bird bones found at 154 Neanderthal sites dating to as early as 130,000 years ago. The results show that, before they made contact with Homo sapiens, Neanderthals across Eurasia were hunting golden eagles and white-tailed eagles and using parts of their carcasses, mainly the talons, as jewelry or other kinds of symbolic artifacts. The findings run counter to the widely accepted idea that Neanderthals were big-game hunters who couldn’t adapt to hunting smaller, faster prey, such as eagles, when bigger, slower species, such as elk and bison, were dying out. They also suggest that, independent of modern humans, Neanderthals were developing symbolic thinking alongside new techniques for exploiting a wider variety of resources, including birds. According to Stewart Finlayson, director of natural history at the Gibraltar National Museum, the findings show just how sophisticated Neanderthals were. [Source: Zach Zorich, Archaeology magazine, July-August 2019]

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: National Geographic, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, Nature, Scientific American. Live Science, Discover magazine, Discovery News, Ancient Foods ancientfoods.wordpress.com ; Times of London, Natural History magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, BBC, The Guardian, Reuters, AP, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, “World Religions” edited by Geoffrey Parrinder (Facts on File Publications, New York); “History of Warfare” by John Keegan (Vintage Books); “History of Art” by H.W. Janson (Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.), Compton’s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.

Last updated April 2024