The first European artists?

Prehistorians have unequivocally confirmed that Neanderthals, these extinct "cousins" of modern man, had indeed painted the stalagmite of a Spanish cave more than 60,000 years ago, according to a study published on Monday.

The affair agitated the small community of prehistorians since the publication of a study in 2018 attributing to Neanderthals the application of a “paint” based on red ocher on the columns of a monumental stalagmite, in the cave of Ardales, in southern Spain.

But the dating, at least 64,800 years old, a time when modern humans did not inhabit the continent, had been carried out on fragments of stalagmite.

Neanderthal painted well in this Spanish cave 60,000 years ago https://t.co/AJJDIFbywW

- The HuffPost (@LeHuffPost) August 3, 2021

"These deposits are not natural"

"And a scientific article said that these pigments were perhaps a natural thing", a flow of iron oxide, recalls the prehistorian Francesco d'Errico. The study he co-authored in the journal of the American Academy of Sciences (PNAS) “shows that these deposits are not natural, that they are indeed ocher-based pigments very probably brought into the cave ”, continues this CNRS researcher at the University of Bordeaux.

Better still, the analysis of these pigments, a first, showed that they were not all identical, and that their diversity corresponded to the different dates of the stalagmite fragments initially studied.

This “supports the hypothesis that the Neanderthals came on several occasions, over several thousand years, to mark the cave with pigments”, according to Professor d'Errico.

And this on a "particular, enormous stalagmite flow".

"It is perhaps not exactly what one can call art"

However, it is difficult to compare this behavior to that which will produce the wall art of modern humans, more recent, such as that of the Chauvet-Pont d'Arc cave, at -37,000 years old.

But it is an added touch added to the portrait of a Neanderthal who was anything but a somewhat boorish “cousin” of Man, and whose lineage died out some 40,000 years ago.

“It is perhaps not exactly what one can call art”, says Prof. d'Errico, but “the place, the stalagmitic flow and the fact of putting pigment on it was important, a symbolic behavior ”.

And very clever who could interpret the meaning, when even today prehistorians argue over the meaning to be given to the cave art of modern humans, between artistic expression, story of the world or invocation of supernatural forces.

"In some caves the entrance is inhabited, but the interior and the depths are visited for something else, for art or activities that leave no trace", says Professor d'Errico.

He thus mentions the example of the Bruniquel cave, in Tarn-et-Garonne, where Neanderthals ventured more than 300 meters inside, to place there precisely in two circles more than two tons of stalagmites carefully. broken.

And that, more than 170,000 years ago.

With Ardales, this makes “two examples where Neanderthals enter a cave and consider that these stalagmitic structures have a role”.

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