World's Oldest Cave Art Found—Made by Neanderthals? [1]
NationalGeographic.com
Ker Than
for National Geographic News [2]
Published June 14, 2012
In El Castillo cave, hand stencils join a red disk (not pictured) that may be Earth's oldest cave art.
Photograph courtesy Pedro Saura via Science/AAAS
Prehistoric dots and crimson hand stencils on Spanish cave walls are now the world's oldest known cave art, according to new dating results—perhaps the best evidence yet that Neanderthals [3] were Earth's first cave painters.
If that's the case, the discovery narrows the cultural distance between us and Neanderthals—and fuels the argument, at least for one scientist, that the heavy-browed humans were not a separate species but only another race.
"It adds to evidence Neanderthals were not a distinct species," archaeologist says.
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