2023-06-22 11:53:53
Prehistoric works are widely recognized, but did you know that our species is not the only one to have produced them? The question of art among Neanderthals is complex and controversial, but it would seem that this practice predates contact between Sapiens and Neanderthals!
In comparison with A wise manthe Neanderthal Neanderthal (homo neanderthalensis) has left relatively few archaeological remains qualified as symbolic or artistic. A certain mistrust characterizes the interpretations of these different traces. Neanderthals probably used pigments to coat skins, and would have sported ornamental objects such as feathers, teeth, bones, raptor talons, and even fossils, sometimes engraved. The walls of the caves they frequented bear marks of their passage, pigmented, traced or engraved. Are these practices therefore the sign of an artistic will? A study led by Jean-Claude Marquet, from the University of Tours, and published in the journal PLOS ONEshows that the oldest engravings attributable to Neanderthal are French, and that their creation was indeed intentional and thoughtful.
The researchers looked at the marks of the cave of La Roche-Cotard, in Langeais (Indre-et-Loire). The cave, then located on the banks of the Loire, delivered carved stones, and an enigmatic worked object qualified as a “protofigurine”. Several panels of the tuffeautuffeau walls bear finger strokes in a soft layer of clayey silt deposited by the river, and a few spots of red ocher. The entrance to the cavity was blocked by sedimentsediments following the occupation by Neanderthals, which is fortunate because everything that has been collected and observed there can therefore be attributed to them unambiguously.
In their most recent study, the researchers were able to date the sediments present in the cave using a technique using thermoluminescence, optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating. Their results show that the cave became inaccessible to humans more than 57,000 years ago, which confirms that the traces it contains are unambiguously attributable to Neanderthals, since Sapiens only arrived in Europe around -45,000. These abstract marks are the oldest attributable to Neanderthals, and their meaning still remains a mystery…
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