Heavy Brows, High Art?

marco_polo

Potentially this is a huge discovery IMO. The list of behaviours which were once believed to be unique to Homo Sapiens appears to be growing ever shorter by the day.

Newly discovered 50,000 year old painted shells from Spain present the first evidence that Neandertals made jewelery, and thus imply that the were capable of expressing symbolism. The date are a full 10,000 years before the fossil record reveals any evidence of modern humans entering Europe.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=neandertal-art-human

Newly discovered painted scallops and cockleshells in Spain are the first hard evidence that Neandertals made jewelry. These findings suggest humanity's closest extinct relatives might have been capable of symbolism, after all.

Body ornaments made of painted and pierced seashells dating back 70,000 to 120,000 years have been found in Africa and the Near East for years, and serve as evidence of symbolic thought among the earliest modern humans (Homo sapiens). The absence of similar finds in Europe at that time, when it was Neandertal territory, has supported the notion that they lacked symbolism, a potential sign of mental inferiority that might help explain why modern humans eventually replaced them.

Wibbs

They buried their dead too IIRC and spread ochre over the bodies, or the ochre was a form of body painting. There's also a very crude venus figure found in Africa that may be an example of Erectus symbolism. I suspect we'll discover more and more of this stuff.

Galvasean

Stuff like this pretty much puts to rest the notion that neanderthals could not 'think out side the box' and focus on things that were not directly related to short term survival. The presence of art and a belief in an afterlife (potentially the basis of religion) show that they certainly did focus time and energy on thins that were not strictly 'here and now'.

marco_polo

As a side note I have finished watching Walking with Cavemen, interesting stuff but discoveries like this and others over the past few years are making the script sound a a little dated.

Kess73

Personally I love findings like this, as each time there is an enforced change of what was thought to be canon by many, it just confirms that there is so much new information out there waiting to be found.

Wibbs

Now it seems erectus could build rafts... http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/53219/title/Ancient_hominids_may_have_been_seafarers

Thats a big deal right there. It means they were a lot more advanced mentally and when acting as a group than previously thought. If true language would have to be older too as building a raft and going across the ocean as a group would be hard to do without it.

Wibbs

Galvasean wrote: »

Stuff like this pretty much puts to rest the notion that neanderthals could not 'think out side the box' and focus on things that were not directly related to short term survival. The presence of art and a belief in an afterlife (potentially the basis of religion) show that they certainly did focus time and energy on thins that were not strictly 'here and now'.

Where we may differ is that we had much more of an extended trading thing going on, which may have led to easier lives, which in turn leads to more thinking and some members of the group becoming "thinkers" as a job. That and we started to live longer. It could be that simple. Neandertals had bigger brains than moderns. Its possible a neandertal growing up in our modern society would be just as brainy. Hard to know though. Behaviour could be very different. Wolves and dogs are the same species and wolves have bigger brains than dogs, yet dont interact with or understand humans the same way at all. Even if raised as dogs.

marco_polo

Wibbs wrote: »

Wolves and dogs are the same species and wolves have bigger brains than dogs, yet dont interact with or understand humans the same way at all. Even if raised as dogs.

On that point I was watching an interesting documentary about dogs the other day. The suggestion was that despite being less "intelligent" than chimps (in the very narrow sense that us humans have a habit of labeling the concept), they are more tuned into our social behaviours, movements etc.

The simple experiment consisted of two bowls, one with food under it and one without. Neither animal had been trained in the behaviour prior to the experiment. The researcher would then hide food under one of the bowls and point at the one containing food. The dog quickly picked up on the action after only a couple of turns, however the chimp continued to pick random bowls, never realising the signifigance of the gesture at all.

Wibbs

Oh really? I suppose it stands to reason. I mean there are breeds called pointers so the concept goes both ways. I know with dogs Ive had they will try to attract my attention to something by looking at me and then sighting the point of interest down their snouts. It seems to have been selected by us, or maybe is inherent? Did they try same with wolves? There's a guy in the US who has trained wolves to be sheepdogs and apparently they do quite well in trials. Well they're bloody fast so.. though trying to stop them eating the prize may be an issue.

Dogs bark as adults too. Wolves very rarely do, though again I read about a pack being observed in a very large enclosure and when habituated to humans they barked more to get attention. Maybe they just realise we're a bit deaf by comparison. Wolf A "here Geoff, what is it with these two legged eejits? Ive been subsonically growling for ages here and nada". Wolf B, "Didn't you know Ethel, they're as deaf as posts. Watch. WOOF!.... See? He's coming over now". Wolf A "well I never"

Plus you could argue that wolf packs and early human packs had more dynamics in common and foods in common that our ape cousins. Especially foods. Indeed early modern europeans show an almost identical food mineral intake in the bones to wolves. Wolves/Dogs and humans travel big distances, hunt in packs and family units tend to be of a similar size(chimps hunt in packs but not that often). Plus we're better at the killing bit. Contrary to popular belief wolf hunts have about a 30% success rate. If they did the chasing and we did the catching. Result for both.

actually on topic, I suspect one of, if not the biggest diffs between us and our ancestors is that we had dogs. Might explain why our noses got a lot smaller. We didnt need them anymore. Fido had a bigger one. Though geneticists vary in their opinion of when we domesticated the dog. Many think around 50,000 years ago, so that was long after we lost the big hooters.