How sapiens were Neanderthals?: new found shell art (Introduction)

by David Turell , Friday, February 23, 2018, 21:33 (2465 days ago) @ David Turell

Another article covers more new findings, decorated shells dated 115,000 years ago:

https://cosmosmagazine.com/archaeology/neanderthals-and-early-modern-humans-were-cognit...

"Hoffman is also lead author of a second study, published in the journal Science Advances, analysing a collection of 120,000-year-old painted and perforated seashells found in another Spanish location, called Cueva de los Aviones.

"Dating evidence reveals that the artefacts, like the paintings, were fashioned many millennia before the arrival of Homo sapiens, meaning that they, too, were the work of Neanderthals.

"Hoffman and colleagues note that similar finds in Africa, attributed to modern humans, have been uncontroversially accepted as proxies for symbolic behaviour.

***

"By carefully teasing out the relationship between the sediment layers at the site, then applying thorium-uranium dating techniques, Hoffman’s team came up with a much more reliable – and much earlier – date. The shells all dated to within a 5000-year period, between 115,000 and 200,000 years ago.

"The date range is significant on more than one level. It clearly shows that the artefacts were made before the arrival of modern humans in the area. Also, however, it makes them older than the earliest human symbolic material found anywhere in the world.
Hoffman and colleagues note that the earliest South African artefacts so far discovered date to about 79,000 years ago. A shell bead found at Grotte des Pigeons, Morocco, is estimated to be 82,000 years old, and perforated shells found at Qafzeh Cave in Israel are thought to be 92,000 years old.

"The Spanish find, say the researchers, “substantially predates … anything comparable known in Africa or western Asia to date”.

"This, combined with the painting evidence, they conclude, “leaves no doubt that Neanderthals shared symbolic thinking with early modern humans and that, as far as we can infer from material culture, Neanderthals and early modern humans were cognitively indistinguishable.'”

Comment: One wonders now why the Neanderthals did not survive with this much evidence of cognition.