Groundbreaking discovery at Gorhams Cave: Neanderthal engravings found The first ever intentional, and non-functional, engraving made by a Neanderthal has been found in Gorham’s Cave. The results of this discovery have been published this evening in a major international journal and the news is expected to raise media interest across the world. The chance discovery was made two years ago, in the summer of 2012, at the very back of Gorham’s Cave. What seemed ‘unusual’ at first sight, turned out to be the first ever intentional, and non-functional, engraving made by a Neanderthal, some 39,000 years ago. It’s the first time anywhere in the world that an engraving has been demonstrated by someone other than a ‘modern human’. The series of parallel lines measure at around 15cms wide and can be compared to ‘modern’ behaviour. Experiments have been carried out and the engraving analysed over the past two years. With the use of high-resolution microscopes, x-ray refraction and chemical analysis in the cave, the excavation team has explored how the layers on the rock were formed, leaving very little doubt to its authenticity. Various experiments were also carried out using real Neanderthal tools from Gorham’s Cave itself. Over time the criss-cross pattern can be further analysed and it may be possible to find out if the Neanderthal that made the engravings was right or left handed, or for example, standing up or kneeling down whilst making the strokes. The discovery also coincides with work being undertaken to have the Gorham’s Cave ready for World Heritage Site nomination next year, and the finding will no doubt affect the bid. The paper ‘An engraving made by Neanderthals in Gibraltar’ (1) has now been published in The National Academy of Sciences USA and is open access for anyone to read online. The engraving will also be further discussed at the Calpe Conference later on this month. - Neanderthals made some of Europes oldest art Criss-cross patterns deep in a Gibraltan cave suggest that the species had minds capable of abstract artistic expression. Nature 01 September 2014 doi:10.1038/nature.2014.15805 nature/news/neanderthals-made-some-of-europe-s-oldest-art-1.15805 It looks like a game of tic tac toe, but engravings found deep inside a cave in Gibraltar might be a Neanderthal masterpiece. At more than 39,000 years old, the etchings rival in age the oldest cave art in Europe — and they are the first to be unquestionably done by a Neanderthal, claim the researchers who discovered them (1). Other scientists, however, say that the artworks attribution is not an open-and-shut case. Archaeologists uncovered the engravings in Gorham’s Cave, a site overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. A team led by zoologist Clive Finlayson, the director of the Gibraltar Museum, has been excavating the cave since the late 1980s. The researchers found that the Neanderthals who called the cave home ate fish, shellfish and birds, and perhaps survived later than their counterparts elsewhere in Europe. But in July 2012, Finlaysons colleague Francisco Pacheco crawled on the cave floor through a narrow passage to reach the very rear of the chamber, and happened on the etchings, carved on a horizontal platform that is elevated 40 centimetres from the bedrock, like a natural coffee table. “We started to shine the torch in different directions and we started to see the relief of this thing. It’s not immediately obvious,” says Finlayson. The drawings cover an area of about 20 by 20 centimetres, roughly the size of a Frisbee, and are up to a few millimetres deep. Getting a date Rock art is notoriously tricky to date because it is not immediately linked to human or animal bones that can be carbon-dated. Finlayson, however, is confident that the etching was made by Neanderthals more than 39,000 years ago. A layer of sediment that once covered the engraving contained stone tools typical of those made by Neanderthals dating to between 30,000 and 39,000 years ago. This means that the engraving must be even older, Finlayson says, perhaps 40,000 to 45,000 years old. Humans did not arrive at Gorham’s Cave until more than 10,000 years later, and long after Neanderthals were gone. The teams dating of the Gorham etching makes it one of the oldest examples of cave art in Europe. A smudge of pigment in the Cave of El Castillo in northern Spain dates to more than 40,000 years ago, but it is not clear whether Homo sapiens or Neanderthals created it (2). To better understand the engraving, Finlayson’s team tried replicating them using original Neanderthal stone tools. They found that only dozens of purposeful, repeated motions could create similar etchings. “We wanted to show that this was not a doodle, a casual thing,” he says, unlike the helter-skelter scratchings that the authors left when they sliced fresh pork skin on rock, for instance. The teams results appear in this weeks Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (1). Age-old question What the signs mean, however, is anyone’s guess. “Is it art? I don’t know. I can’t get into the minds of these people. It looks geometric. It looks like criss-cross patterning,” and perhaps it represents some kind of map, says Finlayson. “What is clear is that it’s abstract, it’s deliberate, and it speaks to their cognition in a way that brings Neanderthals, once again, closer to us.” Alistair Pike, an archaeologist at the University of Southampton, UK, says that the engravings, if made by Neanderthals, represent a very important find. “It adds permanent rock engraving to the sparse but significant evidence for Neanderthal symbolic behaviour.” Ochre pigment, shell beads and other adornments have also been used to back the idea that Neanderthals possessed the sorts of symbolic cognitive powers that underlie language and religion (see Neanderthal culture: Old masters - Nature 497, 302–304 (16 May 2013) doi:10.1038/497302a - nature/news/neanderthal-culture-old-masters-1.12974). But Harold Dibble, an anthropologist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, has misgivings about the engraving, as well as the identity of its maker. Sediments tend to shift around a cave, and it is possible that humans made the etchings, only for them to be later covered up by older sediments from prior Neanderthal occupations, he says. Moreover, Dibble questions the importance of abstract scratchings, which also appear on animal bones at Neanderthal sites. “It takes more than a few scratches — deliberate or not — to identify symbolic behaviour on the part of Neanderthals.” - Were Neandertals cave artists, too? news.sciencemag.org/archaeology/2014/09/were-neandertals-cave-artists-too One of the biggest debates in archaeology is whether Neandertals were capable of the kind of abstract and symbolic expression that prehistoric modern humans demonstrated in abundance—for example, by painting animal images on the walls of caves like Chauvet and Lascaux in France and Altamira in Spain. Possible evidence for Neandertal art was reported a couple of years ago in the Spanish cave of El Castillo (Did Neandertals Paint Early Cave Art? - news.sciencemag.org/2012/06/did-neandertals-paint-early-cave-art), but researchers are not sure whether Neandertals or modern humans painted a red disk on its wall 41,000 years ago—right around the time that modern humans entered Europe. Now, archaeologists working at Gorham’s Cave, a former Neandertal haunt on the coast of Gibraltar, report online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (1) that they have found this crosshatched pattern etched into the hard rock floor of the cave (see photo above). The pattern was deeply incised using some sort of stone tool and was found under archaeological layers dating back at least 39,000 years—but containing stone tools that only Neandertals made. The image is somewhat reminiscent of a 75,000-year-old geometric pattern found at Blombos Cave in Africa (From a Modern Humans Brow--or Doodling? - sciencemag.org/content/295/5553/247.2.summary), and indeed the Gorham’s team argues that it is proof positive that Neandertals were just as capable of abstract thought as modern humans. The claim is likely to attract some skepticism, however, from archaeologists who have argued that such simple patterns are poor evidence for complex symbolic expression. References 1. Rodríguez-Vidal, J. et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1411529111 (2014). A rock engraving made by Neanderthals in Gibraltar PNAS 2014, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1411529111 pnas.org/content/early/2014/08/27/1411529111 Significance The production of purposely made painted or engraved designs on cave walls is recognized as a major cognitive step in human evolution, considered exclusive to modern humans. Here we present the first known example of an abstract pattern engraved by Neanderthals, from Gorham’s Cave in Gibraltar. It consists of a deeply impressed cross-hatching carved into the bedrock of the cave older than 39 cal kyr. The engraving was made before the accumulation of Mousterian layer IV. Most of the lines composing the design were made by repeatedly and carefully passing a pointed lithic tool into the grooves, excluding the possibility of an unintentional or utilitarian origin. This discovery demonstrates the Neanderthals’ capacity for abstract thought and expression. Abstract The production of purposely made painted or engraved designs on cave walls—a means of recording and transmitting symbolic codes in a durable manner—is recognized as a major cognitive step in human evolution. Considered exclusive to modern humans, this behavior has been used to argue in favor of significant cognitive differences between our direct ancestors and contemporary archaic hominins, including the Neanderthals. Here we present the first known example of an abstract pattern engraved by Neanderthals, from Gorham’s Cave in Gibraltar. It consists of a deeply impressed cross-hatching carved into the bedrock of the cave that has remained covered by an undisturbed archaeological level containing Mousterian artifacts made by Neanderthals and is older than 39 cal kyr BP. Geochemical analysis of the epigenetic coating over the engravings and experimental replication show that the engraving was made before accumulation of the archaeological layers, and that most of the lines composing the design were made by repeatedly and carefully passing a pointed lithic tool into the grooves, excluding the possibility of an unintentional or utilitarian origin (e.g., food or fur processing). This discovery demonstrates the capacity of the Neanderthals for abstract thought and expression through the use of geometric forms. 2. Pike, A. W. G. et al. Science 336, 1409–1413 (2012). U-Series Dating of Paleolithic Art in 11 Caves in Spain Science 15 June 2012: Vol. 336 no. 6087 pp. 1409-1413 DOI: 10.1126/science.1219957 sciencemag.org/content/336/6087/1409 Abstract Paleolithic cave art is an exceptional archive of early human symbolic behavior, but because obtaining reliable dates has been difficult, its chronology is still poorly understood after more than a century of study. We present uranium-series disequilibrium dates of calcite deposits overlying or underlying art found in 11 caves, including the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage sites of Altamira, El Castillo, and Tito Bustillo, Spain. The results demonstrate that the tradition of decorating caves extends back at least to the Early Aurignacian period, with minimum ages of 40.8 thousand years for a red disk, 37.3 thousand years for a hand stencil, and 35.6 thousand years for a claviform-like symbol. These minimum ages reveal either that cave art was a part of the cultural repertoire of the first anatomically modern humans in Europe or that perhaps Neandertals also engaged in painting caves.
Posted on: Wed, 03 Sep 2014 12:19:15 +0000
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