Rock carving discovered the first Neanderthal – The País.com (Spain)

Engraving Neanderthal discovered in the bottom of Gorham’s Cave (Gibraltar). / Stewart Finlayson

The background from a cave in Gibraltar has been found engraved in the rock, a set of guilloche someone intentionally and painstakingly made about 40,000 years ago. That someone was Neanderthal. It is the first known example of an abstract design that predates recorded by modern humans European species, our species, scientists say they have discovered and analyzed thoroughly. And the find upends what has often been considered that would be mental abilities and limitations of Neanderthals

The summary scientists themselves. “The making of drawings or prints painted on purpose in walls of the caves-a way to record and transmit symbolic codes perdurable- way is considered a fundamental step in human cognitive evolution. This behavior, considered unique to modern humans, has been used as an argument in favor of significant cognitive differences between our direct ancestors and the archaic hominids who were his contemporaries, including Neanderthals, “write your Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This apparent inability of Neanderthals for abstract thought and expression is what breaks with engraving Gorham’s Cave, on the eastern side of Gibraltar, looking out towards the Mediterranean.

There are eight deep marks cross made in two groups of three and two short lines rock, which found, in the summer of 2012, Joaquín Rodríguez-Vidal (University of Huelva) and colleagues from various European institutions. Engraving occupies an area of ​​about 300 square centimeters and is horizontally in the center of a natural platform, about 40 inches above the ground rises in the back of the cave.

The various techniques dating applied by scientists to rock and sediment, with unmistakable traces of lithic industry covering neandertales- etching allowed us to fix his age at about 40,000 years. And the comprehensive analysis and testing not only excluded that are natural features of the rock or residual question marks in some other activity on that platform, but indicate how conducted. “Whoever did it was not the first time he did and possibly recorded it whole at once,” said Rodríguez-Vidal COUNTRY

A guess about its meaning would be risky,” says researcher

To ensure the authenticity of the find archaeologists reproduced marks recorded Neanderthal stone using punches (pieces found in the outermost part of the cave and “out of context”, ie, difficult scientific utility). Also tested with other stones but the result was not the same. They conclude that the author gave at least 54 blows with a hard stone point to the deeper lines and in total, more than 300 percussion

Gorham’s Cave in Gibraltar. / Clive Finlayson

What mean these lines cross? “At the current level of research, make a guess of its meaning would be risky,” says Rodriguez-Vidal.

Ya “indirect” evidence of symbolic thought of Neanderthals as the use of black pigments were known and red colored seashells so bored as marks produced by extracting feathers of birds, the scientists write. “But the recorded Gorham’s Cave represent the first example directly demonstrable in an abstract engraved technically prepared, consistent and carefully made, requiring prolonged and concentrated action, has become the rock of a cave,” they say.

two years ago, a new different samples of rock art in Asturias and Cantabria showed that some of them are older than previously thought, giving us a time frame (just over 40,000 years) in which there were still Neanderthals. Thus, one would not say, from a chronological point of view, these tests only the symbolic mind could do modern humans. Gorham engraving shows, scientists say, authorship and the mental capacity of those ancient European extinct.