• Some researchers think the paintings may predate European Homo sapeins.
• The study suggests that the art may not be the work of modern humans at all.
• Neanderthals have been portrayed as brutish, animalistic cavemen, but the archaeological evidence suggests they weren’t dummies.

A series of cave paintings in Spain are thousands of years older than scientists realized, raising speculation — but no proof — that Neanderthals could have been the earliest wall artists in Europe.

The oldest image, a large red disk on the wall of El Castillo cave in northern Spain, is more than 40,800 years old, according to an advanced method that uses natural deposits on the surfaces of the paintings to date their creation. The new findings, detailed in the June 15 issue of the journal Science, make the paintings the oldest reliably dated wall paintings ever.

The cave, El Castillo in northern Spain, the researchers found primitive art of mind-boggling age. This cave contained the 40,800-year-old red disk. It also sported a hand stencil, created by an artist spitting red pigment over his or her hand to leave a handprint, that dates back more than 37,300 years.

“We simply did not have any dates this old before,” Zilhao said. “Even if this is made by modern humans, we are pushing the age of this stuff by 5,000 years.”

The previous oldest-known rock art in Europe was not a painting, but etchings of likely female genitalia symbols made about 37,000 years ago in France.

We now know that Neanderthals probably cooked their food and made tools for hunting and fishing. They were also culturally more sophisticated than previously thought.

“Neanderthals engaged in body painting,” says Zilhão. “They used pendants. We have evidence of the use of perforated marine shells – perforated animal teeth – used as pendants.”

Already, symbolic culture has been shown to have existed among the Neanderthals, with 50,000-year-old evidence indicating body painting and jewellery decoration made from bones, teeth, ivory and marine shells, at sites in France.

“It would not be surprising if they were indeed Europe’s first cave artists,” Zilhão said. “In the context of what we’ve learned about Neanderthals in the last decade it really should not be very surprising.”

If Neanderthals were decorating their caves, it might mean that language and advanced cognition were present in the human lineage further back than suspected – perhaps since the time of Neanderthals’ and modern humans’ last common ancestor, who lived at least half a million years ago.

Building a reliable chronology for cave art is difficult because the primary dating method, the radiocarbon technique, is not suitable for engravings or paintings made purely with mineral pigments. And, the availability of just tiny samples means the effects of contamination are highly magnified.

“So some radiocarbon dates disagree with other radiocarbon dates on the same painting or even dates that are processed in different ways that give you a different radiocarbon date,” said Pike.

To prove definitively the involvement of Neanderthals in cave art creation, scientists will need to find and date samples from more caves using the new technique. If there are paintings pre-dating the arrival of modern humans into Europe – that is, older than 42,000 years old – it will be hard to doubt that Neanderthals were the world’s first cave artists.

Pike said that the most exciting thing about the possibility that the El Castillo cave had Neanderthal art was that anyone could walk in and see a Neanderthal hand on the wall. “And this is something that had been invisible to archaeology until we worked out where to look.”

“I would still hold my breath a little bit longer before asserting that Neanderthals were involved here,” Riel-Salvatore says.

Riel-Salvatore says he’d be more likely to believe that Neanderthals painted in caves if future research turned up stronger evidence. For instance, if Neanderthal tools were found close to the artwork, or if scientists found cave paintings even older than the ones in the new study.

The authors of the new study are already on it. They’re scouring caves all over Europe for signs of older paintings.

ARTICLES:

http://news.discovery.com/history/oldest-cave-art-neanderthals-120614.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/jun/14/neanderthals-first-create-cave-paintings

http://www.theworld.org/2012/06/ancient-art-castillo-cave/

Ancient body paint workshop dates back 100,000 years

The 100,000-year-old workshop is the earliest example of an art studio.

• The findings show how red pigment ochre was used.
• Two separate tool kits for working ochre were found at the site.
• The findings represents an important benchmark in the evolution of complex human mental processes.

Archaeologists have uncovered what they believe is a 100,000-year-old paint workshop in Blombos Cave, South Africa, about 186 miles east of Cape Town. The discovery, discussed in the journal Science, indicates that our early Homo sapien ancestors had a basic knowledge of chemistry and the ability to make long-term plans.

“The recovery of these toolkits at Blombos Cave adds evidence for early technological and behavioral developments associated with H. sapiens and documents their deliberate planning, production, and curation of a pigmented compound and the use of containers,” the study authors wrote.

Additionally, they found two sea snail shells called abalone shells that probably served as containers to store a red concoction of ochre, bone and charcoal. Pigment residue on one of the bones suggests it was used for stirring and transferring the mixture out of the shell.

There is evidence that this mixture had been heated; perhaps liquefied bone marrow was used as a paste. Urine or water was also probably added to make it more fluid.

This is also the oldest evidence for use of a container, said Francesco d’Errico, study co-author and researcher at the University of Bordeaux in France. It appears that these containers were used multiple times.

“They really knew what they were doing. It’s not just idiosyncratic behavior, but it’s a very planned process,” d’Errico said.

Ancient fragments of ochre have been found before from earlier than 100,000 years ago, but never in association with the objects to make it, or in containers, d’Errico said. Chemical analysis reveals three different types of pigment were used in this workshop, including yellow and red shades.

“It’s really relatively complex behavior going on there that clearly indicates that the production of pigment for them was not just occasional,” d’Errico said. “It was a very planned process involving a number of different raw materials.”

This cave seems to have been used as a workshop, and then the early Homo sapiens left it behind shortly after making these compounds. It appears that sand blew into the cave and very quickly covered these objects, preserving them throughout the millennia.

A piece of red ochre with an engraved design from the Blombos Cave

“It may be combination of functional and symbolic reasons,” d’Errico said. “In traditional societies, these reasons – symbolic and functional – often go together. One reason cannot exclude the other.”

The researchers believe that pieces of ochre were first rubbed on quartzite slabs to produce a fine red powder.

NEWS: Earliest American Art: Mammoth on Mammoth

“Ochre chips were crushed with quartz, quartzite and silcrete hammerstones/grinders and combined with heated crushed, mammal-bone,charcoal, stone chips and a liquid, which was then introduced to the abalone shells and gently stirred,” Henshilwood said.

A bone was probably used to stir the mixture and to transfer it out of the shell as with a painter spalula.

According to Erella Hovers, an archaeologist at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the finding confirms the hypothesis that the production and use of ochre were a complex process that involved forethought and planning.

“Bits and pieces attesting to various phases of the process have been found independently and separately in various sites in and out of Africa at comparable ages, but to the best of my knowledge this is the first time that the whole process can be reconstructed,” Hovers told Discovery News.

Most interestingly, the Blombos elaborate ochre processing used a mixture with marrow fat to produce a paint rather than with plant resin to produce a mastic, Alison Brooks, professor of anthropology at George Washington University in Washington DC, noticed.

“This argues strongly for its symbolic function,” Brooks told Discovery News.

For more than 20 years, Blombos Cave has been yelding bone tools and artefacts left by its Middle Stone Age inhabitants. In 2002, researchers found 70,000-year-old blocks of ochre with abstract engravings, suggesting the emergence of abstract thinking and modern human behaviour much earlier than previously thought.

“The recovery of these toolkits adds evidence for early technological and behavioural developments associated with humans and documents their deliberate planning, production and curation of pigmented compound and the use of containers,” said Henshilwood.

“It also demonstrates that humans had an elementary knowledge of chemistry and the ability for long-term planning 100,000 years ago,”

Articles:

http://www.sott.net/article/236276-100000-year-old-Art-Studio-Found-Evidence-of-Early-Chemistry

http://lightyears.blogs.cnn.com/2011/10/13/100000-year-old-art-studio-uncovered/

http://news.discovery.com/history/art-studio-111013.html

•  The oldest known artwork from the Americas depicting an animal shows a mammoth engraved on mammoth bone.
• Based on many scientific tests, researchers believe the engraving dates from 13,000 to 20,000 years ago.
• The object, found in Florida, strengthens the controversial theory that Europeans were the first inhabitants of the Americas.

Compared to the rough crosshatched, checkered lines associated with Paleoindian art from early sites such as Gault in Texas, this animal image from Florida looks quite sophisticated. Speakman, however, points out that 120,000-year-old decorative ornaments have been found in Africa and the Near East. Venus figurines date to at least 35,000 years ago, and paint materials in the human archaeological record could date to more than 300,000 years ago.

Twenty thousand years ago is therefore a drop in the proverbial art bucket from a global perspective, but it is extremely old for the Americas. The researchers indicate the object may strengthen the controversial theory that people associated with the Solutrean culture of Europe migrated to North America via the North Atlantic Ice Sheet.

“As to who and when the bone was inscribed,” Bradley continued, “the only issue is really whether it was done on fresh or mineralized bone. Since there is no means of directly dating the bone, the probability is that it is at least as old as the extinction of the animal species it came from.”

In the future, a full excavation of the North Vero Beach site could be possible, allowing researchers to learn more about what could be the first human inhabitants of the Americas.

Article: http://news.discovery.com/history/earliest-american-art-mammoth-110622.html

Although the early dates coincide with recent evidence of a Homo sapiens presence in Europe, the scientists wrote that because 40,800 is only a minimum age, “it cannot be ruled out that the earliest paintings were symbolic expressions of the Neanderthals,” who were living in that part of Spain until at least 42,000 years ago.

In another article for the journal, John Hellstrom of the University of Melbourne in Australia, an authority on dating prehistoric artifacts, praised the research. “The scope of their study has allowed them to unambiguously identify a number of examples that challenge and overturn the previous understanding of that art’s origin,” he wrote.

Dr. Hellstrom said that “3 of the 50 examples dated show art to have been created in Spain at around (indeed possibly before) the time of the arrival of modern humans, bringing current ideas of the prehistory of human art in southern Europe into question.”

In a teleconference for reporters on Wednesday, Dr. Pike said the older dates suggested three possible interpretations. One: Homo sapiens entered Europe with the tradition of cave art already part of the culture. There is increasing evidence that the African ancestors of Homo sapiens had for thousands of years developed expressions of symbolic thinking in the form of perforated beads, engraved eggshells and decorative pigments. Such has been the standard hypothesis.

Another possibility is that this artistic culture arose shortly after modern humans reached Europe. “It might have been the result of competition for resources with Neanderthals,” Dr. Pike said. “The rate of cultural innovation was accelerating, and this was a byproduct.”

“The people who came in to Europe were very much like us. They used art, they used symbols,” Shea said.

João Zilhão, a prehistorian and Neanderthal specialist at the University of Barcelona and a member of the research team, made a forceful defense of the hypothesis in the teleconference.

“We have sufficient evidence to the effect that Neanderthals possessed a symbolic culture,” Dr. Zilhão said. “They are close enough to modern humans to have interbred with us. This is sufficient to think about Neanderthals as fundamentally human beings with perhaps racial differences.”

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/story/2012-06-14/cave-paintings-spain/55602532/1

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/15/science/new-dating-puts-cave-art-in-the-age-of-neanderthals.html?pagewanted=all

   Probably the most famous among man’s earliest works of art is the impressive ivory carving: “The Wild Horse from Vogelherd”. It is exceptionally accurately shaped, perfect in form and remarkably expressive. Due to the curved neck, it is usually thought to represent a stallion with an aggressive or imposing bearing. Only the head is completely preserved. Due to the flaking of external ivory layers, the width has been reduced and the legs have broken off. There are engraved symbols, including cross marks and angular signs, on the back of the neck, as well as on the back and the left chest.

30 min. gesture collage

“The Venus of Hohle Fels is 2.4 inches in height and was carved from the tusk of a woolly mammoth. It has been pieced together from six fragments found in a cluster, about 10 feet below ground, although the left arm and shoulder are still missing. It has a short and squat body whose waist is slightly narrower than its broad shoulders and wide hips. The figurine has no head; in its place, a carved ring protrudes between the shoulders, indicating that the sculpture was probably worn as a pendant or amulet. The figure is endowed with prominent breasts, while its two short arms with their carefully shaped hands and fingers rest on the upper part of the abdomen. A number of deeply etched horizontal creases (indicating clothes?) traverse the torso from the just below the breasts to the pubic triangle. The buttocks and genitals are portrayed in exaggerated detail, while the legs are small and pointed.”

“The figurine was sculpted from a woolly mammoth tusk and had broken into fragments, of which six have been recovered, with the left arm and shoulder still missing. In place of the head, the figurine — which probably took “tens if not hundreds of hours” to carve ^[4] — has a perforated protrusion, which may have allowed its owner to wear it as an amulet.”

PREHISTORIC SCULPTURE

pre sapian art = earth shattering = art magick life survival community are all the same fuckin thing. bitch.

Video- Worlds-Oldest-Paintings-Discovered-in-Spanish-Cave-517266168

“Cave paintings in Malaga, Spain, could be the oldest yet found – and the first to have been created by Neanderthals.

Looking oddly akin to the DNA double helix, the images in fact depict the seals that the locals would have eaten, says José Luis Sanchidrián at the University of Cordoba, Spain. They have “no parallel in Palaeolithic art”, he adds. His team say that charcoal remains found beside six of the paintings – preserved in Spain’s Nerja caves – have been radiocarbon dated to between 43,500 and 42,300 years old.

That suggests the paintings may be substantially older than the 30,000-year-old Chauvet cave paintings in south-east France, thought to be the earliest example of Palaeolithic cave art.

The next step is to date the paint pigments. If they are confirmed as being of similar age, this raises the real possibility that the paintings were the handiwork of Neanderthals – an “academic bombshell”, says Sanchidrián, because all other cave paintings are thought to have been produced by modern humans.

Neanderthals are in the frame for the paintings since they are thought to have remained in the south and west of the Iberian peninsula until approximately 37,000 years ago – 5000 years after they had been replaced or assimilated by modern humans elsewhere in their European heartland.

Until recently, Neanderthals were thought to have been incapable of creating artistic works. That picture is changing thanks to the discovery of a number of decorated stone and shell objects – although no permanent cave art has previously been attributed to our extinct cousins.” – FM

Before Christmas I found a fabulous over sized book in the library all about the Chauvet Cave paintings called ‘Chauvet Cave, The Discovery of the World’s Oldest Paintings’ by Jean-Marie Chauvet, Eliette Brunel Deschamps, Christian Hillaire. It details how three cavers in 1994 (Ardéche, South East France) discovered by chance an hidden entrance to an underground cavern, inside they made the most exciting discovery. Paintings dating back 30,000 years covered the cave walls, there were also blackened remains of fires. Flint & bones littered the ground and footprints made by the stone age man were seen on the sandy floor.

With a little bit more research I found out that the Lascaux Caves were discovered by four boys in 1940 (South West France). The paintings in these caves date back 17,000 years.

For this project the children had fun mixing their own cave wall colour with powder paint. A large sheet of paper was painted using random brush strokes, texture was added by using a sponge too. Whilst the paint was still damp the paper was crunched into a ball to acheive a crinkly wall effect. Once straigtened back out the paper edges were carefully torn away for a rough old look.

Once dry, the children used charcoal and pastels to draw their own cave art. As an added extra I covered one wall with paper and let the children create their own cave graffiti.