tOMOrrOW's AnsWers tODAY - AkzoNobel

Previous page: The El Castillo dots and hand
stencils are thought to be the world’s oldest
known cave art.
Photography: Pedro Saura.
long the artwork was there before the film deposit formed.
Sometimes, however, it is possible to estimate the maximum age,
if samples of the underlying surface can also be dated – such as,
for example, when the seepage results in the formation of
stalactites, which have then been painted.
Having demonstrated the utility of the dating method in
Britain, Pike began looking at cave art in Spain. There was, he
says, a “conundrum in the dating evidence” in the Spanish caves,
because nothing discovered in Spain could be dated at more
than 22,000 years, using the predominant radiocarbon dating
method, whereas cave art in Southern France was much older
– perhaps as old as 35,000 years. “Either something was wrong
with our dating methods, or there was something that stopped
people with this tradition of painting from moving to Spain. But
people argued against that on the basis of stylistic similarities.
So people agreed that it was probably the dating methods that
weren’t very good, and that seemed like a testable hypothesis.”
And then last summer, Pike discussed his findings in a paper
published in Science Magazine. It caused a minor stir among
paleontologists and attracted worldwide attention. He had taken
samples from calcite he found on some red dots and hand
stencils he found in a cave called El Castillo. These hand stencils,
which are a recurring theme in early art, were probably made by
blowing or spitting a mixture of red ochre pigment and water at
a hand placed on the cave wall. The dots would be made by a
similar method of blowing or spitting the primitive paint. Using
their uranium-thorium method, Pike and his colleagues
concluded that the hand stencils were at least 37,300 years old,
and one of the red dots was painted at least 40,800 years ago.
Those dates correspond to the very earliest traces of modern
humans in that part of the world – but they are within a few years
of the last traces of Neanderthals in the region – meaning, with
the minimum age of the art fixed but the actual age unknown,
that the dots and hand prints could conceivably have been made
by Neanderthals. Could it be that Neanderthals, who made
simple tools but had never been linked to symbolic art, were the
creators of the Northern Spain cave art? If so, what would that
tell us about the level of sophistication of Neanderthals, and who
may or may not have been learning what from whom 40,000 or
so years ago?
The thing about symbolic art, as opposed to tools, is that it
represents a different thinking process. And though we can’t
know what these early artists were thinking, leaving your mark
on a cave is not the same as making a club for hunting, or a blade
for cutting, or even making a fire – clearly utilitarian behaviors
that help you to survive. That mark is there for others to see, even
when you are not, or it communicates with spirits, or it perpetuates
your existence long after you have moved on – in this case,
more than 40,000 years after you have gone. Come to think of
it, there’s hardly a paint manufactured today – by AkzoNobel or
any other paint maker – that you would count on for 40,000 years.
Pike is much too careful to claim with any certainty that Neanderthals
were the artists making the hand prints and dots in
Northern Spain. But he leaves the strong impression that he
believes it is the likeliest explanation. To start with, he points out,
“the argument that these things appear so close to the arrival of
humans means they equally could already have existed and been
made by Neanderthals.” Then he explores the three most
plausible explanations.
One is that humans arrived with the tradition of painting
caves in their culture. But then, says Pike, you’ve got to ask a
question: “Where are these pre-European paintings? The age of
cave paintings in Africa is 15,000 years younger than what we
find in Europe. So we begin to think, maybe it’s something that
arose in Europe.” Humans in Africa almost certainly painted their
bodies with ochre pigments 80,000 years ago, but they didn’t
seem to paint caves. Simultaneous with the arrival of humans in
Europe, he adds, they began making symbolic artifacts including
three-dimensional sculptures and musical instruments. So
perhaps, speculates Pike, “something about the European
environment created an acceleration in cultural innovation. And
the difference between Europe and Africa is the presence of
Neanderthals in Europe. So it could have been a response to the
increased competition for resources with Neanderthals.
The third hypothesis is that yes, while humans definitely
painted, they may have just been continuing a tradition that
was started by the Neanderthals. And the argument for that,
apart from this unresolved dating issue, is that we do see
evidence for symbolic behavior among the Neanderthals prior to
the arrival of modern humans. The Neanderthals buried their
dead, used black manganese as a pigment, and based on the
discovery of perforated sea shells, it is likely that they used the
shells to adorn their bodies. “They are not doing anything very
different from what the humans were doing in Africa,” says Pike.
“So it’s not that they didn’t have the cognitive ability or the social
need to create something symbolic.”
So is it possible that Neanderthals have been getting a bad
rap, and just had the bad luck to have lost out – for reasons we’ll
never know – to our human ancestors? “Absolutely,” adds Pike.
“What we are seeing is a level of sophistication in Neanderthals
that wouldn’t look out of place among modern humans. In
terms of their cognitive abilities, we wouldn’t notice any difference.
I suspect that if Neanderthals had persisted they would have
gone on to paint all the elaborate figurative art that modern
humans eventually did. It was just that they weren’t able to cope
with whatever it was about their circumstances that changed
around the time that modern humans appeared.”
Whatever else, Pike clearly has a soft spot in his heart for
the much-maligned Neanderthals. “I think the reason we think
of Neanderthals as knuckle-dragging cavemen is because of
some very bad 1960s films and some Victorian ideas about
human evolution.”