The Oldest Cave Painting Is As Sophisticated as Modern Painting

The painting on the cave wall is always interesting to be kidnapped. Moreover, wall paintings that have been tens of thousands of years. Latest, researchers from the University of Southampton managed to analyze three cave paintings in Spain.

They believe this is the oldest 64,000-year-old cave painting made by Neanderthals. Neanderthals are members of the extinct genus Homo and are from the Pleistocene and are known as the intelligent and brutal group of men.

However, the paintings on the walls of the caves they make are clear proof that they are also skilled artists painting animals, dots, and also geometric signs.

Not just good at drawing. Researchers also see that they already have the mindset symbolically just like modern humans.

"This is a very interesting finding that shows that Neanderthals are far more intelligent than they have been believed," Dr. Chris Standish lead author of the study dilansir Daily Mirror, Friday (23/2/2018). "The painting we reviewed so far shows that this is the oldest cave art in the world created 20,000 years before modern humans arrived in Europe and Africa, so this painting must have been made by Neanderthals," he continued.

In this study the researchers used a technique called uranium-thorium to find out when the paintings in La Pasiefa, Maltravieso, and Ardales caves were made. Standish explained the three paintings depicting the animals, dots, and geometric marks were painted in black and red.

Interestingly, the results of this painting are made in the same way as modern humans, ie with stencils (assisted pattern prints), handprints, and also carvings. They also argued that the Neanderthals had considered things when painting. Starting from site selection, considering the light source, and mixing the pigment.

Associated with the symbols that exist on the walls of the cave, an anthropologist says that the symbolic material culture has long been only linked to our species, modern humans.

"The emergence of a symbolic material culture is a fundamental threshold in human evolution," says Dr. Dirk Hoffman of Max Plank Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. "Artifacts whose functional value is not so widely used in practice and more use of symbols is a proxy for the fundamental aspects of human cognition as we know it," he added.