Modern humans are not the only species to have produced art, according to a new study that has been described as a “major breakthrough” in our understanding of human evolutionary history.
Researchers have identified the world’s oldest known cave paintings, revealing that they were created by Neanderthals, not modern humans.
An international team of researchers, led by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and the University of Southampton, dated cave paintings at three sites in Spain to more than 64,000 years ago.
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Since the fossil record shows that modern humans only arrived in Europe 20,000 years later, the researchers argue in the paper, published in the journal Science, that these paintings must have been produced by Neanderthals–the only archaic species of humans present on the continent at the time. This is the first evidence that Neanderthals created cave paintings.
Source: Yahoo News
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