NationalGeographic.com
Ker Than
Published June 14, 2012
In El Castillo cave, hand stencils join a red disk (not pictured) that may be Earth's oldest cave art.
Photograph courtesy Pedro Saura via Science/AAAS
Prehistoric dots and crimson hand stencils on Spanish cave walls are now the world's oldest known cave art, according to new dating results—perhaps the best evidence yet that Neanderthals were Earth's first cave painters.
If that's the case, the discovery narrows the cultural distance between us and Neanderthals—and fuels the argument, at least for one scientist, that the heavy-browed humans were not a separate species but only another race.
"It adds to evidence Neanderthals were not a distinct species," archaeologist says.
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