The first confirmed Neanderthal art These 40,000 year old abstract marks in the dolomitic limestone of Gibraltar are the oldest European art, and it wasn't made by us. About a year ago we reported on a controversial hypothesis based on new dating methods that suggests our Neanderthal cousins may have had a hand in the world renowned cave paintings at Altamira in Spain (see http://tinyurl.com/lycavqd). A series of marks found in Gorhams cave, in a layer associated with typical Neanderthal tools (a style known as Mousterian after a town in France) seem to be the first definite proof of Neanderthal artistic ability, a possibly that has been bitterly contested by many experts until now. They fought a valiant rearguard action against the possibility that our might have spoken, until a Neanderthal hyoid bone was discovered (the floating bone in the neck from which the larynx, containing the vocal chords, is suspended). Similarly the possibility that they might have been capable of art or abstract thought has been rejected since the earliest days of human palaeontology. Neanderthal seems to have evolved separately in Europe from Homo erectus, during the last half million years, while Homo sapiens was simultaneously evolving in Africa. As well as being our cousins, they were also ancestors to some of us (seehttp://tinyurl.com/mzm2h3e for more on out genetic links). Researchers posited that their stupidity was the reason that they were supplanted by our good selves, but recent research suggests small communities and low genetic diversity may have been the actual cause (see http://tinyurl.com/kfogbqq). The marks were discovered in 2012 on a small ledge a hundred metres in, and measure about 3 square metres. There is no clue as to what meaning the minds and hand that created them might have intended. The stratigraphy seems conclusive, the sediments burying the marks were undisturbed in the intervening millennia, and the tool assemblage within that sediment (overlying the marks) is clearly Mousterian, of a type never found in Homo sapiens sites. The dating proves that they were made long before we were in southern Spain. Loz Image credit: Stuart Finlayson http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/02/neanderthal-abstract-art-found-gibraltar-cave http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/09/140901-neanderthal-engraving-gibraltar-science/ http://news.discovery.com/human/evolution/could-cave-carving-be-first-neanderthal-art-140902.htm http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-28967746 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/neanderthal-art-created-40000-years-ago-found-in-gibraltar-cave-9705810.html