A Spanish cave discovery made me flip on early human art

I always figured early humans like Neanderthals only cared about survival tools. Then I read about those red ochre hand prints found in caves, dated to their time. It hit me that they might have had a symbolic side I never considered. What other recent digs are changing old ideas about early cultures?

3 comments

3 Comments

fisher.felix17h ago

Remembered my friend visiting a natural history museum last year. He was telling me about a display of stone tools from a dig in Africa. They had these patterned grooves cut into them, not for use but just for design. It made him stop and realize, like you mentioned @kevin_lee75 with the shells, that the urge to make things look nice is way older than we thought. He said it felt weird to picture someone taking that extra time, just for the sake of it, so long ago.

james_price17h ago

That point from @fisher.felix about the grooves being just for design is interesting, but maybe it's not that weird. Look at the cave paintings in France, those weren't for use either. It seems like for early people, making a tool useful and making it look a certain way weren't separate jobs. Decorating a spear thrower or carving a pattern might have been part of making it right, not extra work. So maybe that urge isn't about taking extra time for no reason, but about the reason being different than we think. It changes how we picture their whole day.

kevin_lee7519h ago

Reading about your flip on Neanderthal art made me laugh at my own dumb assumption that they were just basic toolmakers. Turns out digs in Indonesia showing shell jewelry from way back are shaking up the timeline for symbolic thinking. It's cool how each find chips away at our simple stories about the past.