The engraved bone of a giant deer ( Megaloceros giganteus ) dating back 51,000 years is the oldest ornament in the world and shows that Neanderthals were already very concerned with aesthetics. The bone was skillfully engraved with carefully spaced and stacked markings in a chevron pattern , according to the Lower Saxony State Service for Cultural Heritage in Hannover, Germany, where this artifact has been discovered.
Our extinct cousins had advanced cognitive abilities
Specifically, the ancient ornament was discovered near the entrance to the Unicorn Cave in the foothills of the Harz Mountains in Germany by a team of archaeologists and radiocarbon dated. It had a flat base to hold it upright, which suggests that it was a decorative item, something that takes us away from that rough, crude image we had of Neanderthals (that all-muscle, no-brained caveman) and that we associated more with modern humans.
Previous evidence for symbolic and artistic traits in Neanderthals has been scant, but these new findings raise interesting questions about how complex the behavior of our hominin cousins might really have been.
The fact that Neanderthals created works of art 50,000 years ago shows that they had a clear understanding of abstract thinking and complex behavior, since creating such artistically arranged incisions in bone requires a high level of conceptual imagination and cognitive ability. There are six individual lines carved into the bones, suggesting that there must have been an idea of combining them consistently. After all, we haven’t seen our closest living relative, the chimpanzee, engage in this kind of behavior.
In addition, the bone would have been boiled before being carved to make it softer to carving, making it a totally premeditated work of art. The notches carved into the bone are between 1 cm and 2.5 cm long and set at a 90-degree angle , meaning “they are not butcher cuts,” the authors clarify.
A remarkable brain?
“It is an outstanding example of his cognitive ability. The etched bone is unique in the context of Neanderthals. What makes the article so interesting is that the pattern is very clear and the engravings are very deep. It would have taken about 90 minutes to carve it, ”explains Dirk Leder, leader of the work published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.
Did the artistic abilities of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens evolve in parallel? Or is it an indication of shared knowledge between close relatives?
The researchers support the hypothesis that they had the manual and intellectual abilities necessary to produce such an artifact independently of any modern human influence, arguing that archaeological evidence suggests that Homo sapiens reached Central Europe several millennia after the date on which it the deer bone was engraved.
Referencia: Leder, D., Hermann, R., Hüls, M. et al. A 51,000-year-old engraved bone reveals Neanderthals’ capacity for symbolic behaviour. Nat Ecol Evol (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-021-01487-z
