Neanderthals painted just like us

摘要

OUR extinct Neanderthal cousins were the first known cave artists in the world. Many European caves contain prehistoric art, all of which has been attributed to modern humans. There have been past claims of Neanderthal paintings, but the evidence was weak. Alistair Pike at the University of Southampton, UK, and his colleagues have been studying prehistoric art in the Monte Castillo caves in northern Spain for a decade. In 2012, they reported that a red dot in one cave, El Castillo, was at least 40,800 years old - when Neanderthals were disappearing from Europe and modern humans arrived.