"I'll have the roast duck with the mango salsa."
Posted on 03/27/2008 2:27:09 PM PDT by blam
Neanderthals wore make-up and liked to chat
09:24 27 March 2008
NewScientist.com news service
Dan Jones
Could Neanderthals speak? The answer may depend on whether they used make-up.
Francesco d'Errico, an archaeologist from the University of Bordeaux, France, has found crafted lumps of pigment – essentially crayons – left behind by Neanderthals across Europe.
He says that Neanderthals, who most likely had pale skin, used these dark pigments to mark their own as well as animal skins. And, since body art is a form of communication, this implies that the Neanderthals could speak, d'Errico says.
Working with Marie Soressi of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, d'Errico has recovered hundreds of blocks of black manganese pigment from two neighbouring sites at Pech de l'Azé in France, which were occupied by Neanderthals. These add to evidence of pigment among Neanderthal from some 39 other sites.
The pigments were not just smeared onto the body like camouflage, d'Errico says, but fashioned into drawing tools.
"The flat, elongated surfaces on the archaeological specimens are consistent, as confirmed experimentally, with producing clearly visible straight black lines, perhaps arranged to produce abstract designs," says d'Errico, who presented his work on 15 March at the Seventh Evolution of Language Conference in Barcelona, Spain.
Essential words
Body painting, argues d'Errico, is a "material proxy" for symbolic communication. What's more, he says, the techniques for making the symbols, and the meaning they carry, would have to be transmitted through language.
And body painting isn't the only proxy associated with Neanderthal remains. Neanderthals adorned their bodies with ornamentation, such as necklaces made from shell beads.
The sorts of beads used by modern humans, and the ornaments they fashioned from them, vary geographically.
(Excerpt) Read more at newscientist.com ...
"I'll have the roast duck with the mango salsa."
Make-up. Hundreds of “crayons”. Must have been an early make-up counter in the women’s department.
Or, I could google “black manganese cave paintings” and find that this was commonly used in cave art/images.
Sheesh. No evidence presented in this article, just making stuff up. You sure Hillary didn’t write this?
Wow beat me by 6 seconds and a clever quote
Nah. Nancy Pelosi is the perfect example.
Duh! There were like, tons of way cool Neandertal Valley girls, hitting the cave malls to the max lookin’ for gnarly dudes, right?
Why would they be pale? Wouldn’t they be tanned because they were outside allot?
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Neandertals are starting to sound like Picts.
“Tina’s here. We’re getting back together!”
Like my wife.
lol
Actually the word slave is derived from Slav, because when the word was coined (in the Byzantine Empire, I think) most slaves were Slavs.
Whaddayknow. Next they'll be telling us the thals liked show tunes.
Article is full of “most likely” “implies” “perhaps”
This guy is full of himself and doesn’t know squat for sure. He should be sayin’, “I might very well be wrong, but I guess this, and I guess that. I have no proof, but I’m impressed by my guessing. And you should be too!”
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