Fossil Findings Blur Picture Of Art's Birth (Neanderthals?)

Nature ^ | 7-7-2004 | Michael Hopkins

[blam]

"A golden age?"

We (humans) were a lot closer to the big brained Cro-Magnon back then. We've lost a lot of brain capacity and probably IQ since then.

[SunkenCiv]

Does this mean, then, that Neanderthals could have been artists too? After all, they lived in Europe alongside modern humans at the time of art's first flowering. Perhaps, says Gamble, although it seems unlikely given that they are thought to have arrived in Europe around 200,000 years ago, long before the earliest art.

Of course, the likelihood of 200,000 year old art surviving is about as low as art sample that old being accepted for what they are:

'Oldest sculpture' found in Morocco
by Paul Rincon

A 400,000-year-old stone object unearthed in Morocco could be the world's oldest attempt at sculpture... The object, which is around six centimetres in length, is shaped like a human figure, with grooves that suggest a neck, arms and legs. On its surface are flakes of a red substance that could be remnants of paint. The object was found 15 metres below the eroded surface of a terrace on the north bank of the River Draa near the town of Tan-Tan. It was reportedly lying just a few centimetres away from stone handaxes in ground layers dating to the Middle Acheulian period, which lasted from 500,000 to 300,000 years ago... A 200,000-300,000-year-old stone object found at Berekhat Ram in Israel in 1986 has also been the subject of claims that it is a figurine. However, several other researchers later presented evidence to show that it was probably shaped by geological processes.

There's a massive bias against human qualities that are considered "advanced" to be discerned in the leavings of vanished humans of very long ago. The Berekhat Ram object was also shaped by humans. Imagine however that the best known sculpture of our day should lay in the soil for 100s of 1000s of years...

George W. Bush will be reelected by a margin of at least ten per cent

[Grzegorz 246]

I have also known few people who look like the Neanderthals :)

[Bellflower]

Contempory studies have shown that brain size correlates with IQ. Cro-Magnon Man had a larger brain than present day humans...we're breeding down.(?)

I think you are right about that. I wonder which parts of their brains were bigger than ours. I would think that would be important to knowing how smart they were and in what way. I think the horse statue is really nice and doesn't look primitive but very sophisticated.

[blam]

"I think you are right about that. I wonder which parts of their brains were bigger than ours. I would think that would be important to knowing how smart they were and in what way. I think the horse statue is really nice and doesn't look primitive but very sophisticated."

I've made this comment a number of times on different threads, you're the first to ever respond. I'm glad to see I'm not the only one that ponders such things.

[aculeus]

I am Art and I know exactly when I was born.

[SunkenCiv]

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[SunkenCiv]

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