Science News

Of course, this is inevitably subjective; an attempt to read the minds of humans who lived tens of thousands of years ago from the scant markings they left behind - if they were from our species at all. But it's one of the few ways we have to start assembling hypotheses about prehistoric people's beliefs and culture, in the hope that we can one day test them with newer scientific techniques.

The basic questions about early European cave art—who made it and whether they developed artistic talent swiftly or slowly—were thought by many researchers to have been settled long ago: Modern humans made the paintings, crafting brilliant artworks almost as soon as they entered Europe from Africa. Now dating experts working in Spain, using a technique relatively new to archaeology, have pushed dates for the earliest cave art back some 4000 years to at least 41,000 years ago*, raising the possibility that the artists were Neandertals rather than modern humans. And a few researchers say that the study argues for the slow development of artistic skill over tens of thousands of years.