Archaeologica.org

Neanderthals engraved a deer bone more than 50,000 years ago

CNN)A tiny piece of bone that once belonged to a giant Ice Age deer is changing how we think about Neanderthals.
Found in Einhornhöhle cave in northern Germany, the decorated deer phalanx, or toe bone, features an engraved geometric pattern and has been dated, using several techniques, to at least 51,000 years old.
It refreshes the debate over to what extent Neanderthals, the heavily built Stone Age hominins that disappeared about 40,000 years ago, were capable of artistic expression and symbolic thought and whether they developed these skills themselves or through interactions with early modern humans, who first arrived in Europe around this time.

"The phalanx from Einhornhöhle with its stacked offset chevrons represents one of the most complex cultural expressions in Neanderthals known so far," according to a study that published Monday in the journal Nature.

ARDALES, Spain (Reuters) -Neanderthals may have been closer to our species of prehistoric modern human than previously believed after cave paintings found in Spain proved they had a fondness for creating art, one of the authors of a new scientific report said on Sunday.

Red ochre pigment discovered on stalagmites in the Caves of Ardales, near Malaga in southern Spain, were created by Neanderthals about 65,000 years ago, making them possibly the first artists on earth, according to the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) journal.

Modern humans were not inhabiting Europe at the time the cave images were made.

I'm not sure that randomly spitting a colored substance on a parietal surface constitutes art