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You might also find the red ladder from la pasiega cave in Spain of interest. It's 65,000 years old which means it was painted by Neanderthals (based on current

You might also find the red ladder from la pasiega cave in Spain of interest. It's 65,000 years old which means it was painted by Neanderthals (based on current knowledge). It blows my mind to think that another human species walked on this same planet and drew this art. To me, that's as profound as the discovery, if ever, of another intelligent species in the universe. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/feb/22/neanderthals-not-humans-were-first-artists-on-earth-experts-claim https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/feb/22/neanderthals... Also worth considering, is the art of Chauvet Cave and the excellent Werner Herzog documentary about it. The artistry is incredible. It stands up to anything we could draw today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chauvet_Cave https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chauvet_Cave This art from when I last read is considered to have been done around the time that Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals were both present in Europe. It's incredible to see that these people who lived in ancient France where drawing wild animals such as Rhinos and Lions.

blotter_paper 7y ago
> It's 65,000 years old which means it was painted by a Neanderthal. I'm not saying it wasn't made by a Neanderthal, and I don't think it's unlikely that Neanderthals made cave paintings, but there were human expeditions out of Africa during that time[0]. > To me, that's as profound as the discovery, if ever, of another intelligent species in the universe. For me, the fact that Neanderthals are so closely related to us removes some of the amazement. If octopuses were making paintings on the ocean floor, that would seem more comparable to finding aliens doing the same thing. [0]: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/01/oldest-human-outside-africa-discovered-fossil-jaw-israel-science/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/01/oldest-human...
- danieltillett 7y ago
  What makes Neanderthals so interesting is they split from sub-Saharan humans long before what we now call modern humans evolved. That and the fact they still walk amongst us - everyone who is not of sub-Saharan decent is part Neanderthal.
  - Taniwha 7y ago
    To me the funniest thing is that "neanderthal" became a word to describe stupid people, now it turns out that the white european genetic heritage that the stupid white supremacists are so proud of is essentially "neanderthal", which seems somewhat fitting to me
    - jtx22 7y ago
      White supremacists are much smarter than you.
  - tamizhar 7y ago
    > everyone who is not of sub-Saharan decent is part Neanderthal. Has this been proven? I mean both conditions, ie: that everyone of sub-Saharan descent having no Neanderthal DNA? Also, the percentages are really low, eg: my friend from China did 23andme and his Neanderthal percentage was 0.1%.
    - danieltillett 7y ago
      I suppose in theory that there might be some non-sub-Saharan people that don’t have Neanderthal DNA just by chance, but it is unlikely. There are also people that have far more than the average (2-3%) - for every person like your friend there are other with way more.
      - thrax 7y ago
        4% here!
  - ACow_Adonis 7y ago
    As a non-biologist, am I the only one who had a claim like this raise my eyebrow in skepticism? What does it mean to be a separate species if you're interbreeding in a significant way? What does it mean to have n٪ Neanderthal DNA if that DNA is found in a significant proportion of "modern humans"?
- mouzogu 7y ago
  I agree. I've updated the first point. A lot of this is based on our ever changing knowledge of our history with new discoveries current understanding seems to change almost every day. It's not so much about them being closely related. Rather it's the idea that a mind so distant from my own, that lived a life so alien from my own drew that. I find that deeply fascinating. The fact that they are lost to us just makes them seem even more interesting, the fact that we can never really know, we can never really understand why they drew that, why they took the time out of their harsh and unforgiving lives to draw some lines on a wall that one day, a different species would ponder over.
  - blotter_paper 7y ago
    > It's not so much about them being closely related. Rather it's the idea that a mind so distant from my own, that lived a life so alien from my own drew that. I think I'm using the former as a proxy for the latter. If Neanderthals were more distantly related then I would imagine their minds to be more distant from my own. If less, then less. I imagine that my mind is much closer to that of a chimpanzee than that of an octopus, so I would be less amazed by similar behavior in the former than the latter. This isn't to say that I find no amazement in what little we know of Neanderthal culture, just that it's nowhere near the amazement I would find in seeing a truly alien culture. They're on the same continuum, but not at the same point on that continuum.
  - hutzlibu 7y ago
    "It's not so much about them being closely related. Rather it's the idea that a mind so distant from my own, that lived a life so alien from my own drew that. I find that deeply fascinating." Well, genetically they were not much different, close enough for interbreeding. But their mind ... and culture was probably very alien to us.
    - danieltillett 7y ago
      There is enough Neanderthal DNA in the modern non-sub-Saharan human population (we all have a few percent Neanderthal DNA, but that few percent is different in each of us) that some people probably think like Neanderthals.
ufo 7y ago
There is a 3D version of Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams and it is one of the best uses of 3D that I've seen in a film. Being able to see the depth in the walls literally adds another dimension to the experience.
- minitoar 7y ago
  I also enjoy the meta here of using a technically sophisticated visual medium to portray the oldest, maybe most primitive medium.
  - tracyshaun 7y ago
    Makes me wonder if there's a project to use "primitive" painting techniques from 40K years ago to portray modern day activities...
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
buckminster 7y ago
There is a Neanderthal flute in the museum in Ljubljana. I found that even more astonishing than the paintings. They didn't just daub, they made music! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divje_Babe_Flute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divje_Babe_Flute
- tombh 7y ago
  A 43k year old flute! I never knew. That is amazing indeed!
jacobwilliamroy 7y ago
>people who lived in ancient France were drawing wild animals such as rhinos and lions. My guess is that when Homo sapien met the people who live in caves, they got to talking about africa and one human was trying to explain rhinocerous and after a while they got frustrated and said "no you're still not getting it. Give me that ink over there, I'll show you." And then they drew the rhino and also a group of people, for scale.
- arkitaip 7y ago
  Or maybe they were enjoying a game of pictionary.
  - crooked-v 7y ago
    On that note, it's kind of fascinating to consider that ancient humans (both homo sapiens and other human species) almost certainly had their own variations of currently universal party games like charades, would you rather, etc.
- jboggan 7y ago
  Or maybe they were just drawing the extant megafauna that had not yet been hunted to extinction [0]. 0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woolly_rhinoceros https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woolly_rhinoceros
- Mikeb85 7y ago
  There used to be rhinos and lions in Europe...
newnewpdro 7y ago
> To me, that's as profound as the discovery, if ever, of another intelligent species in the universe. Err, what? Edit: To elaborate, this strikes me as completely ridiculous. We're only talking about thousands of years, this is not a long time. Just imagine if every person living in the united states alone were born sequentially, and that the average lifetime were 60 years. There's over 300M people in this country alone. That's what, 18B years? Even hundreds of thousands of years isn't a long time. If anything's profound it's how quickly things have drastically changed. Not how impressive it is to find art in caves from less than a million years ago.
- gbear605 7y ago
  Person years is a bad metric to compare to time years. You should compare the 18B person years to the about 5 trillion[1] person years that have existed since these cave paintings. Now that’s truly a long time, and shows how slowly these changes really have been. To get from those cave paintings to where we are now would take trillions of years for one person. [1]: ~100B people ever[2] * ~50 years of life span = ~5T person years. [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population
andrewflnr 7y ago
Dang, you weren't kidding about Chauvet cave. Some of those photos are strikingly beautiful.
Mikeb85 7y ago
"Another human species". Europeans are part Neanderthal, so it's not another species, just some of our ancestors.
- throwawaymath 7y ago
  No, neanderthals are scientifically considered a different species from homo sapiens. It's not uncommon for two related but different species to be capable of interbreeding with viable offspring. That doesn't detract from distinct speciation.
  - samatman 7y ago
    This was, perhaps is, a topic of vigorous debate. You will find in various sources, the names homo sapiens neanderthalensis and homo neanderthalensis, it would appear Wikipedia prefers the latter, which is of course conclusive. What a species is, exactly, is the biggest spook in biology.
  - nradov 7y ago
    In the case of such closely related populations the distinction is rather meaningless. We're arguing over semantics, not genetics. Calling Neanderthals a different species doesn't change what happened.
  - Mikeb85 7y ago
    Dunno, one of the commonly accepted definitions of species is the largest group of organisms that can produce fertile offspring. Using this definition, Neanderthals, Sapiens, Denisovans, etc..., are definitely the same species. And if they're not the same species, it presents an interesting problem, as it would mean many humans today aren't 100% the same 'species'...
    - throwawaymath 7y ago
      As a counterpoint that would imply wolves, coyote and dogs, donkeys and horses, lions and tigers, house cats and bobcats, grizzly bears and polar bears, etc. are all the same species, because they are all capable of interbreeding with viable offspring. Taxonomy is not a settled question, and I'm not trying to imply it is. But neanderthals exhibited significantly different traits from humans. There is probably a case to be made that modern homo sapiens are a subspecies of neanderthals and another hominid. Hybridization can (and frequently does) result in new species distinct from the forebear species, after many generations. But speciation doesn't preclude interbreeding.
java-man 7y ago
my wife made copies of some of the Chauvet cave paintings: https://www.etsy.com/shop/ElenaGoryachev https://www.etsy.com/shop/ElenaGoryachev
samatman 7y ago
The European Lion lasted quite awhile. Take the Greek legends of Hercules defeating the Nemean Lion, Nemea is in present-day Greece.
hanoz 7y ago
> It blows my mind to think that another human species walked on this same planet and drew this art. To me, that's as profound as the discovery, if ever, of another intelligent species in the universe. Well, it's certainly something to think about, but I have to say that it is surely nowhere, absolutely nowhere at all near as mind blowingly profound as the discovery of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe would be.
- nradov 7y ago
  Discovery of intelligent alien life would cause a brief flurry of interest. And then most everyone would lose interest when they realize the aliens are too far away for any type of meaningful interaction.
  - hanoz 7y ago
    I disagree, I think it would completely redefine the human experience forever.
puranjay 7y ago
Neanderthals were a distinct human species in the way that lions and tigers are distinct species. They are distinct, but not in any particularly remarkable way

blotter_paper 7y ago

> It's 65,000 years old which means it was painted by a Neanderthal. I'm not saying it wasn't made by a Neanderthal, and I don't think it's unlikely that Neanderthals made cave paintings, but there were human expeditions out of Africa during that time[0]. > To me, that's as profound as the discovery, if ever, of another intelligent species in the universe. For me, the fact that Neanderthals are so closely related to us removes some of the amazement. If octopuses were making paintings on the ocean floor, that would seem more comparable to finding aliens doing the same thing. [0]: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/01/oldest-human-outside-africa-discovered-fossil-jaw-israel-science/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/01/oldest-human...

danieltillett 7y ago
What makes Neanderthals so interesting is they split from sub-Saharan humans long before what we now call modern humans evolved. That and the fact they still walk amongst us - everyone who is not of sub-Saharan decent is part Neanderthal.
- Taniwha 7y ago
  To me the funniest thing is that "neanderthal" became a word to describe stupid people, now it turns out that the white european genetic heritage that the stupid white supremacists are so proud of is essentially "neanderthal", which seems somewhat fitting to me
  - jtx22 7y ago
    White supremacists are much smarter than you.
- tamizhar 7y ago
  > everyone who is not of sub-Saharan decent is part Neanderthal. Has this been proven? I mean both conditions, ie: that everyone of sub-Saharan descent having no Neanderthal DNA? Also, the percentages are really low, eg: my friend from China did 23andme and his Neanderthal percentage was 0.1%.
  - danieltillett 7y ago
    I suppose in theory that there might be some non-sub-Saharan people that don’t have Neanderthal DNA just by chance, but it is unlikely. There are also people that have far more than the average (2-3%) - for every person like your friend there are other with way more.
    - thrax 7y ago
      4% here!
- ACow_Adonis 7y ago
  As a non-biologist, am I the only one who had a claim like this raise my eyebrow in skepticism? What does it mean to be a separate species if you're interbreeding in a significant way? What does it mean to have n٪ Neanderthal DNA if that DNA is found in a significant proportion of "modern humans"?
mouzogu 7y ago
I agree. I've updated the first point. A lot of this is based on our ever changing knowledge of our history with new discoveries current understanding seems to change almost every day. It's not so much about them being closely related. Rather it's the idea that a mind so distant from my own, that lived a life so alien from my own drew that. I find that deeply fascinating. The fact that they are lost to us just makes them seem even more interesting, the fact that we can never really know, we can never really understand why they drew that, why they took the time out of their harsh and unforgiving lives to draw some lines on a wall that one day, a different species would ponder over.
- blotter_paper 7y ago
  > It's not so much about them being closely related. Rather it's the idea that a mind so distant from my own, that lived a life so alien from my own drew that. I think I'm using the former as a proxy for the latter. If Neanderthals were more distantly related then I would imagine their minds to be more distant from my own. If less, then less. I imagine that my mind is much closer to that of a chimpanzee than that of an octopus, so I would be less amazed by similar behavior in the former than the latter. This isn't to say that I find no amazement in what little we know of Neanderthal culture, just that it's nowhere near the amazement I would find in seeing a truly alien culture. They're on the same continuum, but not at the same point on that continuum.
- hutzlibu 7y ago
  "It's not so much about them being closely related. Rather it's the idea that a mind so distant from my own, that lived a life so alien from my own drew that. I find that deeply fascinating." Well, genetically they were not much different, close enough for interbreeding. But their mind ... and culture was probably very alien to us.
  - danieltillett 7y ago
    There is enough Neanderthal DNA in the modern non-sub-Saharan human population (we all have a few percent Neanderthal DNA, but that few percent is different in each of us) that some people probably think like Neanderthals.

ufo 7y ago

There is a 3D version of Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams and it is one of the best uses of 3D that I've seen in a film. Being able to see the depth in the walls literally adds another dimension to the experience.

minitoar 7y ago
I also enjoy the meta here of using a technically sophisticated visual medium to portray the oldest, maybe most primitive medium.
- tracyshaun 7y ago
  Makes me wonder if there's a project to use "primitive" painting techniques from 40K years ago to portray modern day activities...

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

buckminster 7y ago

There is a Neanderthal flute in the museum in Ljubljana. I found that even more astonishing than the paintings. They didn't just daub, they made music! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divje_Babe_Flute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divje_Babe_Flute

tombh 7y ago
A 43k year old flute! I never knew. That is amazing indeed!

jacobwilliamroy 7y ago

>people who lived in ancient France were drawing wild animals such as rhinos and lions. My guess is that when Homo sapien met the people who live in caves, they got to talking about africa and one human was trying to explain rhinocerous and after a while they got frustrated and said "no you're still not getting it. Give me that ink over there, I'll show you." And then they drew the rhino and also a group of people, for scale.

arkitaip 7y ago
Or maybe they were enjoying a game of pictionary.
- crooked-v 7y ago
  On that note, it's kind of fascinating to consider that ancient humans (both homo sapiens and other human species) almost certainly had their own variations of currently universal party games like charades, would you rather, etc.
jboggan 7y ago
Or maybe they were just drawing the extant megafauna that had not yet been hunted to extinction [0]. 0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woolly_rhinoceros https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woolly_rhinoceros
Mikeb85 7y ago
There used to be rhinos and lions in Europe...

newnewpdro 7y ago

> To me, that's as profound as the discovery, if ever, of another intelligent species in the universe. Err, what? Edit: To elaborate, this strikes me as completely ridiculous. We're only talking about thousands of years, this is not a long time. Just imagine if every person living in the united states alone were born sequentially, and that the average lifetime were 60 years. There's over 300M people in this country alone. That's what, 18B years? Even hundreds of thousands of years isn't a long time. If anything's profound it's how quickly things have drastically changed. Not how impressive it is to find art in caves from less than a million years ago.

gbear605 7y ago
Person years is a bad metric to compare to time years. You should compare the 18B person years to the about 5 trillion[1] person years that have existed since these cave paintings. Now that’s truly a long time, and shows how slowly these changes really have been. To get from those cave paintings to where we are now would take trillions of years for one person. [1]: ~100B people ever[2] * ~50 years of life span = ~5T person years. [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population

andrewflnr 7y ago

Dang, you weren't kidding about Chauvet cave. Some of those photos are strikingly beautiful.

Mikeb85 7y ago

"Another human species". Europeans are part Neanderthal, so it's not another species, just some of our ancestors.

throwawaymath 7y ago
No, neanderthals are scientifically considered a different species from homo sapiens. It's not uncommon for two related but different species to be capable of interbreeding with viable offspring. That doesn't detract from distinct speciation.
- samatman 7y ago
  This was, perhaps is, a topic of vigorous debate. You will find in various sources, the names homo sapiens neanderthalensis and homo neanderthalensis, it would appear Wikipedia prefers the latter, which is of course conclusive. What a species is, exactly, is the biggest spook in biology.
- nradov 7y ago
  In the case of such closely related populations the distinction is rather meaningless. We're arguing over semantics, not genetics. Calling Neanderthals a different species doesn't change what happened.
- Mikeb85 7y ago
  Dunno, one of the commonly accepted definitions of species is the largest group of organisms that can produce fertile offspring. Using this definition, Neanderthals, Sapiens, Denisovans, etc..., are definitely the same species. And if they're not the same species, it presents an interesting problem, as it would mean many humans today aren't 100% the same 'species'...
  - throwawaymath 7y ago
    As a counterpoint that would imply wolves, coyote and dogs, donkeys and horses, lions and tigers, house cats and bobcats, grizzly bears and polar bears, etc. are all the same species, because they are all capable of interbreeding with viable offspring. Taxonomy is not a settled question, and I'm not trying to imply it is. But neanderthals exhibited significantly different traits from humans. There is probably a case to be made that modern homo sapiens are a subspecies of neanderthals and another hominid. Hybridization can (and frequently does) result in new species distinct from the forebear species, after many generations. But speciation doesn't preclude interbreeding.

java-man 7y ago

my wife made copies of some of the Chauvet cave paintings: https://www.etsy.com/shop/ElenaGoryachev https://www.etsy.com/shop/ElenaGoryachev

samatman 7y ago

The European Lion lasted quite awhile. Take the Greek legends of Hercules defeating the Nemean Lion, Nemea is in present-day Greece.

hanoz 7y ago

> It blows my mind to think that another human species walked on this same planet and drew this art. To me, that's as profound as the discovery, if ever, of another intelligent species in the universe. Well, it's certainly something to think about, but I have to say that it is surely nowhere, absolutely nowhere at all near as mind blowingly profound as the discovery of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe would be.

nradov 7y ago
Discovery of intelligent alien life would cause a brief flurry of interest. And then most everyone would lose interest when they realize the aliens are too far away for any type of meaningful interaction.
- hanoz 7y ago
  I disagree, I think it would completely redefine the human experience forever.

puranjay 7y ago

Neanderthals were a distinct human species in the way that lions and tigers are distinct species. They are distinct, but not in any particularly remarkable way