> For scale, this reaches back in time roughly 10-15% of the way to when Homo Sapiens first emerged. Ah! But only if we're talking about anatomically modern ho

> For scale, this reaches back in time roughly 10-15% of the way to when Homo Sapiens first emerged. Ah! But only if we're talking about anatomically modern homo sapiens. Behaviorally modern humans emerged much later, and in fact one of the most definitive signs of behaviorally modern humans is the existence of cave paintings! Defining behavioral modernity is an endless debate, but a key part of it is symbolic thought - the ability to think with abstractions and manipulate concepts. Representing a group of pigs on a wall in pigment (or even considering doing so a meaningful activity) demands powers of abstraction that humans acquired only recently, in the last 50,000 years, most likely via the development of language. This is ultimately why finding the earliest cave painting is such a big deal. It shows that in this place there were people who had crossed that behavioral chasm and in some sense were more like us. For more on this subject, Masters of the Planet: The Search for Our Human Origins by Ian Tattersall (2012) is a wonderful read.