Latest news with #DavidÁlvarez-Alonso
Yahoo
30-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
This May Be The World's Oldest Human Fingerprint, And That's Not All
Around 43,000 years ago, a Neanderthal dipped their finger in ocher and stamped the very center of a pebble. This one small marking on this one small stone still exists to this day. It was discovered in 2022 in the San Lázaro rock shelter of Central Spain, and it may be the world's oldest complete human fingerprint. More than that, it could also be one of the oldest known artistic representations of a human face. That latter claim remains controversial, but the red fingerprint does sit in the very middle of the pebble, below two divots and above another – an artistic 'boop' right where a nose should be. On site, the face immediately jumped out to archaeologists, led by David Álvarez-Alonso at the Complutense University of Madrid. If the team is right, this stone was probably carried from the nearby river to the San Lázaro rock shelter. The Neanderthal who selected it must have seen something special in its shape to take it home and paint it with ocher, especially as it seems to serve no functional purpose and no other ocher has been found at the site. "The ocher dot does not appear as a shapeless addition or a mere stain," explain the authors, "rather, it contains a fingerprint that implies the pigment has been applied specifically with the tip of a finger soaked in pigment." There's always a chance the print was made by accident. But Álvarez Alonso and colleagues think it is more likely the marking was an intentional act of imagination and symbolic art – a skill we have only just started giving Neanderthals credit for. "If we had a pebble with a red dot on it that was done 5,000 years ago by Homo sapiens, no one would hesitate to call it portable art," Álvarez Alonso told Sam Jones at The Guardian. "But associating Neanderthals with art generates a lot of debate. I think there's sometimes an unintentional prejudice." The study was published in Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences. Robot Hand Could Help Scientists Decode Why Tickling Makes Us Giggle Earliest Known Whale Bone Tools Discovered in Europe's Museum Collections Are Dogs Replacing Babies in Countries With Declining Birth Rates?
USA Today
29-05-2025
- Science
- USA Today
A 43,000 year-old work of art? Neanderthals may have painted portraits.
A 43,000 year-old work of art? Neanderthals may have painted portraits. An ancient granite pebble included indentations resembling a face, its nose a red dot. A study says it may have had symbolic significance. Show Caption Hide Caption Tourist climbs sacred Mayan pyramid in Mexico A German tourist was escorted from an archaeological complex when he climbed and attempted to evade security at a Mayan pyramid in Mexico. An eight-inch rock found at an archaeological site in central Spain is the latest indication that Neanderthals were making art long before modern humans, further eroding stereotypes of the extinct species as dull-witted. The July 2022 discovery at San Lázaro rock-shelter in Segovia, described as 'exceptional' by the authors of a paper published May 25 in the journal Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, dates back 43,000 years – long before modern humans inhabited the area. The quartz-rich granite pebble included indentations resembling a face, its nose a Rudolph-like red dot visible at center. Significantly, the spot didn't appear to be random, instead bearing evidence indicating it was the product of someone's imagination. 'The ocher dot does not appear as a shapeless addition or a mere stain,' wrote lead author David Álvarez-Alonso of Madrid's Complutense University. 'Rather, it contains a fingerprint that implies the pigment has been applied specifically with the tip of a finger soaked in pigment.' The authors consider the artifact a nonutilitarian visual symbol – in other words, not a tool but an altered or marked object with possible symbolic significance. While its age makes it impossible to draw any definitive conclusions, they wrote, the stone could 'represent one of the oldest known abstractions of a human face in the prehistoric record." 'The fact that the pebble was selected because of its appearance and then marked with ocher shows that there was a human mind capable of symbolizing, imagining, idealizing and projecting his or her thoughts on an object,' they wrote. An expanding Neanderthal portfolio This isn't the first time a Neanderthal fingerprint has been pinpointed, the authors noted. A partial one, likely made by a thumb, was found on resin discovered in Germany in 1963. However, the discovery offers yet another dab of evidence suggesting that Neanderthals made art. In 2018, The Guardian reported archaeological findings in Spain indicating that Neanderthals used red ocher to produce shapes and symbols on cave walls 65,000 years ago. The species flourished from roughly 350,000 to 40,000 years ago, and studies indicate they and modern humans may have gone their separate ways as long as 800,000 years ago. Increasing evidence has indicated that Neanderthals were more advanced than once thought. In 2020, a paper published in the journal Science said evidence found in a coastal cave in Portugal suggested Neanderthals were skilled fishermen who regularly consumed seafood as part of their diet. Until then, only humans (Homo sapiens) had been thought to look to the sea as a food source. Meanwhile, the discovery of 176,000-year-old structures deep within a French cave hinted at Neanderthals' ability to use fire and work in groups. A 2016 article in Nature described strange, circular edifices constructed in an interior space 360 yards removed from daylight; the formations were made from uniform stalagmites, many of them cut to size. With the earliest known human-built structures 40,000 years old, the cave formations not only predate such activity by Homo sapiens but also show Neanderthal utilization of deep caves began much earlier as well. According to the study, the earliest indications of modern humans using deep caves are less than 42,000 years old.
NBC News
28-05-2025
- Science
- NBC News
With the touch of a finger, a Neanderthal may have made art
Researchers in Spain say they have found evidence that Neanderthals were capable of creating art — challenging the idea that art began with the modern humans who succeeded them. The canvas was a quartz-rich granite pebble that was excavated from a rock shelter in central Spain in 2022, in a layer dating back between 42,000 and 43,000 years. Measuring more than 8 inches long, the pebble has curves and indentations that make it resemble a human face. In the middle of its surface is a single red dot, right where a nose would be, researchers said in a study published Saturday in the journal Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, adding that it appeared to be a non-utilitarian object rather than a tool. 'From the outset we could tell it was peculiar,' said David Álvarez-Alonso, lead author of the paper. Analysis showed that the red dot consisted of ochre, a natural earth pigment. The next step was to determine how it got there. While not visible to the naked eye, the red dot was confirmed by Spanish forensic police to be a fingerprint, leaving 'no doubt' that it was applied to the stone intentionally by a finger dipped in ochre, Álvarez-Alonso said in an email on Tuesday. The researchers postulate that the Neanderthal, who based on the fingerprint was possibly an adult male, perceived the pebble as resembling a face — a psychological phenomenon known as pareidolia — and was inspired to complete the depiction, creating 'one of the oldest known abstractions of a human face in the prehistoric record.' 'It would be a clear act of symbolization — apparently very simple, yet meaningful,' Álvarez-Alonso said. The discovery is 'doubly exceptional' since it's the 'most complete' Neanderthal fingerprint identified to date, apart from a partial one previously found in Germany, the researchers said. Neanderthals, a distinct species that went extinct around 40,000 years ago, lived alongside early modern humans in Europe, Asia and the Middle East for at least part of their existence. Characterized by a large nose and relatively short and stocky bodies, the species is very closely related to humans, or Homo sapiens. The remains of Neanderthals do not show clear evidence of lower intelligence than modern humans, some scientists have argued. The stone is 'one of a small but growing number of discoveries that point to the existence of symbolic behavior among Neanderthals,' Álvarez-Alonso said. However, it's 'clearly an isolated object, with no known parallels' that can be used for comparison, he added. 'We should not try to draw direct analogies between the Neanderthal and sapiens worlds,' Álvarez-Alonso said, as Neanderthals did not create a visual symbolic system as complex and diverse as the one developed by Homo sapiens. 'This pebble doesn't solve the mystery, but it offers one more clue suggesting the presence of a complex mind — one capable of producing symbols,' he said.
