28-05-2025
Can YOU see the face? Scientists claim this 'portrait' was created by a Neanderthal 43,000 years ago
As far as art goes, it's not going to win any awards.
But this large pebble might be the earliest known representation of a face, experts say.
The quartz-rich stone was unearthed three years ago in the San Lázaro rock shelter in Segovia, Spain.
The dig team noticed something odd about the pebble – especially the red dot which appears in the centre.
Now, scientists believe it was made by a Neanderthal who dipped their finger in red paint and pressed it against the pebble's edge around 43,000 years ago.
And they think this was done to complete the image of a 'face' – by adding a nose to the peaks and grooves of the stone.
The 'strategic position' of the dot could be evidence of Neanderthals' 'symbolic behaviour', suggesting they had the ability to think about things in an abstract way.
The discovery contributes to the ongoing debate about the now-extinct species' ability to make art, the researchers said.
Professor María de Andrés-Herrero, co-author of the study from the University of Complutense in Madrid, said excavation at the shelter began five years ago and they found this particular stone in 2022, buried below 1.5 metres of sediment from Neanderthal groups.
It had been transported at least 5km from the Eresma River, suggested it was deliberately selected.
'At the beginning we couldn't believe what we were looking at, because there was a bigger stone in comparison to other stones that appeared at this site, with a red dot just in the middle which looked like a human face,' she told BBC's Newsday.
Her team used multi-spectrum analysis to confirm the red dot was made with ochre, a natural clay pigment.
Further investigations indicated the fingerprint – the oldest complete one found to date – was of a male adult.
Speaking from a news conference on the scientific development, Spanish official Gonzalo Santonja said the pebble was the oldest portable object to be painted in the European continent and 'the only object of portable art painted by Neanderthals'.
Researchers believe the mark was not accidental because, according to their findings, the red pigment does not exist naturally in the shelter, meaning it was intentionally brought there.
The idea is that a Neanderthal found the stone, 'which caught his attention because of its fissures, and he intentionally made his mark with an ochre stain in the middle of the object', they explained.
The study, published in the journal Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, reads: 'This is not merely daubed but placed, with a specificity that makes coincidence deeply improbable.
'The fact that the pebble was selected because of its appearance and then marked with ochre shows that there was a human mind capable of symbolising, imagining, idealising and projecting his or her thoughts on an object.
'Furthermore, in this case, we can propose that three fundamental cognitive processes are involved in creating art: the mental conception of an image, deliberate communication, and the attribution of meaning.
'These are the basic elements characterising symbolism and, also prehistoric – non-figurative – art.
'Furthermore, this pebble could thus represent one of the oldest known abstractions of a human face in the prehistoric record.'
Other realistic depictions of faces come much later in the historical record.
One of the most striking is the Venus of Brassempouy, a fragment of an 25,000-year-old ivory figurine made by modern humans and discovered in 1894 in a cave in southwest France.
Last year, archaeologists uncovered 'surprising' new evidence that suggested Neanderthals were smarter than previously believed.
Excavations near the Pyrenees mountains in Spain produced over 29,000 artifacts, including stone tools and animal bones, which proposed the ancient hominin primates were skilled and intelligent hunters.
The animal bones uncovered at the site showed our ancestors planned their meals based on the surrounding environment and developed tools specific to killing large animals like bison or smaller ones like rabbits.
'The findings revealed Neanderthals were able to adapt to their environment, challenging the archaic humans' reputation as slow-footed cavemen and shedding light on their survival and hunting skills,' researchers said.
'Our surprising findings at Abric Pizarro show how adaptable Neanderthals were,' lead author Dr Sofia Samper Carro added.
'The animal bones we have recovered indicate that they were successfully exploiting the surrounding fauna, hunting red deer, horses and bison, but also eating freshwater turtles and rabbits, which imply a degree of planning rarely considered for Neanderthals.'
A close relative of modern humans, Neanderthals went extinct 40,000 years ago
The Neanderthals were a close human ancestor that mysteriously died out around 40,000 years ago.
The species lived in Africa with early humans for millennia before moving across to Europe around 300,000 years ago.
They were later joined by humans, who entered Eurasia around 48,000 years ago.
These were the original 'cavemen', historically thought to be dim-witted and brutish compared to modern humans.
In recent years though, and especially over the last decade, it has become increasingly apparent we've been selling Neanderthals short.
A growing body of evidence points to a more sophisticated and multi-talented kind of 'caveman' than anyone thought possible.
It now seems likely that Neanderthals had told, buried their dead, painted and even interbred with humans.
They used body art such as pigments and beads, and they were the very first artists, with Neanderthal cave art (and symbolism) in Spain apparently predating the earliest modern human art by some 20,000 years.
