News Stories

Early Man Loved Art

Cave paintings discovered in Spain in the 1870s have been dated using a new process and found to be 15,000 years older than thought. This makes them 41,000 years old, so old that they may have been made not by modern humans, but by Neanderthals. What makes them so important is that they date from the time when modern humans first came to Europe from Africa.

The paintings depict a red sphere (the sun?) and many handprints made by blowing pigment on a hand that was placed against the cave wall. Scientists dated the Spanish cave paintings by measuring the decay of uranium atoms in the paint.

On Yahoo News, Seth Borenstein quotes anthropologist John Shea as saying, "The people who came in to Europe were very much like us. They used art, they used symbols. They were not like Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble."

Borenstein quotes anthropologist Joao Zilhao as saying that cave paintings are "one of the most exquisite examples of human symbolic behavior, and that's what makes us human."

People didn't always make love (or art), not war, in prehistoric times. Newly discovered ancient human remains reveal that a Cro-Magnon man killed a Neanderthal man with a spear in what is now Iraq between 50,000 and 75,000 years ago. Is this evidence that modern humans killed off the Neanderthals in a sort of war?

In, Jeanna Bryner quotes anthropologist Steven Churchill as saying, "What we've got is a rib injury, with any number of scenarios that could explain it. We're not suggesting there was a blitzkrieg, with modern humans marching across the land and executing the Neanderthals (but) we think the best explanation for this injury is a projectile weapon, and given who had those and who didn't, that implies at least one act of inter-species aggression."

It's war! (or is it?) NOTE: Subscribers can still listen to these shows. The truth is, modern man was made for peace, not war, and the only battle we want to have is one that recruits more subscribers, so we can still be here tomorrow. Won't you join the fight for truth? Subscribe today!

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