Story at a glance
- Researchers from the University of Göttingen and the Lower Saxony State Office for Heritage unearthed a decorated deer bone at the entrance of Unicorn Cave in the Harz Mountains in northern Germany.
- Researchers believe the uniform parallel lines were intentionally created, suggesting that Neanderthals were capable of artistic expression and symbolic thought.
- The age of the bone is much older than comparable works of art attributed to Neanderthals that date back to about 40,000 years ago, when modern humans arrived in Europe.
An engraved deer bone dating back more than 51,000 years may be the oldest piece of art ever discovered.
Researchers from the University of Göttingen and the Lower Saxony State Office for Heritage have been carrying out excavations at the entrance of Unicorn Cave in the Harz Mountains in northern Germany and successfully uncovered well-preserved cultural artifacts from the Neanderthal period.
Among the discoveries is a prehistoric deer phalanx inscribed with several deep slanting lines. Researchers believe the uniform parallel lines were intentionally created, suggesting that Neanderthals were capable of artistic expression and symbolic thought.
“We quickly realized that these were not marks made from butchering the animal but were clearly decorative,” Dirk Leder, researcher with the Lower Saxony State Office for Heritage, said in a release.
Researchers said the bone likely had to be boiled first to carve the pattern with stone tools, and the work would have taken more than one hour. Using radiocarbon dating technology, scientists determined the bone was more than 51,000 years old and came from a giant deer.
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The age of the bone is much older than comparable works of art attributed to Neanderthals that date back to about 40,000 years ago, when modern humans arrived in Europe.
“The fact that the new find from the Unicorn Cave dates from so long ago shows that Neanderthals were already able to independently produce patterns on bones and probably also communicate using symbols thousands of years before the arrival of modern humans in Europe,” Thomas Terberger, professor from Göttingen University’s Department for Prehistory and Early History, said in a release.
The study was published Monday in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.
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