carcass feces or symbolic thoughts

In the Harz mountains in Germany, in a rhino cave (deه gua unicorn) The leg bones of a giant deer were found to be about 50,000 years old with ten notches which together form two patterns. According to the researchers who presented their findings this week of Natural environment and development, the pattern of lines is a clear indication of the abstract and symbolic thinking (“conceptual imagination”) of Neanderthals.

It did not appear in this area until after about five thousand years (sane people), which has been found in “early drawings” similar to 100,000 ancient Ocher cuts in South Africa. That Neanderthals also had this kind of expression is not surprising. Originally from Spain abstract rock painting Known 65,000 years ago and associated with Neanderthals. And in several places, including Fomani (Italy) and Krapina (Croatia), Neanderthal fossils were also made. Bird’s claws Found that they were sometimes used as pendants. These images and objects would also demonstrate the symbolic abilities of Neanderthals.

It is not clear whether the pattern of stripes on the leg bones measuring about 5.5 x 4 x 3 cm really represents anything. Giant deer, which can carry antlers with a wingspan of three and a half meters, are relatively rare in the region. This awe and rarity, according to the researchers, led by Dirk Leider (Lower Saxony Heritage Institute) and Thomas Terberger (University of Göttingen), contribute to the object’s ‘symbolic value’, which can also be easily corrected.

praise and criticism

This discovery has been met with both praise and criticism in archeology. in Linked Comments British archaeologist Sylvia Bello (Museum of Natural History, London) writes that she is pleased that the bones from the Cave of the Unicorns add important evidence to the symbolic Neanderthal repertoire. According to him, it is “one of the most complex technical expressions of Neanderthals known today.”

But from Leiden, Will Robrox, professor of archeology and Neanderthal expert, is very skeptical about the interpretation of this line. “That’s too far for me,” he said by phone. “Neanderthals were very successful at hunting and gathering, and capable of many things, but whether they were capable of symbolic and abstract thought, we don’t know.” And the bone certainly wouldn’t contribute to this evidence for symbolic thinking, according to Robbocks.

The German team determined experimentally that the stripes might have been made with small, deep incisions in the pre-cooked bone, which turned out to be quite soft. It is not known whether the old bones were also cooked. Overall, editing could take about an hour and a half, ten minutes per tape, but Robrox wasn’t impressed: “When I looked at this bone, I didn’t see anything special. They said the track was too deep and the pattern was too common to be the result of slaughtering.” Normal, but I doubt it. It was the cut of an animal’s leg bone like that. shoulderTurn around and then again taktaktak. Why they cut the bones is not entirely clear, they probably did it for the bone marrow. In any case, I see no reason to interpret “non-functional”.

Principle problem

But apart from explaining these giant concrete deer bones, Robros also sees a fundamental problem in the path to symbolic thought in prehistoric humans. “Okay, I found the obvious human modification, but then? How do you go from this observation to the next step? That this would be non-functional and thus a pattern, and thus refer to symbolic thinking? Then you build assumptions on assumptions, possibility after possibility, but that becomes the house of the Paper At that time, we focused on our publications on Shell from Trinil, which is 450,000 years ago a man standing Scratched, he was really limited to this conclusion: “This is a regular pattern.” Whether this object was intended and used symbolically, we do not know. Symbols derive their meaning and function from the social and cultural environment, of which we know nothing about this distant past. This is also the case here. I want to go here for a working explanation. ”

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