"Neanderthal Art" Found in Gibraltar Cave
From the UK Telegraph:
The first examples of Neanderthal art are thought to have been found in a cave in Gibralta.
The abstract etchings -- a series of lines resembling a noughts and crosses grid scratched into the wall of Gorham's Cave in Gibraltar -- are being cited as proof of Neanderthals' intelligence.
It was previously thought that only modern humans were capable of producing art. But the marks are being touted as evidence of artistic expression in Neanderthals as they were found beneath sediment that also hid Neanderthal tools.
"It is the last nail in the coffin for the hypothesis that Neanderthals were cognitively inferior to modern humans," Paul Taçon of Australia's Griffith University is quoted as saying.
Taçon "told the AP news agency that the research showed that the engravings were made with great effort for ritual purposes, to communicate with others, or both," according to the Telegraph.
