Archaeologists have concluded that a series of engravings discovered on a cave wall in France were made by Neanderthals using their fingers, some 57,000 years ago. They could be the oldest such marks yet found and further evidence that Neanderthals' behavior and activities were far more complex and diverse than previously believed, according to a new paper published in the journal PLoS ONE.

As Kiona Smith previously reported for Ars, evidence that Neanderthals could think symbolically, create art, and plan a project has been piling up for the last several years. For instance, about 50,000 years ago, Neanderthals in France spun plant fibers into thread. In Central Italy, between 40,000 and 55,000 years ago, Neanderthals used birch tar to hold their hafted stone tools in place, which required a lot of planning and complex preparation. In 2016, we reported on archaeologists' announcement that a Neanderthal group wrested hundreds of stalagmites from the floor of a cave inside Bruniquel Cave in Southern France to build elaborate circular structures, their work illuminated only by firelight.

Archaeologists have also found several pieces of bone and rock from the Middle Paleolithic—the time when Neanderthals had most of Europe to themselves—carved with geometric patterns like cross-hatches, zigzags, parallel lines, and circles. That might mean that the ability to use symbols didn’t originate with modern humans.

For instance, in 2018, archaeologists claimed that uneven lines observed in the soft, chalky outer layer of a small, thin flint flake were a deliberate marking. It was found in Kiik-Koba Cave, which overlooks the Zuya River in the Crimean Mountains. The engraved flake came from a layer between 35,486 and 37,026 years old. Archaeologists found the skeleton of a Neanderthal infant in the same layer, leaving no doubt about who lived at Kiik-Koba when the stone tools were made and used.

In 2021, archaeologists announced they'd found a geometric design akin to "offset chevrons" carved into the second phalanx, or toe bone, of a giant deer in a cave now called Einhornhohle in the Harz Mountains of Northern Germany. The carver was almost certainly a Neanderthal, based on the bone’s radiocarbon-dated age, because no one but Neanderthals lived in Europe until around 45,000 years ago.

The authors argued that this was a legitimate project; it took imagination to plan the design and figure out that a few individual lines would add up to a more complex pattern. It took resources and planning to assemble the tools, and it took time and effort to actually carve the pattern, as well as a good supply of small, sharp flint blades. The researchers could vouch for that because they tried it themselves, using cow phalanges and hand-knapped blades of Baltic flint, the stone a north German Neanderthal bone-carver would most likely have had access to.

Neanderthals in Spain painted the walls of caves and made shell jewelry painted with ocher pigment around 64,000 years ago. The art analyzed in La Pasiega, Maltravieso, and Ardales Caves is unequivocally Neanderthal. Uranium-thorium dating of rock deposited over paintings in all three caves indicates that the paintings can’t be any younger than 64,000 years. Unlike the first Homo sapiens, who didn't show up until 20,000 years after the rock of the caves began flowing over the art, Neanderthals had lived in the region since at least 243,000 years ago.

And in a sea cave called Cueva de los Aviones, on the southeastern coast of Spain, archaeologists found shells decorated with red and yellow pigment with holes punched in them as for a string. They’re generally assumed to be jewelry, which is another kind of symbol. Here, too, flowing water had deposited a flowstone over the layer of sediment in which these shells were found. Uranium-thorium dating said the flowstone couldn’t be any younger than 114,000 years. In fact, they predate every comparable set of artifacts found so far by at least 20,000 to 40,000 years.