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. 2018 Feb 22;4(2):eaar5255.
doi: 10.1126/sciadv.aar5255. eCollection 2018 Feb.

Symbolic use of marine shells and mineral pigments by Iberian Neandertals 115,000 years ago

Dirk L Hoffmann  1 , Diego E Angelucci  2 , Valentín Villaverde  3 , Josefina Zapata  4 , João Zilhão  5   6   7
Affiliations

Symbolic use of marine shells and mineral pigments by Iberian Neandertals 115,000 years ago

Dirk L Hoffmann et al. Sci Adv. .

Abstract

Cueva de los Aviones (southeast Spain) is a site of the Neandertal-associated Middle Paleolithic of Europe. It has yielded ochred and perforated marine shells, red and yellow colorants, and shell containers that feature residues of complex pigmentatious mixtures. Similar finds from the Middle Stone Age of South Africa have been widely accepted as archaeological proxies for symbolic behavior. U-series dating of the flowstone capping the Cueva de los Aviones deposit shows that the symbolic finds made therein are 115,000 to 120,000 years old and predate the earliest known comparable evidence associated with modern humans by 20,000 to 40,000 years. Given our findings, it is possible that the roots of symbolic material culture may be found among the common ancestor of Neandertals and modern humans, more than half-a-million years ago.

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Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1. Site setting.
(A) The site seen from a breakwater in the Cartagena harbor. (B) Overview of the cave. Brecciated Pleistocene remnant before (C) and after (D) its 1985 excavation. The dotted circles in (C) and (D) indicate the position of the dated flowstone, clearly overlying the excavated deposit.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2. Sampling.
(A) Extant stratigraphic section. Zenithal (B) and frontal (C) views of the flowstone capping the excavated deposit. The rectangle in (A) denotes the area enlarged in (C). A 20-cm yellow ruler was used for scale in (B) and (C), in which the numbers denote the samples taken.
Fig. 3
Fig. 3. Symbolic finds [after Zilhão et al. (12)].
(A) Spondylus shell with remnants (indicated by the white square) of a pigmentatious compound mixing ground inclusions of hematite and pyrite in a red lepidocrocite basis. (B) Large lump of natrojarosite, a mineral whose only known archaeological use is in cosmetics. (C) Perforated Acanthocardia and Glycymeris shells (red hematite residues were found adhering to the inner side of the larger Glycymeris).
Fig. 4
Fig. 4. Sample AVI 13-1c.
(A) Sample piece AVI 13-1c after removal from flowstone section LS01 (12) at the interface between the flowstone and the underlying cemented sediment LS02 (figs. S2 and S4). Note the cemented sediment of the LS02 unit adhering to the bottom part of the sample. (B) Sample piece AVI 13-1c after cutting out a section for U-series subsampling (fig. S7D). (C) Piece on the left in (B) viewed from different angles. The red arrows indicate the boundary between the LS01 flowstone and the LS02 cemented sediment. The black square indicates where flowstone formed around a sediment particle.
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References

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