Question

How does cave art reveal the cultures of early humans?

Answer 1

Los neandertales que vivían en la Península Ibérica hace 65.000 años ya pintaban arte rupestre en las paredes de las cuevas. Pintaban figuras de animales y motivos geométricos como puntos, discos y rayas. También solían dejar las huellas de sus manos, tal vez como una firma.

Answer 2

Throughout the twentieth century, scientists discovered a swath of cave paintings, many in western Europe. To date, the known number of decorated sites is around 400, with many of those concentrated in the mountains of France and Spain.

But more recent discoveries, like a 2019 revelation of cave art in Indonesia, believed to be at least 36,000 years old, have altered our understanding of early humans altogether. Because the cave art found in Indonesia shared similarities with the cave art in western Europe—namely, that early people seemed to have a fascination animals, and had a propensity for painting abstractions of those animals in caves—many scientists now believe that the impressive works are evidence of the way the human brain was developing in various, and distant, parts of the world around the same time.