Located in the Loire Valley, in central France, the cave of La Roche-Cotard has a series of non-figurative markings on its walls that are interpreted as finger marks.
The scientific team that conducted the study, including French archaeologist Thierry Aubry, who works at the Vale do Coa Museum and Archaeological Park, concluded: from the shape, spacing and order of the carvings, those organized and deliberate marks made by human hands, in this case by Neanderthal man.
Thierry Aubry told Lusa that the La Roche-Cotard engravings are “unambiguous examples of abstract designs made by the Neanderthal.”
Aubry, who is technically and scientifically responsible for the Museum and Archaeological Park of Vale do Coa, analyzed the traces of chipped stone in the cave, the cutting method of which is only attributed to Neanderthal man in Europe.
According to the archaeologist, whose work has been published on the Foz Coa cave carvings, the data collected indicates that the cave has not been visited after 57,000 years because the entrance was covered” and only became accessible after discovery and excavations at the beginning of the 20th century.
The experts arrived at the dating of the engravings of sediment samples from the cave obtained by the optically stimulated luminescence method, widely used in archaeological dating, especially of sediments, by determining, based on the light emitted by an excitation process optically the time that has elapsed since the grains that make up the sediment were last exposed to sunlight.
The human origin of the non-figurative and spatially structured signs discovered in the La Roche-Cotard cave “is supported by layout and experimental studies,” Thierry Aubry told Lusa.
The engravings reveal, according to the authors of the study, published in the open access scientific journal PLOS ONE, that “Neanderthal behavior and activities were as complex and diverse” as those of the homo sapiensmodern guy, refers to a note from the publisher of the publication.
For Thierry Aubry, it continues to “establish a direct relationship” between the carvings and “one of the levels of occupation of the various places” of the cave by Neanderthal and that “could be older than 57,000 years”.
Neander Valley Man was bulky and muscular and had a large brain capacity, albeit less than that of the homo sapiens.
The name comes from fossils discovered in the 19th century in the Neander Valley, Germany.
The species dominant in Europe would have lived between 400,000 and 35,000 years.
Source: DN
