They might not look much compared to the work of Michelangelo or Vincent van Gogh. But a couple of abstract etchings discovered in China could be a sign that the Denisovans, our mysterious extinct cousins, were artists. The 100,000-year-old marks on two pieces of bone also bolster the idea that Denisovans, like Neanderthals, were capable of symbolic thought – once regarded as something only modern humans could do.
The bones were unearthed at Lingjing in Henan Province, China, a site where a population of archaic humans, thought to be Denisovans – though this needs to be confirmed – lived between 125,000 and 105,000 years ago. The Denisovans and the Neanderthals belong on a branch of the human family tree that split away from our “modern human” branch within the last million years. Denisovans lived in east Asia, while Neanderthals lived in Europe and west Asia.
Detailed analysis of the Lingjing engravings showed that they had been carefully drawn with a sharp point, and weren’t cutmarks from processing meat. “The microscopic analysis of the lines shows that they cannot be interpreted as marks of butchery, the alternative interpretation,” says Francesco d’Errico, a palaeoanthropologist at the University of Bordeaux in France, and a member of the team that studied the bones.
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Rubbed with ochre
To enhance their visibility, the lines on one of the bones had been rubbed with reddish ochre – a pigment often found on prehistoric ornaments from Europe and Africa. “We need to explain why equidistant lines were deliberately engraved on a semi-fossil bone and covered with red ochre to highlight them,” says d’Errico. “The explanation that would be given by archaeologists if this behaviour was observed at a more recent site would be that this is a sign to which some sort of meaning was attributed.”
We can’t yet be certain that it was the Denisovans who engraved these bones, especially as we now know that modern humans reached China between 80,000 and 120,000 years ago. “It’s difficult to be 100 per cent sure,” says d’Errico. “However, the skull of an archaic hominin was found in the same layers in which the engraved bones were found. This strongly suggests the authors of the engravings were archaic hominins.”
There are profound implications if a Denisovan or another archaic human was the artist. The Denisovans are thought to have occupied a vast territory in east Asia, but few artefacts dating to the time of their existence have been uncovered in the region. A bracelet made of green rock, rings and beads dating back to 45,000 years ago have been found in the Denisova cave in Siberia, where Denisovans were first identified back in 2010. But some researchers suspect they were produced by modern humans, who arrived in Siberia at this time.
Cognitive skills
Though apparently simple in design, the Lingjing bone engravings suggest that the people who made them had the advanced cognitive skills needed to represent information through abstract symbols. No other animal, not even a chimpanzee, has been known to produce abstract, non-functional designs.
“This finding is really quite groundbreaking,” says Genevieve von Petzinger at the University of Victoria, Canada, who specialises in geometric symbols in cave art. Even if it seems simple, the concept behind these graphic marks is ridiculously cognitively complex, she says.
“They are an artificial memory system – a way to retain information over time and space. This doesn’t happen when you communicate with others by talking. You have to use graphic marks to do it. To see closely related human species making these graphic marks is absolutely fascinating,” says von Petzinger.
Meaningful symbols
The researchers are hopeful that more finds will be uncovered soon. “China and other regions of Eurasia have been under-investigated and it is very probable that in a near future we will have more discoveries coming from those regions,” says d’Errico.
We will never know what the bone engraving symbolised to the people who created them, but also published this month offers some clues. This found that prehistoric abstract motifs, such as zigzags, lines and crosshatching, activate a region of the human brain’s left hemisphere that is involved with the processing of written language. This demonstrates that our brain responds to these motifs as meaningful symbols, not as mere decorations.
“It’s such an exciting time to be working in the field of palaeoanthropology,” says von Petzinger. “The 21st century is going to be all about being open minded and not being biased towards the idea that our direct ancestors were the only ones making art.”
Journal reference:ĚýAntiquity,Ěý
