State Service for Cultural Heritage Lower Saxony (Niedersächsisches Landesamt für Denkmalpflege), Hannover, Germany.
Seminar of Prehistoric Archaeology, Georg-August-University Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany.
Nat Ecol Evol. 2021 Sep;5(9):1273-1282. doi: 10.1038/s41559-021-01487-z. Epub 2021 Jul 5.
While there is substantial evidence for art and symbolic behaviour in early Homo sapiens across Africa and Eurasia, similar evidence connected to Neanderthals is sparse and often contested in scientific debates. Each new discovery is thus crucial for our understanding of Neanderthals' cognitive capacity. Here we report on the discovery of an at least 51,000-year-old engraved giant deer phalanx found at the former cave entrance of Einhornhöhle, northern Germany. The find comes from an apparent Middle Palaeolithic context that is linked to Neanderthals. The engraved bone demonstrates that conceptual imagination, as a prerequisite to compose individual lines into a coherent design, was present in Neanderthals. Therefore, Neanderthal's awareness of symbolic meaning is very likely. Our findings show that Neanderthals were capable of creating symbolic expressions before H. sapiens arrived in Central Europe.
虽然有大量证据表明非洲和欧亚大陆的早期智人具有艺术和象征行为，但与尼安德特人相关的类似证据却很少，在科学辩论中经常存在争议。因此，每一个新发现对于我们理解尼安德特人的认知能力都至关重要。在这里，我们报告了在德国北部 Einhornhöhle 的前洞穴入口处发现的一块至少有 51000 年历史的雕刻巨型鹿掌骨。这一发现来自一个明显的中石器时代的背景，与尼安德特人有关。这块雕刻的骨头表明，概念想象力是将单独的线条组合成一个连贯的设计的前提，在尼安德特人中已经存在。因此，尼安德特人很可能具有象征性的意识。我们的发现表明，在智人到达中欧之前，尼安德特人就已经能够创造象征性的表达。
