Recently, in the Spanish caves of Nerja, located near Malaga in Andalusia, unexpectedly discovered ancient cave paintings. More ancient than those in Chauvet, in the south of France, whose age is determined by the interval between 35, 000 and 33, 000 years.
The Nerja Caves, discovered in 1959 by five boys, are known for the world's largest stalagmites, whose height reaches 32 meters. And now they will be popular thanks to their cave paintings. And although the entrance to the bowels of the Earth until this time was free, now it will be closed from tourists.
This find, according to scientists, is an "academic bomb." Because, after analyzing and finding out that the age of the drawings varies from 43.5 to 42.3 thousand years, we can conclude that these drawings belong to Neanderthals! But before this discovery, the presence of imagination and creative abilities was attributed only to Homo sapiens, the rational man.
In a drawing that resembles (a strange thing) a link in a DNA chain, the ancient artist depicted just a hunt for pinnipeds, fur seals or seals. These animals were found in large numbers in local reservoirs.
However, scientists caution against premature findings. After all, the exact dating of cave paintings is not an easy task. But determining the age of the paintings is a very important and necessary thing. It allows you to better know our ancestors, their way of thinking, etc.
Exact data will be available no earlier than 2013. Currently, excavations are underway in the caves of Nerja in search of other images, and possibly tools of Neanderthals, which disappeared 37, 000 years ago. According to scientists, they died out either from changes in climatic conditions, or were replaced by the more developed Homo sapiens. However, as it turned out, they were not primitive creatures that could only hunt.
