AN INNOCUOUS looking piece of stone has been discovered that could revolutionise archaeology. The stone depicts a face, and was supposedly made by Neanderthals around 32,000 years ago. If true, it would be one of the oldest, and most important pieces of rock art known.
Whether Neanderthals were capable of complex art is one of the most enduring archaeological debates. There is no doubt that the earliest Cro-Magnons in Eurasia made artwork of various kinds, and even Neanderthals occasionally made personal ornaments like shell pendants. But the lack of evidence for Neanderthal rock art has bolstered the view that these hominids did not possess a culture approaching that of our Cro-Magnon, Homo sapiens ancestors.
Now two rock art experts, Jean-Claude Marquet and Michel Lorblanchet, have unearthed a 鈥渇ace-mask鈥� made of flint and bone from late ice-age deposits at La Roche-Cotard in France. They are convinced that Neanderthal people altered this piece of stone (pictured) to represent a face.
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Just over 100 millimetres long, the stone mask is basically a triangular piece of flint. One surface has an original and naturally sculpted face shape with a brow descending into a triangular nose. In the same way that Picasso turned a fortuitously shaped stone into a sculpture, Neanderthals may have modified the flint to take on a recognisable form. The anthropomorphic appearance has been enhanced by a shard of animal bone pushed through a hole behind the bridge of the nose creating the appearance of eyes or eyelids.
It is clearly not accidental since the bone is fixed firmly in place by two tiny wedges of flint, the researchers say. Finally, the face-shape was improved by hand trimming. Several flakes were removed from the edge of the piece by careful percussion flaking, a technique employed by stone-age sculptors to shape tools and weapons.
This French stone-and-bone face mask was found near Mousterian-type stone tools, which experts generally agree were made by Neanderthals. Flint was a preferred stone-age material used by both Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons. Some details of the find have been published in the journal Pal茅o, but a full account of the discovery is revealed this week in Antiquity (vol 77, p 661).
For British rock art expert Paul Bahn the Roche-Cotard mask is 鈥渙ne of the most important finds of recent years. After this, I don鈥檛 see how any objective scholar can deny that the Neanderthals had art, and even quite sophisticated, complex art.鈥� Perhaps it is time we stopped using Neanderthal as a term of abuse.
