Art of the Middle Paleolithic

Proposed Neanderthal art

Proposed Neanderthal jewelry: white-tailed eagle claw with striations at the Neanderthal site of Krapina, Croatia, circa 130,000 BP.[4]

Proposed Neanderthal work of art with symbolism: incision-decorated raven bone from the Zaskalnaya VI (Kolosovskaya) Neanderthal site, Crimea, Micoquian industry dated to between cal. 43,000 and 38,000 BP.[5]

Uranium-thorium dating of painted designs in the caves of La Pasiega (Cantabria), a hand stencil in Maltravieso (Extremadura), and red-painted speleothems in Ardales (Andalusia) yielded an age of more than 64,800 years, predating the previously oldest known art by at least 20,000 years.[2]

The Mask of La Roche-Cotard has also been argued as being evidence of Neanderthal figurative art, although in a period post-dating their contact with Homo sapiens. The "Divje Babe flute" had controversially been claimed as a Neanderthal musical instrument; other archaeologists have claimed a Cro-Magnon origin of the artefact. A number of rival archaeologists maintain an alternative hypothesis that the perfectly circular, spaced, and aligned holes were bite marks of carnivores. The main argument in support of their alternative hypothesis is fundamentally circular in its reasoning: that the artefact which appears to be a flute of Neanderthal origin cannot be a flute of Neanderthal origin because Neanderthals did not have music, according to them.

The "abstract drawing" (ochre cross-hatching) discovered in Blombos Cave in South Africa, ca. 73,000 years old.[3]

In 2002 in Blombos cave, situated in South Africa, ochre stones were discovered engraved with grid or cross-hatch patterns, dated to some 70,000 years ago. This suggested to some researchers that early Homo sapiens were capable of abstraction and production of abstract art or symbolic art. Also discovered at the Blombos cave were shell beads, also dating to c. 70,000 years ago.[6] Engraved ochre has also been reported from other Middle Stone Age sites, such as Klein Kliphuis,[7] Wonderwerk Cave[8] and Klasies River Cave 1.[9] Arguably, these engraved pieces of ochre represent – together with the engraved ostrich egg shells from Diepkloof[10][11] – the earliest forms of abstract representation and conventional design tradition hitherto recorded. The interpretation of the hatching patterns as "symbolic" has been challenged, and several purely functional explanations of the objects have been proposed, e.g. as an ingredient in mastic, skin protection against sun or insects, as soft-hammers for delicate knapping, as a hide preservative or as medicine.[12][13][14][15] The Blombos Cave cross-hatches, dated to as early as 73,000 years old, have been described as "abstract drawings" in a 2018 publication.[3]

Shell from Trinil, Java with geometric incisions, dated ca. 500–300 kya.[16]

"Venus of Tan-Tan" (left) and "Venus of Berekhat Ram" (replicas)

Claims of artistic activity, in the form of diagonal etchings made with a sharks tooth, were made in 2014 relating to a 500,000-year-old fossil of a clam found in Java in the 1890s associated with Homo erectus.[17]

Homo erectus had long before produced seemingly aimless patterns on artifacts such as is those found at Bilzingsleben in Thuringia. Some have attempted to interpret these as a precursor to art, allegedly revealing the intent of the maker to decorate and fashion. The symmetry and attention given to the shape of a tool has led authors to controversially argue Acheulean hand axes as artistic expressions.

There are several other claims of Lower Paleolithic art, namely the "Venus of Tan-Tan" (before 300 kya)[18] and the "Venus of Berekhat Ram" (250 kya). Both of these may be natural rock formations with an incidental likeness to the human form, but some scholars have suggested that they exhibit traces of pigments or carving intended to further accentuate the human-like form.