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Letter: Did Neanderthal art brush off on us?

Published 21 March 2018

From Faith Anstey, Dalguise, Perth and Kinross, UK

Michael Marshall reports the discovery of Neanderthal cave art (3 March, p 16). There is an oft-repeated myth that Cro-Magnon cave art – and even symbolism itself – “exploded” onto the European scene in 40,000 BC. Rather than proving how the Cro-Magnons made this great leap forward in civilisation, perhaps it shows that contact with Neanderthals sparked off the apparently fully fledged artwork that the latter had been developing for millennia?

Issue no. 3170 published 24 March 2018

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