Neanderthal man wore make-up and jewellery
Neanderthal man was the original metrosexual and was wearing make-up and jewellery 50,000 years ago, it has been found.Researchers at Neanderthal-associated sites have found examples of sea shells which were worn as neck pendants and coloured pigments which were used as make-up.
They say the find in Murcia, south-east Spain, challenges the view Neanderthals were much less intelligent than modern man.
Analysis of lumps of red and yellow pigments found alongside suggest they were used in cosmetics while a Spondylus gaederopus shell looks like it was used to mix them.
If you want to know what the make-up wearing Neanderthals looked like, just imagine Wayne Rooney in a bit of eye-liner.
Lead researcher Professor Zilhão said: "This is the first secure evidence that, some 50,000 years ago – ten millennia before modern humans are first recorded in Europe – the behaviour of Neanderthals was symbolically organised.
"The evidence from the Murcian sites removes the last clouds of uncertainty concerning the modernity of the behaviour and cognition of the last Neanderthals and, by implication, shows that there is no reason any more to continue to question the Neanderthal authorship of the symbolic artefacts of the Châtelperronian culture.
"When considering the nature of the cultural and genetic exchanges that occurred between Neanderthals and modern humans at the time of contact in Europe, we should recognise that identical levels of cultural achievement had been reached by both sides."
LINKS
University of Bristol
"The evidence from the Murcian sites removes the last clouds of uncertainty concerning the modernity of the behaviour and cognition of the last Neanderthals and, by implication, shows that there is no reason any more to continue to question the Neanderthal authorship of the symbolic artefacts of the Châtelperronian culture.
"When considering the nature of the cultural and genetic exchanges that occurred between Neanderthals and modern humans at the time of contact in Europe, we should recognise that identical levels of cultural achievement had been reached by both sides."
LINKS
University of Bristol
