US EditionA Neanderthal Fingerprint Points to Art, and Possibly Portraiture, Around 43,000 Years Ago
- Archaeologists uncovered a pebble bearing a red ochre fingerprint left by a Neanderthal approximately 43 millennia ago at the San Lázaro rock-shelter site in Segovia, Spain.
- The find resulted from excavations at a Neanderthal site where symbolic behavior has increasingly been found and studied in recent years.
- Multispectral and forensic analyses confirmed that the red ochre pigment, composed of non-native iron oxide, was deliberately applied using an adult male Neanderthal's fingertip.
- Researchers suggest the pebble may be among the earliest examples of a human face depiction, indicating deliberate transportation and decoration for symbolic, non-functional reasons.
- This discovery contributes to evidence that Neanderthals engaged in symbolic thought and artistic expression, challenging ideas that such behaviors were limited to Homo sapiens.
20 Articles
20 Articles
Oldest Fingerprint Ever May Have Been Early Art Form
Archaeologists in Spain have found the oldest complete human fingerprint ever. A Neanderthal pressed his finger into the red dye 43,000 years ago to make an imprint on a stone. The researchers think it may be a very early form of art: with a bit of good will, an elongated face can be recognized in the stone, with two dents for eyes. The maker would then have added a red nose with paint. The stone was found in July 2022 during an excavation in a …
A Team of Police and Scientists Present the so-Called “Oldest Human Fingerprint in the World”
A group of nine researchers – five of them from the Spanish scientific police – presented Monday “the oldest human fingerprint in the world,” which the authors attribute to the finger of a Neanderthal adult man who lived about 43,000 years ago in what is today Segovia. The fingerprint is shaped in a solitary red dot discovered on a roll. The nine signatories speculate that that individual chose the stone because it looked like a human face, with…
The Oldest Fingerprint in the World: It Is Neanderthal and Has Been Identified in Segovia with the Help of the Police
About 43,000 years ago, in what is today the site of the San Lázaro shelter, in the city of Segovia, a Neanderthal picked up a pebble of granite rock and painted with ochre a red dot. There, apparently deliberately, he left his fingerprint, the oldest that is known in the world and that, as if it were a detective case, has now been identified by a team led by the Complutense University of Madrid with the help of the Scientific Police.
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