For centuries, the"Unicorn Cave," or"Einhornhöhle," in central Germany has been famous for its many thousands of bones. In medieval times, people thought the bones came from unicorns.
"The engraved bone from Einhornhöhle is at least 50,000 years old and thus ranges among the oldest known symbolic objects," said Dirk Leder, an archaeologist with the Lower Saxony state government who has published research on the object. The meaning of the symbolism is lost to time, but it may have been"a device intended to communicate with other group members, outsiders, spirits or the like — we simply don't know," he said.
Leder, for his part, avoids calling the carved bone from the Unicorn Cave"art." Instead, he prefers the term"pre-art," which researchers use to describe very early forms of artistic expression. Going back further, archaeologists have found hundreds of stone spheres, a few inches across, at several ancient human sites where stone tools were made. The earliest date from around 2 million years ago — which predates the emergence of Neanderthals and H. sapiens by more than a million years.
But for Leder and others, artifacts at multiple archaeological sites are evidence that hominins such as Neanderthals had a rudimentary artistic sense. And while only a few of these artifacts remain, it's possible there were somewhat more impressive works, made by Neanderthal Michelangelos, which have since been lost.
Archaeologist and psychologist Derek Hodgson, an expert in prehistoric cave art formerly at the University of York in the U.K., thinks the evolution of an artistic sense among hominins — of whatever species — developed alongside their abilities to make stone tools and use other objects to modify their habitats.