Totes aquestes sensacionalitats tenen el seu orígen en unes datacions que sobrepassen lleugerament els 40.000 anys de pintures rupestres de la serralada cantàbrica. Sense voler posar en dubte la credibilitat d'aquests titolars -i ara!- m'agradaria que algú em respongués a un dubte que tinc. Es tracta d'aquesta imatge:
Molt bé doncs: el que m'ha cridat l'atenció no és que hi hagi mans, sinó com estan representades aquestes mans i la tècnica que s'ha utilitzat, que és exactament la mateixa que en el cas de les mans d'El Castillo datades en 40.800 anys: bufant pigment vermell contra la paret i posant-hi la mà al davant perquè hi deixi l'empremta.
Amb això no dic que els neandertals no poguessin marcar-se les mans a la paret ni molt menys. No estic parlant tampoc de capacitats intel·lectuals ni de simbolisme. Estic parlant de paral·lelismes: com és possible que, havent estat aïllats durant 500.000 anys o més dels moderns, els neandertals desenvolupessin exactament la mateixa tècnica, i precisament al moment d'arribada dels homenets alts i prims a la península ibèrica? No és massa casualitat, o m'ho sembla a mi? I si m'equivoco, això voldria dir que la ment dels neandertals era idèntica a la nostra.
Patagonian neanderhands! Jajaja!
ResponEliminamy language skills are not good enough - did you mean, that those hands could be 40000 years old and made by Neanderthals? They remind me of papuan cave hands, up to 30000 years old.
EliminaNo, she means that the hands are from Patagonia (Argentina), dated to at least 9000 years ago, and cannot by any means have been made by Neanderthals, that would also be the case of the Papuan hands, which can't be made by Neanderthals who never lived there. Do you have a link for the Papuan cave, Zaender? Never heard of them before.
EliminaThe issue is that some media has been illustrating the El Castillo new rock art dates (which some speculate that could be Neanderthal-made, although they are not really old enough in most cases) with the wrong set of imprinted hands, not the one from El Castillo, Cantabria, but the one of Las Manos, Patagonia.
thanks, Maju! I have no link for the papuan caves, just remember a film about it some years ago. It was in a difficult mountain region in the middle, not well explored and the hands had been not only outlined like in El Castillo, but carried specific pattern of points, suggesting, we could face a sort of clan signets.
EliminaPerhaps we should ask ARTE!
Hi Zaender and Maju!
ResponEliminaMy idea is that there are too many parallelisms between Patagonian hands and the El Castillo ones to be neanderthal art.
Amerinds and paleolithic Europeans have been separated by only 40-50 Ka, that's much less than the 500 Ka for the separation between modern humans and neandertals, so I can imagine that modern humans differ very little in their capabilities, while neanderthals might differ something more. It's also suspicious that no neanderthal hands like these have been found in any cave of their homeland and dated more than 60 Ka.
fully agree!
EliminaI am even quite sure, that already the first Out-of-Africa people brought this custom along via all the Orang Asli, be it more poetical (the shape of my hand shows my right to be), be it a ritual (initiation) or be it something like a social contract between clans.