We have found the oldest human fingerprint in the world. He is 43,000 years old and someone left her in Spain

Now we know a scene that occurred thousands of years ago. It happened more or less like this: a Adult Neanderthal He found a granite shot whose irregular shape, rich in quartz and natural clefts, possibly evoked for his eyes more than a simple stone: it looked like an elongated face. What followed was a seemingly minimal act, but full of significance. He left the oldest human footprint ever known, and did it in Spain.

The art of Neanderthals. The scene has now described the scientists and calculate what happened about 43,000 years in what is today the province of Segovia. As explained in the study Recently publishedthe adult Neanderthal wet his finger in red pigment and pressed with him the stone just where the nose of that possible face would be, thus leaving the oldest human fingerprint ever recorded.

The discovery, made in 2022 in San Lázaroit has been verified through an interdisciplinary team of archaeologists, geologists and forensics, which have concluded that the reddish point contains iron oxides and clay minerals not present in the cave, indicating that the pigment He took intentionally From another place.

Art. Unlike a tool or utilitarian utensil, the stone did not present signs of practical use: its value was symbolic, aesthetic, or perhaps spiritual. The red pigment point, without which the object would not have archaeological value, marks the decisive step between the merely physical and the cultural: between the stone and the idea.

The stone found

The meaning behind the gesture. The authors of the study, published in the magazine Archaeological and Anthropological Sciencesthey argue that the finding reinforces the hypothesis that the Neanderthals had a symbolic mind similar to that of Homo sapiens. For them, the act of selecting a stone for its shape, transporting it, applying a precision pigment and probably attributing a meaning is proof of the existence of at least Three cognitive processes Complexes: the mental conception of an image, the will to communicate something through symbols, and the ability to attribute meaning.

This triad, they affirm, is the art base. In that sense, the simple pebble with a red point can represent one of the oldest human face abstractions of the European prehistoric record. The uniqueness of the object makes it a difficult piece to contextualize: there is, for now, another equal. That said, remember that your artistic dimension cannot be ruled out. On the contrary: its rarity reinforces its character as an isolated, but revealing example, of the ability of the Neanderthals to Project thoughts and ideas about the material world.

Breaking prejudices. There is more, of course. The finding highlights not only the original act of that Neanderthal, but also the persistent modern resistance to consider these hominids as authentic art creators. As explained Archaeologist David Álvarez Alonsoif it were a human intervention dated just 5,000 years ago, no one would hesitate to classify the object as art portable.

But the fact that a Neanderthal has produced a debate that is not strictly scientific, but also cultural: our resistance to accepting that others Humans, extinct about 40,000 years ago, shared with us not only tools, fire and hunting strategies, but Also imaginationsymbolism and the need to represent. Under that prism, the stone of San Lázaro breaks that taboo with a single footprint. It is not a mural, nor a petroglyph, not even a figurine: it is a unique gesture on an ordinary support, one that, they assure, demands a deep rereading of what we consider “art” and who can produce it.

A window The researchers tell In his work that the trace of pigment, interpreted as a deliberate act, forces us to ask ourselves for the Mental process that led to that moment. The first: What did that Neanderthal see in the stone: a face, a spirit or a sacred object? We will never know, but what the intervention suggests is a will to assign meaningto highlight, to leave a brand (mark).

As the team points out, the total absence of pigments in the surroundings of the cave suggests A firm intention: The stone was collected, transported and altered with purpose. If we also want, in its apparent simplicity, the finding contains a complexity that forces us to reconsider the conception of the human being.

If the Neanderthals could look at a stone and see a face in it, and then intervene it so that others would also see it, then they shared with us something essential: The ability to transcend the immediate and imagine the invisible … through a simple sign.

Image | Mr. Álvarez-Alonso et al.

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