Artistic expression in humans may have evolved much earlier than initially thought

It is often thought thatartistic expression developed as humans evolved into their modern form, that is, Homo Sapiens. But this assumption has had faced challenges in recent years. The 'Unicorn cave' or "Einhornhöhle" in central Germany has been a place where animal bones from pre-historic times have been found. Some of them were used as tool.

Just a few years ago, a discovery gave strength to argument that artistic expression was present in human species that existed before Homo Sapiens. These species are considered 'less evolved' than Homo Sapiens. A bone was found in the unicorn cave which had carving resembling an undulating cheveron pattern. This made scientists think that this was a symbolic, ceremonial tool rather than practical one.

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As reported by LiveScience, scientists revealed a suprising fact when they performed carbon dating to find age of the ornate bone. It was found that the object is at least 50,000 years old.

"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, as reported by LiveScience.

50,000 years ago, the Unicorn Cave was occupied by the Neanderthals.

So do we need to start searching for 'art' made by Neanderthal humans? There are certainly hints that humans may have developed artistic expression much before than was initially thought by the scientific community.

If this gets subastantially established it opens a new vista for study of human evolution and argument that for artistic expression you do not need advance (from evolutionary point of view) skills like speech, language and more.

(With inputs from agencies)