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As Alisa LaGamma (2002) has pointed out in her perceptive introduction to her catalogue of the present exhibition, it was for long believed that the earliest evidence for the expression of what Alexander Marshack (1985) has called "the human capacity" came from Europe in the period following about 40–35,000 years ago. Prior to this time, the only hominid species populating Europe was Homo neanderthalensis, a highly distinctive form (Fig. 3) whose ancestral split with the lineage leading to Homo sapiens dates back to at least half a million years ago, and probably more. At about 40,000 years ago, however, Homo sapiens, in the form of the Cro-Magnons, began trickling into Europe, probably from an initially African place of origin. And by not much less than 30,000 years ago, the Neanderthals were gone from the entire huge swath of Europe and western Asia that they had previously inhabited, leaving the Cro-Magnons in sole possession. Except (possibly) in the post-contact period, the Neanderthals had exhibited only equivocal signs of symbolic behaviors. They may indeed, for instance, have invented a tradition of burial of the dead, which they practiced occasionally if only simply. But such interment was bereft of the symbolic paraphernalia associated with Cro-Magnon burial; and it may well have served no more than a utilitarian purpose, rather than a ritual, symbolic one. And there is, overall, no contrast in the entire archaeological record greater than the one between the material culture left behind by the Neanderthals and that bequeathed us by the Cro-Magnons. For just as that of the Neanderthals was largely or entirely devoid of symbolic content, the record of the Cro-Magnons was drenched in symbol.
The record of the Cro-Magnons is truly extraordinary (see White, 1986). Over 30,000 years ago they had already begun to leave extraordinary art on the walls of caves (Fig. 4; see also Chauvet Cave* and Lascaux Cave*). At the same time bone flutes of complex sound capabilities announce the advent of music (Fig. 5). And if these people made music (see examples of the earliest playable prehistoric bone flutes from East Asia*), surely they sang and danced as well. Markings on bone plaques (Fig. 6) clearly represent systems of notation, perhaps even lunar calendars. Burials were often complex, and crammed with grave goods. And some of the most beautifully observed and crafted sculptures* ever made date from this time. Notable among these is the tiny Vogelherd horse (Fig. 7) carved from mammoth ivory, perhaps the earliest art object known at around 34,000 years old. This exquisite piece is no simple rendition of the chunky horses of the Ice Age European steppes; instead, it is a quintessentially symbolic piece: an abstraction of the graceful essence of the horse. At the same time, technology became more complex and started on a course of constant change and innovation. By 26,000 years and more ago, bone needles (Fig. 8) announce the advent of tailoring, and equally early on ceramic technology was invented, figurines (Fig. 9) being baked in simple but remarkably effective kilns. Hunting became more complex, and fish and bird bones show up abundantly for the first time in food refuse.*
The list of Cro-Magnon achievements could go on and on, but the point is already evident: these people were us, possessed of a sensibility totally unprecedented in all the hominid history I've briefly reviewed (for greater detail see Tattersall, 1998). However, as I intimated earlier, this extraordinary record from Europe shows the human capacity already fully fledged. And quite evidently, this intellectual facility did not emerge in Europe. It was brought with them by the Cro-Magnons, whose new qualities had emerged elsewhere. Probably this was in Africa, for it is from this continent that we have not just the first suggestions of the emergence of modern anatomical structure, but of modern behaviors as well.*
(See references cited in this paper)
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