Cave paintings in Malaga, Spain, could be the oldest yet found – and the first to have been created by Neanderthals.

Looking oddly akin to the DNA double helix, the images in fact depict the seals that the locals would have eaten, says José Luis Sanchidrián at the University of Cordoba, Spain. They have “no parallel in Palaeolithic art”, he adds. His team say that charcoal remains found beside six of the paintings – preserved in Spain’s Nerja caves – have been radiocarbon dated to between 43,500 and 42,300 years old.

That suggests the paintings may be substantially older than the 30,000-year-old Chauvet cave paintings in south-east France, thought to be the earliest example of Palaeolithic cave art.

The next step is to date the paint pigments. If they are confirmed as being of similar age, this raises the real possibility that the paintings were the handiwork of Neanderthals – an “academic bombshell”, says Sanchidrián, because all other cave paintings are thought to have been produced by modern humans.

Neanderthals are in the frame for the paintings since they are thought to have remained in the south and west of the Iberian peninsula until approximately 37,000 years ago – 5000 years after they had been replaced or assimilated by modern humans elsewhere in their European heartland.

Until recently, Neanderthals were thought to have been incapable of creating artistic works. That picture is changing thanks to the discovery of a number of decorated stone and objects – although no permanent cave art has previously been attributed to our extinct cousins.

Neanderthals’ creativity

Now some researchers think that Neanderthals had the same capabilities for symbolism, imagination and creativity as modern humans.

The finding “is potentially fascinating”, says at the University of Sheffield, UK. He cautions that the dating of cave art is fraught with potential problems, though, and says that clarification of the paintings’ age is vital.

“Even some sites we think we understand very well such as the Grotte Chauvet in France are very problematic in terms of how old they are,” says Pettitt.

If the age is confirmed, Pettitt suggests that the cave paintings could still have been the work of modern humans. “We can’t be absolutely sure that Homo sapiens were not down there in the south of Spain at this time,” he says.

Sanchidrián does not rule out the possibility that the paintings were made by early Homo sapiens but says that this theory is “much more hypothetical” than the idea that Neanderthals were behind them.

Dating of the Nerja seal paintings’ pigments will not take place until after 2013. Further excavations in the extensive cave system – discovered by a group of boys hunting bats in 1959 – is ongoing.

Chimps have been reported dancing in rainstorms – and now it seems our closest relation has a “fire dance”, too. A dominant male chimp performed such a dance in the face of a raging savannah fire in Senegal.

Anthropologist of Iowa State University in Ames recounts that the male faced the fire with “a really exaggerated slow-motion display” before redirecting his display at chimps sheltering in a nearby baobab tree. Barking vocalisations from the male, never heard in more than 2000 hours of monitoring the group, were also heard.

Pruetz and co-author at the East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania suggest that the chimps were cognisant enough to predict the fire’s movement, retreating short distances at a time while staying calm. Other animals, in contrast, panic when fire approaches.

“If chimps with their small brain size can conceptually deal with fire, then maybe we should rethink some of the earliest evidence for fire usage,” Pruetz says. The earliest confirmed evidence of controlled fire use dates to several thousand years ago but some palaeoanthropologists argue control began as far back as 1 to 2 million years ago. The chimps’ responses to two fires – set for land clearance – were seen in 2006.

Primatologist William McGrew at the University of Cambridge is wary of granting chimps a “conceptualisation of fire”, but further work could yield interesting results, he says.

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