engleski

Neandertal Aesthetics?

The goal of this essay is to ask whether it is possible to infer complex symbolic behaviour in one of our ancestral populations – the Neandertals. I will use the example of the eagle talons collected by Neandertals and deposited at the Krapina rock shelter some 130, 000 years ago. The following section presents an overview of possibly the first glimpses of beauty-appreciating behaviour in past populations, and of how we recognise such behaviour in populations allegedly mostly preoccupied with problems of sustenance and survival. My goal is not to provide an exhaustive or even partial account of the first possible symbolic behaviours, but to explore how our expectations and recognition of symbolic objects and behaviours during the Pleistocene – the epoch preceding ours – are possibly biassed by our assumptions about the behaviour of anatomically modern humans versus other archaic populations. I will conclude with an overview of the growing evidence of Neandertal complex symbolic behaviours documented at various sites across Europe, such as collected raptor talons, raptor feathers, pigments and other unusual objects. I will raise the question of what these behaviours imply in terms of Neandertal cognition and complexity of social behaviour, including communication. I will also ask if these behaviours can be interpreted as aesthetic.

Neandertal ; symbolic behaviour ; aesthetic behaviour

nije evidentirano