New study shows how Neanderthals’ inability to draw was to do with hunting techniques
Neanderthals lacked the hand- eye coordination to draw vivid renderings of animals and other figures, unlike early modern humans, according to a study which may explain the differences in how both groups hunted.
While Neanderthals had large brains and made complex tools, they but never demonstrated the ability to draw recognisable images.
This artistic gap may be due to differences in the way they hunted, according to scientists from University of California, Davis in the US.
Neanderthals used thrusting spears to bring down tamer prey in Eurasia, while Homo sapiens, or modern humans, spent hundreds of thousands of years spear-hunting wary and dangerous game on the open grasslands of Africa.
Richard Coss, a professor at UC Davis, said that the hand-eye coordination involved in both hunting with throwing spears and drawing representational art could be one factor explaining why modern humans became smarter than Neanderthals.
In the study published in the journal Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture, Coss examined archaeological evidence, genomics, neuroscience studies, animal behaviour and prehistoric cave art.
He proposed a new theory for the evolution of the human brain.
According to Coss, Homo sapiens developed rounder skulls and grew bigger parietal cortexes – the region of the brain that integrates visual imagery and motor …read more