structural:scholar_edition
Abstraction

In 2018, some red-painted dots, disks, lines and hand stencils on the cave walls of the Spanish La Pasiega, Maltravieso, and Doña Trinidad were dated to be older than 66,000 years ago, prior to the arrival of modern humans in Western Europe. If the dating is correct, this would indicate Neanderthal authorship, and similar iconography recorded in other Western European sites—such as Les Merveilles, France, and Cueva del Castillo, Spain—could potentially also have Neanderthal origins. The dating of these Spanish caves, and thus attribution to Neanderthals, is contested. Neanderthals may have produced finger flutings on the walls of La Roche-Cotard over 57,000 years ago.