Coherent symbolism and art by literally another species (assuming you subscribe to their status as a species distinct to H. sapiens and not a subspecies). This concept is pretty mind-blowing.
I am way out of my depth here but I've read a couple of articles recently talking about the migration of homo sapiens out of Africa possibly occurring far sooner than was previously thought [1]. That was the first one I could remember. After a quick read of this it seems that their reason for attributing this to Neandertals is only the dating. I maybe way off here but it seems premature to draw too many conclusions about the creators of this art without some sort of additional evidence.
Evidence of modern humans existing in Israel that long ago does not mean a migration occurred. Those remains could be from a group that ranged only that far and died out.
If they can tie their genetics to the genetics of non Africans then yes, you have your evidence for earlier migration, but you still need to show that modern humans could likely have been in Iberia during the time frame of the cave paintings.
The burden of the evidence that it could have been modern humans lays at the feet of those who say it could have been modern humans, not at the feet of those claiming neanderthal did it since there is ample evidence of neanderthal populations all over Europe during this time frame.
You talk about burden of proof like the overarching topic of contention isn't whether or not Neanderthals had the capacity for symbolic thought at all. The observation that we keep inventing new OOA migrations and then pushing them back by hundreds of thousands of years is entirely noteworthy as is the fact that these conclusions about Neanderthals are based on certainty that humans arrived in Europe 40K years ago instead of 60K years ago.
We know when neanderthal was living in Europe and we think we know when Humans arrived. Based on the evidence that we have, the conclusion is that neanderthal has symbolic thought.
I am not saying it is not possible that modern humans are not responsible for the cave paintings. I am saying that all we have is evidence for a settlement in Israel that is old enough to show Humans could have migrated OOA much sooner than thought. That settlement is not evidence that they did. If you find more data then we can talk about it. A settlement of modern humans in the Balkans or even in Anatolia during that time frame would at least bolster the argument.
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[ 538 ms ] story [ 1723 ms ] thread[1] http://science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6374/456
If they can tie their genetics to the genetics of non Africans then yes, you have your evidence for earlier migration, but you still need to show that modern humans could likely have been in Iberia during the time frame of the cave paintings.
The burden of the evidence that it could have been modern humans lays at the feet of those who say it could have been modern humans, not at the feet of those claiming neanderthal did it since there is ample evidence of neanderthal populations all over Europe during this time frame.
I am not saying it is not possible that modern humans are not responsible for the cave paintings. I am saying that all we have is evidence for a settlement in Israel that is old enough to show Humans could have migrated OOA much sooner than thought. That settlement is not evidence that they did. If you find more data then we can talk about it. A settlement of modern humans in the Balkans or even in Anatolia during that time frame would at least bolster the argument.