We actually had a discussion on this at Archaeologica a while back. It seemed odd that the cave paintings in Western Europe were seemingly without precedent in North Africa. These are not precedents, though...they are ancestors!
http://www.archaeologydaily.com/news/201...umans.html
15,000 year old images in Africa v 25-35,000 years at Altamira. Maybe the Neanderthals gave HSS the artistic gene and took it back to Africa to renovate the "motherland?"
http://www.archaeologydaily.com/news/201...umans.html
Quote:A Canadian archeologist is being credited nearly 50 years after the fact with discovering a prehistoric petroglyph site in southern Egypt that is now being described as a "Lascaux on the Nile" because of its similarity in age and style to France's world famous, cave-wall gallery of Stone Age cattle, deer and horses.
Prehistoric petroglyph site in southern Egypt discovered by Canadian archeologist Philip Smith in a 1962-63 expedition.
The inscribed Egyptian images of extinct wild oxen, hippopotami, fish, gazelle and other animals - now firmly dated to a time in the late Pleistocene era at least 15,000 years ago - are being hailed as the oldest rock art in North Africa and as a pivotal discovery in the evolution of artistic behaviour by ancient humans.
15,000 year old images in Africa v 25-35,000 years at Altamira. Maybe the Neanderthals gave HSS the artistic gene and took it back to Africa to renovate the "motherland?"
