Cave art discovery in Indonesia force rethink of origin of art.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Jared diamonds book The Third Chimpanzee talks about how art might have evolved in other animals - specifically in a kind of bird that builds elaborate and beautiful displays as part of its mating ritual. With this in mind it's very possible that our ancestors engaged in type of art that wouldn't have preserved for maybe hundreds of thousands of years. Probably not large nest-like art displays but who knows what our ancient ancestors mating rituals involved?

Cool.

The difference is mating display is not thought to be representational.

Oh, role-playing elevates it to high art ...

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Have you heard the idea that, based on the structure of the skull and how it sat on their body and comparing that to ours, there are certain vowel sounds that they couldn't form? Do you think we have enough information to make that inference? I was never totally sold on it. Maybe I haven't found a convincing enough read.

It was thought at one time that Neaderthals lacked hyoid bones in their larynxes, which would greatly limit their capacity for speech, but they've since been discovered to have hyoidae that closely resemble our own. I don't have time to dig up great source material right now, but if you use google scholar and search neaderthal hyoid, I'm sure you'll find some stuff.

eta: Chuck got there first, sorry to repeat info.