Prehistoric crayons provide clues to how Neanderthal created art

A remarkable yellow crayon in Crimea, still sharp after more than 40,000 years, indicates that painting lines on objects was part of Neanderthal culture. The discovery is the strongest evidence yet that some Neanderthal groups used pigment in symbolic ways—a practice once thought to be the sole domain of our species.

“It’s really interesting. It adds a new dimension to what we know about the symbolic use of colour,” says Emma Pomeroy at the University of Cambridge.

The use of lion’s mane—an iron-rich mineral with a red, yellow, or orange hue—has ancient roots, dating back at least 400,000 years in Europe and Africa. Fragments of ocher are found at many Neanderthal sites, where they appear to have been used for practical purposes such as tanning clothing and as fire extinguishers, as well as sometimes being embalmed on shell beads.

Neanderthals may also have used ocher to decorate his body, clothing, and other surfaces, but such traces have long since disappeared. To investigate further, Francesco D’Errico at the University of Bordeaux in France and his colleagues conducted a detailed analysis of ocher fragments found at Neanderthal sites in Crimea, Ukraine. By studying how the ocher pieces were modified by the Neanderthals, as well as microscopically analyzing how they were worn, researchers can build a picture of how the objects were used.

The most compelling of these ocher objects was a yellow one that was at least 42,000 years old and had been ground and raised into a crayon-like shape about 55 to 6 cm long. Detailed analysis shows that the tip was worn through use, then reshaped, indicating that it was reused over time as an implement for making marks.

“This was an instrument that was designed and built many times, which makes it very special,” D’Errico says. “It’s not just a crayon in shape. It’s a crayon because it was used as a crayon. It’s something that’s been used on skin or rock to make a line—perhaps a depiction of an artistic activity.”

April Nowell at the University of Victoria in Canada, who was not involved in the research, agreed. “If you want to draw precise lines or designs, you just maintain a point on a crayon,” she says.

The research team also identified another ancient broken crayon made of red ocher, which may be 70,000 years old.

“It tells us so much more than just these little bits of anchovy,” says Pomeroy. “It’s such a small part of humanity that we can relate to.” It really brings these individuals within touching distance.”

Creman Craven’s discoveries add to a small but growing body of evidence pointing to Neanderthals’ artistic abilities, such as 57,000-year-old finger carvings on a cave wall in France and mysterious circles made of stalagmites in another French cave 175,000 years ago.

They also give weight to the idea that symbolic behavior has deep roots in our evolutionary past, rather than having developed only relatively recently. Homo sapiens. “The basic cognitive ability for symbolic behavior is undoubtedly shared by the last common ancestor Homo sapiensDenisovans and Neanderthals more than 700,000 years ago,” Nowell says.

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