Archaeologists have uncovered ochre artefacts in Crimea that show Neanderthals shaped and used them as crayons for drawing over 40,000 years ago. This discovery provides the strongest evidence yet of Neanderthals employing pigments symbolically, challenging previous assumptions about early human creativity. The findings highlight a shared evolutionary capacity for symbolic behavior dating back more than 700,000 years.
In Crimea, Ukraine, researchers led by Francesco d’Errico at the University of Bordeaux, France, analyzed ochre pieces from Neanderthal sites. Ochre, an iron-rich mineral yielding red, yellow, or orange hues, has been used for at least 400,000 years in Europe and Africa. At Neanderthal sites, it served practical roles like tanning clothing, accelerating fires, and adorning shell beads, but traces of decorative use had faded over time.
The standout find is a yellow ochre crayon, at least 42,000 years old, ground and scraped into a 5-to-6-centimeter tool. Microscopic examination revealed its tip worn from use and resharpened multiple times, confirming it as a reused drawing implement. “It was a tool that had been curated and reshaped several times, which makes it very special,” says d’Errico. “It’s not just a crayon by shape. It’s a crayon because it was used as a crayon. It’s something that may have been used on skin or a rock to make a line – the reflection, perhaps, of an artistic activity.”
Another fragment, a broken red ochre crayon possibly 70,000 years old, supports this interpretation. April Nowell at the University of Victoria in Canada notes, “You only maintain a point on a crayon if you want to make precise lines or designs.” Emma Pomeroy at the University of Cambridge adds, “It’s really exciting. It adds a new facet to what we know about symbolic use of colour,” and reflects, “It tells us so much just from those small bits of ochre. It’s that little bit of humanity that we can relate to. It really brings those individuals into touching distance.”
These Crimean artefacts bolster evidence of Neanderthal artistry, including 57,000-year-old cave wall carvings and 175,000-year-old stalagmite circles in France. Nowell suggests the cognitive basis for symbolic behavior traces to the last common ancestor of Homo sapiens, Neanderthals, and Denisovans over 700,000 years ago. The study appears in Science Advances (DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adx4722).