Dr. Genevieve von Petzinger

Mm-hmm.

And how do we figure out what those things are?

Because that will also help us understand who was in what caves doing what.

And then we can start to figure out the order of things.

If we're going to ask crazy questions like, what if Neanderthals taught humans how to make hands?

Where's the oldest hands?

We need to know enough information to understand if all the oldest hands we're finding are with Neanderthals and Denisovans, then it's illogical that humans invented it first.

Right.

But I think that so this comes we have to change our own mindset about it first.

And to think about them again is not and also not being a monolithic entity, which is that in the Crimea and in Eastern Europe, we have Neanderthals who seem to be not doing paint stuff so much, though, again, there's some ochre.

Our colleague Francesco Derrico and his team just identified ochre crayons in the Crimea that have that appear to have been used and scraped.

which looks like they were being used to make pigment, which is cool.

But at those sites, they have stones and bones, back to our stones and bones, with series of parallel lines, very intentionally carved parallel lines.

And so that seems to be more their thing, as I would call them like the parallel line people over there.

And so those are one set of Neanderthals are doing that, while these other Neanderthals seem to be doing paintings.

or making little, you know, engraved circles.

But we're not seeing the engraved circles over in Eastern Europe and into the Crimea area.

We're seeing lines and more linear art.

So we could be, again, we're probably not talking about one Neanderthal art.

We're probably talking about culture groups who created their own traditions.