Tristan Hughes

Yeah.

Harkening back to what you were saying at the beginning, that we're covering a large range of time and different groups over a large area, and we just class them as Neanderthals, but you need to think a bit more than that.

Okay, before we go on to the summarising questions, Genevieve, I also had in my notes Adelaide's cave, but are there any other key cave sites you'd like to mention?

where we also potentially have examples of Neanderthal art amongst early Homo sapien art as well that we haven't covered yet?

New caves and new art.

And just to kind of summarize what we've been talking about then, Genevieve, so at least in caves, let's say in red ochre paint that we associate with Neanderthals now, the main types of signs, the main types of graphic markings that you see, is it largely kind of the spit painting discs, those ladders, maybe a few hands?

Is that the main types of art that we're associating with Neanderthals right now?

But I would say... We are still noticing crosses.

Is this what we're thinking?

Very exciting.

And I guess also one of those

big questions, which there must be so many theories about now, Genevieve, and I'm sure you've got your thoughts as well, is trying to figure out what these signs, you know, what they all mean, what's the purpose of them, whether they're made with ochre paint or whether they're, you know, their markings carved onto a portable object that Neanderthals are taking along with them.

Genevieve, we could do a whole another episode on the early signs of humans after Neanderthals and what their meanings could be.

I think I'll leave it on this last question, or this last statement, I guess, to ponder.

We mentioned earlier how the evidence is very clear now that Neanderthals and humans did interact in Europe for a period of time.

It's fascinating to reimagine communicating with each other.

You mentioned how one of the ways they could have communicated was through art.

It's fascinating to think whether, given all of the information that may well have been embedded in Neanderthals, maybe their discs or their hand markings or the ladders and so on, whether they were able to communicate that knowledge across to humans that they interacted with.

And then the humans kind of take it on, embrace it and bring it on to the next level.

That would explain why Neanderthal art is so close to human art in some of these caves that we've explored.