Last Ape Standing by Chip Walter

Author:Chip Walter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2013-04-18T04:00:00+00:00

Who Were the Cro–Magnon People?

The term Cro–Magnon can be a little confusing because it originates from a French cave, Abri de Cro–Magnon, in southwestern France, where the first fossils were found, but actually refers to the dark–skinned people whose ancestors began migrating from Africa around fifty thousand years ago. These were the earliest Homo sapiens to reach Western Europe, and the people who first encountered and then coexisted with Neanderthals in places we now know as France and Spain beginning some forty thousand years ago.

As you might imagine, the Cro–Magnon were a tough group. Strong, heavily muscled, and smart with a brain, at 1600 cc, larger than ours is today. Their tall foreheads and square jaws made them the first humans (as far as we know) to bring these neotenic features with them into their adulthood, the physical hallmarks of modern Homo sapiens.

They were clearly successful. Their genes are evident in people living today from Europe to Central Asia and North Africa, Polynesia and both American continents. In short, nearly all of us. Their weaponry was advanced and included the invention of bone spear throwers that held their spears as they launched them at prey (and likely one another on occasion) with a force and accuracy that made them the most lethal hunters on earth. They also excelled in fashioning extremely sharp flint knife blades and spearheads. They even developed techniques for straightening their spears to make their flight more true. They liked to decorate their weapons, too, but discoveries of these small examples of their flair for the artistic were only a small indication of their ingenuity. The world learned of the true depth of their creative talents in 1940 when four curious teenage boys, and their dog, Robot, stumbled upon arrays of mysterious paintings on the walls of the Lascaux caves in France’s Dordogne region.

The artwork is nothing short of jaw–dropping, as beautiful and haunting as anything a modern artist could possibly conjure, and an indication that in these people, modern human behavior had irrevocably touched the world. Why the paintings were created is unknowable. They may have been religious, or a way to enter a spirit world, or simply the doodlings and artistry of generations of ancient but extraordinary humans who were expressing themselves in ways other humans never had. Hundreds of caves have now been discovered around the world filled with the imaginings of these and other ancient humans, all of them powerful illustrations of the playfulness and creativity, the childlike side of us, that distinguishes our species.

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