Pies: The earliest European images of dogs are found in cave paintings dating back 12,000 years ago in Spain

Evidence: 38 • authority: 88

Paleomagnetic Dating of Cave Paintings in Tito Bustillo Cave, Asturias, Spain. Geomagnetic variations recorded in sediments deposited in Tito Bustillo Cave, Asturias, Spain, have been correlated with part of the geomagnetic record established for Lake Windermere, England. An age of between 11,200 and 11,600 years is suggested for a frieze of animals discovered in the cave, so that these polychrome paintings may be attributed to late Ice Age hunters (Magdalenian V-VI).

Evidence: 38 • authority: 80

The technology of the earliest European cave paintings: El Castillo Cave, Spain

Evidence: 38 • authority: 72

Cro-Magnons or European early modern humans (EEMH) were the first surviving expansion of early modern humans (Homo sapiens) found in Europe and Siberia, continuously occupying the continent possibly from as early as 56,800 years ago. They interacted and interbred with the indigenous Neanderthals (H. neanderthalensis) of Europe and Western Asia, who went extinct 35,000 to 40,000 years ago. At the time of this admixture, those Neanderthals already possessed about 6% Homo sapiens ancestry, from admixture with an earlier, extinct sapiens population in Eurasia earlier than 240kya. Ancient DNA research indicates that the earliest modern humans in Europe during the Initial Upper Paleolithic (~45–4…

Evidence: 30 • authority: 72

The woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) is an extinct species of mammoth that lived from the Middle Pleistocene until its extinction in the Holocene epoch. It was one of the last in a line of mammoth species, beginning with the African Mammuthus subplanifrons in the early Pliocene. The woolly mammoth began to diverge from the steppe mammoth about 800,000 years ago in Siberia. Its closest extant relative is the Asian elephant. The Columbian mammoth (Mammuthus columbi) lived alongside the woolly mammoth in North America, and DNA studies show that the two hybridised with each other. Mammoth remains were long known in Asia before they became known to Europeans. The origin of these remains wa…

Evidence: 22 • authority: 88

Dating Magdalenian Art in North Spain: The Current Situation. The graphic activity of Magdalenian human groups forms the most spectacular part of the archaeological record in Cantabrian Spain and, at the same time, represents probably the most expressive aspect of the culture of those Upper Palaeolithic hunters. Since the early 1990s, several projects have tried to fix more precisely the chronology of the cave art through the application of radiocarbon dating by Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (Valladas et al. 1992, 2001; Moure Romanillo and González Sainz 2000; Fortea Pérez 2002). The present article attempts an integrated discussion of the results of the absolute chronology for Magdalenian…

Evidence: 22 • authority: 72

This timeline of prehistory outlines selected developments in human prehistory from approximately 320,000 years ago to around 3200 BC. It begins near the age of some of the earliest known fossils attributed to Homo sapiens, discovered at Jebel Irhoud in present-day Morocco, and covers developments in human migration, technology, subsistence, art and settlement through the Paleolithic and early Holocene. For earlier stages of human evolution, see the Timeline of human evolution. Prehistory generally refers to the period before written records, but its endpoint varies between regions. Writing emerged in Mesopotamia by approximately 3200 BC, while written records appeared at different times el…

Evidence: — • authority: 38