Ug him make pretty fings too

Anthropological arrogance gets another kicking. Zilhao and coworkers (doi: 10.1073/pnas.0605128103) look closer than ever before at the so-called best example of interleaved early human tool layers, in Chatelperron. These have been taken to indicate that Homo sapiens sapiens did all the fancy toolmaking (the Aurignacian tool assemblages, or "cultures") and Homo sapiens neanderthalis just couldn't get his odd-shaped head around the advanced stuff, the decorative stuff. Neander was supposed to have nicked Homsapsap's best ideas to improve his otherwise uninspiring Mousterian toolkit and the resulting poor imitation was called Chatelperronian. Chatelperron, it was claimed, was periodically occupied by one subspecies or the other and all the intermediate-tech in Neandertal layers could be explained by those unimaginative lowbrow oiks apeing our culture and faking our toolkit. The paper shows otherwise. Instead, there's now no reliable evidence of any overlap between the two technologies: Aurignacian, always found associated with anatomically modern human remains if any, comes after Chatelperronian (found with Neandertals). Parsimony demands we throw out the stereotypes and consider the possibility that big-brained (bigger-than-us-brained, actually) Neandertals made up the semi-decorous, better-then-Mousterian toolkit themselves rather than borrow from us supposedly brighter, artier types. In fact, there's a good case for saying our Aurignacian-wielding ancestors stole the best ideas from the Neandertals and improved them. Was decorative art something we learned rather than invented?