The Aurignacian People, Europe's Earliest Human Ancestors ?
These people were the ancestors to most Modern Europeans, and Americans appearing to have originated in Europe 41,000+ years ago, so who were they ?
From the Venus of Willendorf, to the Lion man of the Hohlenstein-Stadel, and the bone and ivory Flutes of Hohle Fels, the oldest and most definitive proof of human “culture” dates back much farther than Mesopotamia. These items are significant especially when identifying E.E.M.H. (Early European Modern Humans) in their correct place as the earliest provable human culture. When researching these topics deep enough, we also see Neanderthal groups with equally impressive cultural items including musical instruments living parallel to the Aurignacian People. Probably even learning from one another, and interbreeding for at least 20,000 years. This goes back to least 60,000 BCE, as can be seen by the Archeological evidence.
What Made the Aurignacian a Culture ?
Let's start by looking at a basic definition of culture as we commonly know it today.
There are a few different ways to define a culture. As you will see in this article there are also many examples within the fairly recent Aurignacian archeological finds to show exactly how cultured this vast group actually was. Their carved Idols like the Lion Man of Hohlenstein-Stadel or the Venus of Hohle Fels are significant proof of God worship, and Fertility rituals. On top of these items we also see many musical instruments appearing among Aurignacian groups at around the same time frame of roughly 40,000 years ago. These Flutes, drums, and Lyre type stringed instruments are being found from the area that is now Germany and France, all the way over to Greece, and up to into Siberia. This wide array of musical instruments show us, that not only did they have music, but they had many kinds of it. Most of them as tribal groups would probably have had very similar ceremonies and festivities around music that we see among Tribal groups still in existence today. The most apparent examples of this would be seen in the Aboriginal Australians, and Native Tribes all over the Americas. These peoples still use a mixture of Music, and art to tell their histories, and religious stories. The Aurignacian people also clearly used Cave art to tell stories. From well detailed pictures of Lions in France, to the Petroglyphs of the Asphendou cave on the island of Crete the history is clear, these many separate groups of human ancestors all had some forms of story telling art. These are much more telling and detailed than simple hatch marks or hashtags carved into a clam shell. These cave paintings going back 40,000 years actually show Anatomical details that allow us to distinguish them from other similar species.
The details in many of these cave paintings are precise enough that some of the animals depicted can be identified as species that have since gone extinct. There are other pieces of art from this time frame that are quite different though, these tell stories, and depict scenes of hunts and perhaps even rituals that we have lost the context to understand. These pieces of cave art show more than just the ability to simply transcribe images of animals they witnessed. It shows that they truly wanted to save certain moments of their tribal history to be remembered for ages.
Creating this Art was no simple task.
Imagine the difficulty they endured to do such a thing. Many of these paintings are so far inside these caves that there is no natural light. That's just one obstacle, then in obtaining the red and yellow ochre and coal they needed to be either mining it, or trading for it before they could even make the paint. We take into consideration the immense amount of effort that went into doing this, and it puts these cave paintings in a whole new perspective. The stories they would tell in these paintings would be a serious matter.
The scientist have mixed opinions about much of human history, but almost all agree that these are distinguished as the first and earliest signs we have so far of “Human” culture. There are other artifacts however that show that Culture itself may not be of “human” origins. Wait… before you just swipe away hear me out. I'm not talking about aliens of any kind, actually it's quite the opposite. The earliest signifiers of culture are actually from the Neanderthal. Yes, that's correct, the Neanderthal and here is why.
There is a major debate among many scholars on the origin of this flute, most lean toward it being if Neanderthal origin simply because of its age. With other recent finds of neanderthal sites in western Europe there is more and more evidence that this may be the case. That Neanderthal may have had a cultural influence on modern humans, and cohabitated with Early European Modern Humans from about 40,000 to 60,000 years ago. The problem with these recent findings, is their contrast to the same group of scientists previous theory. That theory said, Neanderthal eventually died out and modern Humans thrived simply because the Humans had culture like music, and art. The biggest problem, is that both of these theories are now simultaneously out there as the approved version. If the Neanderthal had both music, and art up to 20,000 years before modern humans did, then their other theory simply can not be true. This conflict of theories is problematic because it only raises more questions.
Something happened near the end of the last glacial period around 26,000 years ago that appears to have caused a basic regression in culture. We see nearly no musical instruments can be found, or hardly any depictions of gods from the end of the last glacial maximum about 25,000 years ago, up until the dating of the recent finds at the area around Gobekli Tepe at about 12,500 years ago. So what happened to the signs of “Human Culture” in that 13,000 year gap? There are a few examples, but not nearly the amount that we see prior to 25,000 BCE, or after 8,000 BCE.
In my opinion, we have had the evidence come to surface, pardon the pun, but it was then misplaced, misdated, or just discarded. This would only be done for a few reasons. First to keep certain ideas valid in the public eye, like some of the more modern religions and certain beliefs that help calm the rowdy masses. It actually supports some of the Older religions that say there were other groups of non-human beings living beside us for millennia. So it's clearly not the Vedic, Slavic, Germanic, Norse, or Celtic peoples. To some degree it would also prove certain points of Darwinism, and evolutionary theory and help support some others, so it's likely not the Darwinism Absolutists. It's beginning to look more and more like incompetence and less like a conspiracy to me. There are a few videos and other sources I will link to below that show some of the more recent Neanderthal sites that are not only locally adjacent to some of the Early Human groups but also within the same time frames.
This makes me curious, were the Ancient Europeans seeing groups of Neanderthal and calling them Gnomes or Dwarves, and groups of Denisovans or some other larger group that they called the Jotun ? Are these groups of near human ancestors in our histories the same groups in our religious texts, just with different context ? Did the Solutrean people and other ancestral groups carry these stories down to the Chalcolithic and Early bronze age ?
Sources :
https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1426/
https://www.history.com/news/prehistoric-cave-paintings-early-humans
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/bone-flute-is-oldest-instrument--study-says
Aurignacian culture | prehistoric technology and art | Britannica https://www.britannica.com/topic/Aurignacian-culture
The Aurignacians | The Chauvet-Pont d'Arc cave - Archeologie.culture.fr https://archeologie.culture.gouv.fr/chauvet/en/aurignacians
https://www.nms.si/en/collections/highlights/343-Neanderthal-flute#:~:text=The%20oldest%20musical%20instrument%20in%20the%20world%2C%20a%2060%2C000%2Dyear,have%20been%20made%20by%20Neanderthals.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/biochemistry-genetics-and-molecular-biology/aurignacian
https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/11/world/oldest-rock-art-humans-scn/index.html
Aurignacian Art: History, Characteristics, Chronology - Visual-arts-cork.com http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/prehistoric/aurignacian-art.htm