5 Special Toes
Chaco Toeprints
When it comes to extremities, hands don’t get all the glory. A thousand years ago, feet were revered by a Pueblo culture that lived in Chaco Canyon in New Mexico. Want to honor your walls? Forget about buying a Picasso. The Chacos plastered feet and sandals all over. This community had a special physical trait: polydactyly, which is when hands or feet have an extra digit. Not everybody had an additional toe, but the Chacos had the highest percentage of any ethnic group, based on a study of over 90 Chaco skeletons.
Chaco art revealed the true depth of their respect for polydactyly. Sandals were everywhere, from real ones to shoe-shaped stones to prints against walls and floors. On some, researchers noticed adjustments to make an extra tootsie comfortable. Bare feet and hands also appeared, but those with more digits were positioned more often near the entrances of important rooms.
4 Acoustic Art
A 2014 study determined a remarkable link between prehistoric doodles and sound. Such art is more likely to be found at locations with a tendency to echo loudly. Additionally, many depict scenes connected with thunderous sounds. In Europe, India, and Indonesia, hoofed herds in full charge adorn caves where resonance can get rowdy. Where echoes carry in North America, sometimes there are Thunderbirds. The creature’s beating wings are said to be where thunder comes from.
Even when researchers investigated places known for booming echoes but with no known drawings, they were rewarded with several discoveries of brand new rock art. It’s feasible that prehistoric humans, not fully understanding the nature of echoes, saw them as manifestations of something sacred. An old myth from the Canadian Shield interestingly connects a rock spirit, the Memegwashio, to both cave art and echoes.
3 The Higgs Bison
The Higgs bison represents one of the few times when science received backup from cave paintings. After testing ancient bison DNA, the results were odd. Unexpectedly, the DNA wasn’t a close match with modern European bison. Instead, a mysterious ancestor was hinted at, one researchers dubbed the “Higgs bison.” Like the infamous Higgs boson, they suspected but couldn’t prove its existence.
The tests delivered another zinger: the Higgs bison was a hybrid. Two bovine groups roamed ancient Europe: aurochs and the Steppe bison. Around 120,000 years ago, something rare happened. The two distinct mammals species produced fertile offspring that led to an entirely new species.
Incredibly, this evolution was captured in French and Spanish Ice Age art. Paintings older than 18,000 years show long-horned, powerfully built animals resembling the American bison, a Steppe bison offshoot. Horns and humps diminished with younger art, resembling today’s European bison.
2 The Charama Aliens
Charama Cave Paintings
Indian archaeologists were throwing around the words “UFOs” and “aliens” after looking inside a cave in 2014. In the rural village of Charama in Chhattisgarh, residents are very familiar with the 10,000-year-old paintings. Their ancestors told of a legend wherein the so-called Rohela people would come to the village. These small people would land in a round object and welcome a few villagers aboard before flying off again. In the past, the tribal people of Charama even worshiped the paintings.
Done in colors that archaeologists claim remain fresh-looking despite being prehistoric, the images show humanoids dressed like spacemen and holding what could be weapons. The creatures are lithe, somewhat orange, and lack any noticeable mouths and noses. The alleged UFO image shows a disk-type object with three legs and what local archaeologists describe as a “fan-like antenna.”
1 Neanderthal Enigma
El Castillo Handprints
In Spain, an underground cave is making waves. On the walls of El Castillo are painted dots and hand stencils. The reddish creations are over 40,800 years old, making them the oldest known cave art. They might not even have made by humans. During the time of the art’s creation, the cave was a Neanderthal neighborhood, making it possible that they created the historic marks.
Neanderthals are seen as a separate hominid species, but this art could reclassify them as a race of humans instead. Scientific doubts over whether Neanderthals could even create art, let alone symbols, are being challenged by previous discoveries at Neanderthal sites such as pigment, beads, sculptures, and decorated bones. The way they progressed culturally was the same as Homo sapiens, a strong indicator that Neanderthals were also human and not another hominid species.