Fingerprint on face-like pebble evidence that Neanderthals created art

One day about 43,000 years ago, a Neanderthal man in what is now central Spain came across a large granite pebble whose pleasing contours and indentations snagged his eye.

- Sam Jones

Something in the shape of that quartz-rich stone - perhaps its odd resemblance to an elongated face - may have compelled him to pick it up, study it and, eventually, to dip a finger in red pigment and press it against the pebble's edge, exactly where the nose on that face would have been.

In doing so, he left behind what is thought to be the world's oldest complete human fingerprint, on what would appear to be the oldest piece of European portable art.