Scratches on a stone may evince Neanderthal creative urges

The scratches on this flake of flint may not look much but they were made with deliberation by a Neanderthal man or woman. That is the conclusion of Ana Majkic of the University of Bordeaux and her colleagues, in a paper just published in PLOS ONE. Dr Majkic's analysis bears on the question of whether Neanderthals had anything that might remotely be described as an artistic impulse--a phenomenon many anthropologists suspect is unique to Homo sapiens. The stone in question, about 4cm long, was fo...