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Published online 7 July 2004 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news040705-4

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Fossil findings blur picture of art's birth

Who created the earliest artwork?

For years archaeologists have clung to the idea that only truly modern humans were artists, and that our Neanderthal cousins spent their entire evolutionary lifetime as boorish philistines. But fresh analysis of a prized set of human bones has dealt a body blow to this cherished theory.

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