NEANDERTHALS invented art 20,000 years before the ancestors of Henri Matisse and Claude Monet thought of daubing pictures of prehistoric bison on cave walls, a study has found.

New evidence from three caves in Spain suggest that some of the earliest rock paintings have wrongly been attributed to Homo sapiens.

Instead they were probably the work of our extinct sister species, the Neanderthals – once dismissed as stupid brutish creatures having more in common with chimpanzees than people.

Scientists now know that the Neanderthals were no ape-men. They used simple stone and bone tools, wore clothing, adorned their bodies and may have had a complex language.

The latest discoveries published in the journal Science show that Neanderthals were capable of highly sophisticated symbolic thought.

The study, involving Durham University, shows that the paintings were created more than 64,000 years ago.Study co-author Professor Paul Pettitt, a cave art specialist in the Department of Archaeology at Durham University, said: “Neanderthals created meaningful symbols in meaningful places. The art is not a one-off accident.

“When we made the discovery it was surprising to say the least. We’d been shifting the earliest ages for art backwards in our earlier work, so expected for various reasons to push it back further, but not beyond the period in which our own species first got into Europe. After the initial jubilation we obviously started thinking what our critics might say.”

The cave paintings, made using a paint of haematite (red ochre) applied directly by the hand, or spat out of the mouth, consist of groups of animals, dots and abstract geometric designs, as well as stencilled hand prints. They occupy three sites at La Pasiega, Maltravieso and Ardales – located up to 700 kilometres apart.

A state-of-the-art technique was used to date the paintings more accurately than has ever been possible before.

Archaeologist and the study’s lead researcher Dr Chris Standish, from the University of Southampton, said: “This is an incredibly exciting discovery.”

The dating method involved sampling ultra-thin carbonate deposits built up over time that contain the “mother and daughter” radioactive elements uranium and thorium. Measuring the relative levels of the two elements indicates how long it has taken for one to decay into the other. The scientists analysed more than 60 carbonate samples taken from the paintings.

Prof Pettitt said the findings could re-write the story of mankind. He said: “It shows that it’s not just our own species that is a highly imaginative and visual animal, but the need to create visual culture is not only much older than we thought but was shared by our sister species, the Neanderthals. It reminds us that we’re not as unique as we may think.”

Neanderthals co-existed with Homo sapiens for thousands of years in Europe and Asia and the two kinds of human are thought to have interbred. They became extinct about 38,000 years ago for reasons that are still not clear.