https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/k78nbe/this-51000-year-old-deer-bone-reveals-symbolic-behavior-in-neanderthals

Every person alive today belongs to the species Homo sapiens, but tens of thousands of years ago, we were not the only human lineage to roam the planet. Across Europe and Asia, our ancestors interacted and even interbred with our close relatives, the now-extinct Neanderthals, whose existence is preserved in fossils and in the DNA of some modern human populations.

For decades, debates have raged over the cognitive abilities of Neanderthals relative to H. sapiens, especially their capacity to independently produce art or engage in symbolic behavior. Now, archaeologists have made a major breakthrough in this field with the discovery of a toe bone from an extinct giant deer that was intricately engraved by Neanderthals more than 51,000 years ago in Germany, before the arrival of our own species in the region.