World's Oldest Cave Art Found—Made By Neanderthals?

Prehistoric dots and crimson hand stencils on Spanish cave walls are now the world’s oldest known cave art, according to new dating results—perhaps the best evidence yet that Neanderthals were Earth’s first cave painters.

If that’s the case, the discovery narrows the cultural distance between us and Neanderthals—and fuels the argument, at least for one scientist, that the heavy-browed humans were not a separate species but only another race.

Of the 11 subterranean sites the team studied along northern Spain‘s Cantabrian Sea coast, the cave called El Castillo had the oldest paintings—the oldest being a simple red disk.

At more than 40,800 years old, “this is currently Europe’s oldest dated art by at least 4,000 years,” said the study’s lead author Alistair Pike, an archaeologist at the University of Bristol in the U.K.

If the new dates are correct, they also could make the El Castillo art the oldest known well-dated cave paintings in the world—a title previously held by France‘s Chauvet cave paintings (pictures), believed to be at least 37,000 years old.

Pike’s team teased out the new dates using a method that relies on known rates of decay in uranium—specifically uranium in calcium deposits that had formed over the paint. The mineral-based paint itself couldn’t be dated, because it contains neither uranium nor the carbon needed for radiocarbon dating.

In several cases, the Spanish artwork proved older than previously estimated based on indirect methods, such as stylistic comparisons with paintings at better dated sites, according to the study, published today by the journal Science.

(See pictures of a reconstructed Neanderthal and take a Neanderthals quiz.)

The Dating Game

The new dates raise the possibility that some of the paintings could have been made by Neanderthals, who are thought to have lived in Europe until about 30,000 or 40,000 years ago. Modern humans are believed to have also been in the area at the time, arriving about 41,500 years ago.

(Related: “Neanderthals’ Last Stand Was in Giraltar, Study Suggests.”)

The findings wouldn’t be the first potential evidence of Neanderthal cave art.

Earlier this year, archeologists found what they consider to be 42,000-year-old Neanderthal cave paintings in Málaga, Spain. But that evidence is controversial, according to Pike.

“They dated some charcoal from the floor of the cave, and then they extrapolated it” to the paintings, Pike said.

“All that shows is that someone lit a fire in the cave 42,000 years ago, but they’ve linked it to the paintings. And we think that’s absolutely mad.”

Cave-art expert Michel Lorblanchet doesn’t think Pike’s proof is exactly ironclad either. More evidence, he said, would be needed to firmly establish that some of the Spanish cave paintings were products of Neanderthal minds.

“I am one of the people who are waiting for objective evidence of painting made by Neanderthal as well as Homo sapiens,” said Lorblanchet, a professor emeritus at the University of Toulouse in France.

“But to date a painting around 40,000 [years ago] does not prove that it was made by Neanderthal.”

Study leader Pike, though, pointed out that the new dates are minimum ages only.

“The calcite could have formed many thousands of years after the art was painted,” he said. “But I agree we will need to date more paintings to prove conclusively these were done by Neanderthals, and we are currently sampling more of the art to see … I think in the next few years we’ll actually prove this.”

(Related: “Sex With Humans Made Neanderthals Extinct?”)

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