Neanderthals were making hand stencil rock art more than 66,000 years ago, U-series dating suggests

A discovery deep within a cave in Spain has challenged the history of human artistic expression. Researchers have determined that hand stencils in Maltravieso Cave are more than 66,000 years old, suggesting that Neanderthals, not modern humans, were the world’s first artists.

Stencils and prints of the human hand are some of the earliest forms of deliberately created visual artwork preserved in the archaeological record. Maltravieso Cave houses more than 60 red hand stencils, but their precise ages have remained a mystery.

Determining the age of cave art is usually challenging because mineral-based pigments cannot be dated using carbon dating methods.

Researchers from the University of Southampton and collaborating institutions have put hard limits on how recent they can be using the U-series dating method on calcium carbonate crusts covering portions of the art.

In the study titled “The age of hand stencils in Maltravieso cave (Extremadura, Spain) established by U-Th dating, and its implications for the early development of art,” published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, researchers applied U-series dating to calcium carbonate crusts overlying the hand stencils in the cave’s Sala de las Pinturas and Galería de la Serpiente.

The team collected carbonate samples overlying pigment on hand stencils and performed U-series dating at the Ocean and Earth Science analytical geochemistry facilities at the University of Southampton.

The U-series dating method is considered non-destructive because it does not use any material from the artwork itself. It only requires tiny amounts of the mineral deposits that cover portions of the artwork, preserving the integrity of the find.

A total of 22 carbonate samples were analyzed. Minimum ages for the cave art range from the Holocene to the Middle Paleolithic. The crust covering the hand stencils in the deepest recess of the cave dates to 66,700 years ago, suggesting that Neanderthals likely created these illustrations.

It is possible that modern humans made some of the art, as the carbonate crust has only covered pigments on certain images for approximately 6,000 years, though the art itself could be much older. Moisture and carbonate formations are not uniform and can vary in deposit locations over time. The oldest three samples were dated 46,600, 55,240 and 66,710 years ago.

How U-series dating works

Isotopes of uranium decay into thorium at a set rate, which makes U-series dating suitable for samples ranging from a few hundred to around 500,000 years. On the surface, the soil has a mixture of uranium and thorium isotopes with no way to distinguish which thorium has decayed from what uranium isotope, making exposed soil impossible to date.

When it rains, only the uranium is water soluble, hitching a ride in the water while leaving the thorium in place. Surface water often works its way into underground caves, leaching in from the surface above.

The water brings with it an assortment of soluble minerals, including the uranium isotopes, that form calcium carbonate crusts when the water evaporates, building up over time to create cemented sediments.

It is within the layers of calcium carbonate that the conversion of uranium to thorium can be measured in isolation, ticking away like a clock over thousands of years. By analyzing the uranium-to-thorium ratio of calcium carbonate crusts that cover ancient cave art, researchers can accurately date the crust and, by default, provide a minimum age for the application of the underlying pigment.

These results suggest that the tradition of making hand stencils in Europe began long before they appeared in any other part of the world. The oldest known hand stencil art previous to this is located in the Leang Timpuseng Cave on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. U-series dating of mineral deposits overlying the stencil there indicates a minimum age of 39,900 years.

Handprints and footprints found on the Tibetan Plateau have been dated to approximately 200,000 years ago. Children would have pressed these into the mud near a hot mineral spring, and there is an ongoing debate about whether these prints represent deliberate artistic expression or are simply traces left by human activity.

Previously, a team of researchers at the Cave of La Pasiega, also in Spain, used U-series dating to discover that the iconic red dot art had to be older than 64,800 years. The red dot style is found throughout ancient cave art of Spain, and while most of it is undated, the picture is becoming clearer with this current finding that the Neanderthals of Spain were actively engaged in artistic pursuits.

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