Cantabrian rock art is the oldest in Europe
The oldest examples of Europe’s Palaeolithic rock art are to be found in caves in the Cantabrian area. Specifically, the oldest image has been dated in the cave of El Castillo in Cantabria: it was produced over 40,800 years ago. The image had been thought to be about 30,000 years old, but by means of the uranium-series disequilibrium method (a technique that has barely lent itself to rock art until now), it has been proven to be older than originally thought. The journal has devoted this week's front cover to this study led by Alistair Pike, a researcher from the University of Bristol. Several experts have participated in this work, including Marcos García-Díez, Professor of the Department of Geography, Prehistory and Archaeology of the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU). As this researcher explains, carbon-14 testing, often used for dating purposes, can only be applied to some very specific cave motifs. For example, it can be used in the case of black paintings produced with charcoal (organic matter), but not when the image has been painted red (an inorganic colouring matter, iron oxide) or engraved. So in this piece of work the uranium-series disequilibrium method has been chosen. This is common practice in paleoclimate research. But not in rock art, because it runs into certain difficulties. However, García-Díez and the other researchers have managed to improve the procedure and thus obtain very precise dating with the minimum quantity of samples (milligram-size). Thanks to this method, the raw material used to date rock art was not the paint itself, but the calcite that had built up above and below it. This way, there is no damage as far as the preservation of the paintings is concerned, as it is not necessary to extract any colouring matter from the images; all that is needed is a little calcite to proceed to the analysis. So art cave is not affected —carbon-14 does have negative effects on cave art—. These researchers recently acknowledged by the journal have worked in 11 caves in Asturias and Cantabria, including some which are Unesco world heritage sites, like Altamira, El Castillo and Tito Bustillo. In total, they have calculated the maximum and minimum age of 50 works. Thanks to this innovative dating method, a red disc (large spot) painted in El Castillo has the oldest example of rock art in Europe. Through uranium-series disequilibrium, it has been possible to ascertain that it is over 40,800 years old, 10,000 years older than originally thought; and as a result, it has broken the record held by an image found in Chauvet cave, in France, by a difference of 7,000 years. Furthermore, a negative red hand found in this same cave in Cantabria has been shown to be at least 37,300 years old. Likewise, they have concluded that a red claviform-shaped symbol (big triangle) dated in Altamira is at least 35,600 years old. Which means that rock art in Altamira began 15,000 years earlier than what was originally thought, and that the cave was repeatedly visited and painted over a period of 30,000 years. And that is not all. The creation of rock art has always tended to be attributed to , as a sign of human development, but the results of this research open up a new path of possible analysis. It is a fact that in this area of Cantabria the most ancient remains of that have been found are 41,500 years old, and before them it was the Neanderthals who lived there. So this team in which Garcia-Díez is participating has concluded that the first that arrived in Europe already had a great symbolic capacity. And the team does not rule out another option: that the Neanderthals could have been the authors of these images. Apart from this researcher from the UPV/EHU, this successful piece of work has had the participation of researchers from the universities of Bristol, Barcelona, Sheffield, Alcalá de Henares and Cantabria as well as from the National Research Centre into Human Evolution (Burgos, Spain) and the Museum of Altamira.
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