Cave Paintings Took Thousands of Years to Complete

Archaeologists' new dating techniques reveal a shocking fact about cave paintings: many of the paintings were done over a period of 20,000 years or so.

By Kathryn Hawkins. Posted on October 09 2008

Our earliest ancestors, the Neanderthals, are often characterized as being fairly slow –and a new discovery gives a whole new meaning to the allegation.

According to a group of archaeologists who are studying cave paintings throughout Europe, many of the paintings weren’t done in a single session, as previously thought. Instead, the paintings were a long-term collaborative affair, with people adding onto and embellishing existing works of art. The archaeologists’ new dating techniques reveal a shocking fact: many of the paintings were done over a period of 20,000 years or so.

“It is probably the case that people did not live in the caves they painted. It seems the caves they lived in were elsewhere and there was something special about the painted caves,” the lead researcher, Dr. Alistair Pike of Briston University, told the Telegraph.

Dr. Pike and the other researchers used a technique called uranium series dating, in which they can calculate the ratio of uranium to the element it becomes as it decays, thorium. The rate of decay can help them to evaluate the approximate ages of the cave paintings. This technique provides far greater insight than previous methods, says Professor Palo Arias, an expert on cave art: “Until about ten years ago it was only possible to date cave art by using the style of the figures, but this new technique developed by Bristol allows that date to be accurately bracketed.”

The research isn’t just about the art –it’s also about discovering who our mysterious ancestors really were.” We want to study how the people of the time behaved and how they felt and Palaeolithic art gives us a way of looking at the type of symbols that were important to them,” says Arias, “so we need to know when the people who were making the art actually lived.”

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