Cave paintings are the most valuable historical evidence of the development of human culture. To accurately determine their age, the radioisotope method is mainly used.
In 1994, in the south of France, the archaeologist Jean-Marie Chauvet discovered a cave, later named after him - the Chauvet cave. On its walls were found more than 300 images of animals of the ice age, extinct after the onset of warming or destroyed by primitive people. The age of the drawings (33, 000 - 30, 000 years) was determined using radiocarbon analysis of traces of soot from the torches with which the artists lit the walls.
In May 2912, a group of European and American anthropologists discovered in the Abri Castanet cave in southern France, on a piece of limestone rock, an image of female genital organs, animal drawings, and an icon that looked like the number 8. This rock was previously the ceiling of a cave, collapsed, presumably as a result of an earthquake. Accordingly, the side with drawings carved on it was pressed to the floor of the cave. Scientists split the chip and found drawings on its inner side, the age of which was determined by the method of radiocarbon analysis at 35000-37000 years.
Other objects of ancient art were also discovered in the cave: beads from mammoth bones and talcum stone, shells and bones with traces of processing. Like the inhabitants of the Chauvet cave, the ancient artists from Abri Castanet belonged to the Aurignac culture.
In June 2012, the results of cave paintings in the Altamira Cave in the Spanish province of Cantabria became known - approximately 40, 800 years. Skillful polychromatic animal images and handprints are made with ocher, charcoal, hematite and other natural dyes. The age of the patterns was determined by analyzing the ratio of the uranium-234 and thorium-230 isotopes in the calcareous growths formed in the patterns.
Scientists who have studied rock paintings in the Altamira cave put forward two hypotheses of its origin: the work of Neanderthals or primitive people who migrated to Europe from Africa. In Africa, beads were found whose age was determined to be 100, 000 years. Neanderthals, according to some theories, could not stand the competition with the ancestors of modern people - Cro-Magnons - and disappeared in the process of evolution.
