The engravings in the La Roche-Cotard cave, in the Loire Valley (France), were sealed for thousands of years, until the French archaeologist Jean-Claude Marquet entered the site for the first time in 1974. Already then researchers They suspected that some fine lines on the wall could be of human origin.
Marquet also found scrapers and other retouched pieces known as Mousterian stone artifacts that suggested the cave had been used by Neanderthals. Hence speculation began about who was really the author of these marks.
University of Basel archaeologist Dorota Wojtczak, together with a team of researchers from France and Denmark, have analyzed the carvings on the wall and discovered that they are the oldest known and date back more than 57,000 years. And they were not made by any Homo Sapiens, but rather they were made by Neanderthals.
For decades, historians agreed that Homo neanderthalensis lacked higher cognitive abilities, so it would never have been able to develop its artistic side. Marquet himself, fearing that he would not be able to provide evidence that would shed light on the darkness of the past, left the cave untouched for almost 40 years. Until 2016.
“Our task was to demonstrate with modern methods the human origin of these wall engravings,” explains Dorota Wojtczak, who was part of this new working group in which Jean-Claude Marquet himself was involved. They first used photographs and drawings and then a 3D scanner to meticulously record markings in the tuff rock of the cave wall.
In his Basel laboratory, Wojtczak compared these cave samples to tuff that he had worked experimentally with wood, bone and stone tools, as well as his hands. "This research clearly demonstrated that the cave marks were not made with tools, but by scratching with human fingers," he says in an article published in the journal PLOS ONE.
At the same time, examination of the sediments by Danish researchers showed that the cave must have been sealed for more than 50,000 years by residual mud from the Loire before it was rediscovered. This makes the La Roche-Cotard cave system a very special place: a true “time capsule”.
“At that time, 50,000 years ago, there were no modern humans in Europe, only Neanderthals,” says the specialist in wear analysis. Therefore, both the wall markings and the artifacts found can only come from these early humans.
The clear geometric shapes with parallel and triangular lines suggest that these engravings were not made on the wall by chance, the researcher does not know what they represent. "But they could only have been made by someone who acted with planning and understanding," she says. Whether it was “art” as such or a form of recording, that is a matter of interpretation.
The La Roche-Cotard cave still holds many other archaeological secrets. Jean-Claude Marquet found in 1976, for example, an object that resembles the face of a human or animal and Wojtczak's analysis suggests that it is also man-made.
Another object in the cave appears to be a small oil lamp. "Specialists are currently investigating whether it contains pigments or soot substances that could help identify the type of fuel used at that time," explains Dorota Wojtczak.
The La Roche-Cotard chamber explored so far is only part of an entire cave system. Experts now hope to learn more about Neanderthal activities, especially in Chamber 4, which is still largely covered by sediment.
Wojtczak is convinced that each new study will help dismantle the traditional consensus that Neanderthals were mentally inferior humans and reinforce the perception of them as cousins to modern humans. “They could talk and probably even sing,” she adds.
