The hand and foot prints of two playful children were carved into the walls of soft, porous limestone in Qiusang, Tibet, approximately 200,000 years ago. Until now, researchers believed that it was the oldest work of rock art on the planet, but the latest analyzes indicate that it is much more recent and is probably no more than 1,300 years old.
The first thing that made Chinese experts doubt was that there is no evidence that Middle Pleistocene hominids occupied the frozen central Tibetan plateau during the penultimate glacial period, known as the Riss glaciation (which began about 300,000 years ago and ended about 300,000 years ago). around 130,000). And that is not all.
As explained in an article published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, the uranium-thorium dating used to date this work is very controversial and tends to provide results significantly higher than the age estimates provided with radiocarbon dating. But let's go to the beginning of this story.
Archaeologists discovered the first engraved panel in 2002 near the Qiusang hot springs. It had been imprinted on the travertine (limestone) before it hardened. There were up to 18 impressions that thermoluminescence studies placed around 20,000 years ago.
Years later, in 2018, the same researchers found a second panel in the same site. This time, they used uranium-thorium dating to determine the age of the artwork, and their results, published three years later, indicated that the markings were between 169,000 and 226,00 years ago.
Supposedly two hominids aged 7 and 12 left the impressions, which were quickly celebrated as the oldest example of rock art on the planet, preceding other famous examples of hand and foot prints in Indonesia and Spain by up to 185,000 years. Furthermore, the supposed age of the markings suggested that these ancient children lived on the Tibetan Plateau, often called the Roof of the World, back in the middle of the Rissian Glaciation.
Now, noting that the travertine panel is completely exposed to the elements, Chinese archaeologists from the Universities of Hebei, Nanjing and Minjiang say that rainwater washed away uranium from the surface, which would have greatly increased the estimate of age obtained five years ago.
Specialists also claim that the two sections of engravings are practically identical in both their content and their state of preservation, despite the fact that one is supposedly 20 times older than the other. This is something that, as they write in their article, is inexplicable to them, especially considering that travertine is very prone to weathering.
There is one last detail that further complicates the theory that these inscriptions are 200,000 years old. Two Tibetan characters written on the same limestone panel have recently been discovered. This writing system is believed to have been introduced about 1,300 years ago, and the inscriptions would have had to have been made just before the travertine hardened.
In other words, the space in which the engravings are located must have crystallized at some point in the last 1,300 years, meaning that the marks left by the child artists cannot be older.
All of this is coupled with the fact that the high altitude and icy conditions would have made the Tibetan region uninhabitable during the penultimate ice age. "The area would have been subject to glacial conditions and would have been inaccessible to Lower Paleolithic hominids," the experts write.
“Considering that the earliest proposed human presence on the Central Tibetan Plateau, attributed to the Nwya Devu site, is from the Late Pleistocene, the claim that Middle Pleistocene children lived at the Qiusang site during a glacial period is extraordinary.” , they continue.
Hence, Chinese archaeologists conclude that the “extraordinary” antiquity attributed to the engravings “is based simply on dates derived from a method that is controversial when applied to travertine that has been completely exposed to precipitation.”
