What Scientists Found Sealed in This Cave for 57,000 Years Wasn’t Made by Humans

 Deep within a long-sealed cave overlooking the Loire River in central France, scientists have uncovered what may be the earliest known Neanderthal cave engravings. Hidden for tens of thousands of years beneath layers of sediment, these markings, deliberately carved into soft chalk walls, are now believed to be at least 57,000 years old. According to new research published in PLOS ONE, the engravings were created long before modern humans set foot in this region

Sealed in Time for Over 50,000 Years

La Roche-Cotard stayed out of sight for thousands of years. Floods from the Loire, along with wind and landslides, piled up over 30 feet of sediment that sealed the entrance completely. It wasn’t until a railroad project in 1846 cut through the area that the hidden space came to light. Early 20th-century digs turned up Mousterianstone tools and animal bones marked with cuts, but the walls themselves were mostly ignored until recently.

Starting in 2016, researchers began making 3D scans of the wall markings and comparing them to other Paleolithic engravings. They ruled out newer scratches and animal claw marks, including those from cave bears or metal tools. What they were left with were deliberate lines and dots, made by fingers drawn across the cave’s soft chalk walls — a local stone called tuffeau, made of fine quartz grains and ancient mollusk shells.

Evidence Points to Neanderthal Artists

To figure out how old the engravings are, the team used a technique called optically stimulated luminescence dating, basically a way of telling how long it’s been since quartz grains last saw sunlight. By testing 50 samples from the sediments above and around the site, they worked out that the cavern had been sealed off somewhere between 57,000 and 75,000 years ago. That’s long before Homo sapiens showed up in this part of Europe, which makes Neanderthals the most likely artists.

Backing up that idea are Mousterian tools found inside the chamber, a type of toolkit tied only to Neanderthal populations. As archaeologist Paul Pettitt of Durham University, who wasn’t part of the study, put it, all the evidence together “provides strong indirect, cumulative evidence that Neanderthals produced the finger markings.”

No one has been able to directly link the tools to the engravings themselves, but the fact that the cave stayed sealed and free of later human activity strengthens the case. If the researchers are right, these carvings could be the oldest Neanderthal cave art ever discovered.

Signs of Thought in Ancient Hands

Until recently, the oldest known Neanderthal cave engravings came from Gorham’s Cave in Gibraltar, dated to around 39,000 years ago. In contrast, early Homo sapiens produced figurative art such as the 45,500-year-old pig painting discovered in Indonesia’s Leang Tedongnge cave, or the elaborate animal murals preserved in France’s Chauvet Cave. These artistic milestones have long reinforced the idea of a cognitive divide between Neanderthals and modern humans.

Recent discoveries like those at La Roche-Cotard are beginning to erode that distinction. Neanderthals may also be responsible for 65,000-year-old pigment-based paintings found in Spanish caves—red designs traced around hands or pressed directly onto rock with stained fingertips. Such findings suggest symbolic expression was not exclusive to Homo sapiens.