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RADIO CARBON DATING THE PAINTINGS OF FONT-DE-GAUME:
Font de Gaume Cave, France. Photograph by Anne Maigret.Students of rock art and cave painting have long lamented the difficulties of estimating dates. With carbon 14 dating you need an organic...
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DAMAGE TO ROCK ART FROM POWER PLANT POLLUTION EMISSIONS:
Murujuga, on the Burrup Peninsula and Dampier Archipelago in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. Photograph from newsartnet.com.From 2020 to 2026 a study was conducted at a location known as...
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ORGANIZING PATTERNS IN CAVE PAINTING?
Horse, bison and reindeer, Chauvet Cave, France. Internet image, public domain.From the discovery of the painted caves of Europe (and the eventual acceptance of their authenticity) people have been...
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CHINESE PICTOGRAPH PAINT CONTAINS HUMAN BLOOD:
Zuojiang Hashan pictographs. Internet image, public domain (photograph sharpened with chatGPT).How well a painted image will last on a cliff or boulder depends upon a number of factors. One factor, of...
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CARVED IVORY BIRDS FROM HOHLE FELS CAVE:
Hohle Fels ('hollow rock') cave. Internet image, public domain.For many years excavations have been underway at theh caves of the Ach Valley of the Swabian Jura, near Schelkiingen in southwestern...
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CROATIAN CAVE ART IS THE FIRST KNOWN IN THE BALKANS:
Romuald's Cave, Croatia. Internet image, public domain.A recent discovery has provided “the first evidence for Upper Paleolithic figurative rock art from the Balkan region. These findings expand the...
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REDISCOVERED LATE UPPER PALEOLITHIC IMAGERY IN A CAVE IN BRITAIN:
Bacon Hole cave, Gower Peninsula, South Wales. Photograph from Nash et al., 2026, figure 2.The oldest cave art in Britain has been essentially rediscovered in Bacon Hole cave, on Gower Peninsula in...
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THE HIDDEN MOUNTAIN DECALOGUE STONE, LOS LUNAS, NEW MEXICO:
This is a column on a subject that I have long wrestled with in my own mind. It is the epigraphic question of prehistoric inscriptions in Old World scripts in the New World. I became aware of the...
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CLAVIFORM, VENUS OR STEATOPYGIA?
Equine, Image from Hussein et al., 2025, Figure 5, page 20, (Image sharpened with chatGPT).A recent study of a rock shelter with considerable rock art, found in the central Sinai Peninsula of Egypt has...
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WHO MADE IT? DNA ANALYSIS FROM CAVE PAINTINGS:
Location of test sample from Escoural Cave, Portugal. Image from Mesa et al., 2026, Figure 2, page 3 (image sharpened with chatGPT). This sample held the human DNA.Back on 17 August 2024, I wrote a...
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ATLATL PORTRAYALS IN ROCK ART SUGGEST ROUGH DATING ESTIMATES:
Hunter with atlatl, Jeffer's Site,Cottonwood county, Minnesota. Photograph enhanced, Peter Faris.Knowing that the atlatl technology for hunting has existed since the Paleolithic in the Old World, it...
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A DECORATED BONE PLAQUE FROM GOBEKLI TEPE:
Gobekli Tepe, Turkey. Internet photograph, public domain.An interesting, and pretty much unique, object was recovered in 2011 during excavations at the site of Gobekli Tepe in Turkey. It was described...
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WHAT DO FOOTPRINTS MEAN?
Footprints (Podomorphs) in Sweden. Image from Fahlander, 2026, Figure 3A.RockArtBlog has had a number of columns about footprints in rock art over the years (click on footprint in the cloud index at...
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THE MARTIN BOWDIN GALLERY IN THE PURGATORY REVISITED:
Bear and fox, Bowden Trail, Picketwire Canyon, Colorado. Eldon Brown photograph from John and Daphne Rudolph.Back in August and September of 2015 I did a column in two parts about paintings produced by...
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GIRAFFES IN ROCK ART:
Giraffe. Image from Animal Conservation Awareness.Giraffes, Niger. Internet image, public domain.One theme in rock art consists of animal portrayals, records of the life in and around the artist’s...
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THYLACINE AND TASMANIAN DEVIL PAINTINGS IN NORTHERN AUSTRALIA:
Thylacene cynocephalus (Tasmanian tiger). Internet image, public domain.Sarcophilus harrisii (Tasmanian devil). Image from Wikipedia.Most of us probably know of the Tasmanian Devil as the Looney Tunes...
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BLOMBOS OCHER CROSSHATCHING, A NEW SUGGESTION OF PURPOSE:
Engraved ocher, Blombos Cave, South Africa. Image from Don Hitchcock, donsmaps.com.A few years back (2018) I did a column about the engraved ocher fragments from Blombos Cave (see references below)....
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NEANDERTHAL FINGER FLUTINGS, EUROPE’S OLDEST INTENTIONAL MARKS?
La Roche-Cotard manor house, France. Internet image, public domain.In the ever proceeding scramble to identify the earliest, or oldest, rock art, we have another claim, this time from Europe. In the...
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ANOTHER CLAIM OF PALEOLITHIC WRITING:
Pictographic tablet featuring an account of 33 measures of oil, from Godin Tepe, Iran (Courtesy Dr. T. Cuyler Young, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto).A recent paper by Christian Bentz and Ewa Dutkiewicz...
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DECEBALUS AT THE IRON GATES OF THE DANUBE – THE MOUNT RUSHMORE OF ROMANIA:
Decebalus carving along the Danube River, Romania. Internet image, public domain.Above the bank of the Danube River at the border of Romania and Serbia, on a large rock outcrop known as the Iron Gates...
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