The oldest Neanderthal engravings in France discovered near Tours

They were made with the fingers by Neanderthals at least 57,000 years ago on the limestone walls of a cave: the oldest parietal engravings in France, and perhaps even in Europe, have been identified by scientists near Towers.

According to the dating carried out by the researchers, who published their discovery in the American journal PLOS One on Wednesday, these exceptional engravings "probably" date back to 75,000 years ago, a time when our Homo Sapiens ancestors were not yet known until proven otherwise. settled in Western Europe.

"These findings show that rock carvings are not unique to Homo sapiens," the researchers point out. The Roche-Cotard cave was discovered in 1846 on the banks of the Loire, about twenty kilometers west of Tours (Indre-et-Loire). But it "remained inaccessible until 1912, when the owner of the land on which it is located cleared the entrance", clogged thousands of years ago by silt carried by the Loire, explain in a press release joint CNRS and the University of Rennes, which participated in the study.

Excavations had been undertaken in the 1970s but it was not until 2008 that real research work had resumed in the cave of La Roche-Cotard. The work led to the discovery of the engravings, “located on a wall of tuffeau [soft limestone] a dozen meters in length. »

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Mostly traced with the fingers, the engravings "represent non-figurative motifs, some rather simple like finger marks surrounding a large fossil embedded in the rock or forming long traces covering a large surface, some more elaborate", details the press release. Research work has made it possible to experimentally reproduce such lines and above all to "confirm their human character", eliminating any possibility that they are the product of a natural phenomenon or of some animal action. They also "discarded the possibility that these traces could have been made after the opening of the cavity in 1912."

Datings "obtained in 2023 show that the cave was closed around 57,000 years ago" by silt from successive floods. Proof that no one had since entered the premises, where Neanderthals also left behind tools and animal bones.