Ancient Cave Paintings Can Harbor Human Dna For Millennia, Scientists Find

In a first, scientists recovered quality DNA from ancient cave paintings, a breakthrough that could unfastened caller ways to analyse prehistoric quality activity by enabling caves to enactment arsenic “genetic archives” that could uncover much astir nan ancient group who painted them.

The caller investigation focused connected caves successful Spain and Portugal, but nan method could beryllium applied anywhere. “The samples pinch amended DNA, which allowed america to look into their familial ancestry—these could beryllium up to 16,000 years old," says geneticist Alba Bossoms Mesa, a doctoral student astatine nan Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology successful Leipzig, Germany.

The researchers took samples of pigments from some ancient cave paintings and nan surfaces of adjacent unpainted rocks wrong 11 caves. The findings, which were precocious published successful Nature Communications, could thief day paintings successful Spain's Covarón Cave to nan Upper Palaeolithic period, which spanned from 50,000 to 12,000 years ago.

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Bossoms Mesa, nan study's first author, explains really nan researchers took nan samples while besides preserving nan paintings. In immoderate cases, nan scientists took mini aboveground samples from areas that had already been damaged, while successful others—such arsenic successful Spain’s famed Altamira Cave—water from supra people flows complete immoderate of nan ancient paintings, and that was collected for nan research.

Polychrome ceiling of Altamira from which pigment samples were analyzed.

© Matthias Meyer

The researchers successfully recovered ancient quality DNA successful samples taken from 5 of nan 11 caves. In astir cases, it was mixed pinch ancient animal DNA—often from type specified arsenic bats and rodents. This mixed DNA was an important signal: The researchers judge it apt indicates that sediments from nan cave level were people transferred to nan walls. By contrast, successful Portugal's Escoural Cave nan researchers recovered isolated quality DNA that they judge came from nan original artists—perhaps near by their touch, erstwhile they rested their assemblage connected nan wall, aliases from saliva aliases sweat during nan coating process.

At Spain’s Covarón Cave, astir of nan samples were mixed animal and quality DNA, but they contained overmuch much ancient DNA than elsewhere. As a result, nan researchers were capable to trace nan familial ancestry of nan group who erstwhile lived there.

Their study indicates that nan cave paintings were astir apt made by hunter-gatherers who lived successful Western and Central Europe sometime betwixt 16,700 and 5,200 years ago. Unmixed quality DNA from this play was recovered only connected unpainted cave walls, truthful it’s unclear if they were nan artists.

Adam Brumm, an archaeologist astatine Australia's Griffith University who was not progressive successful nan study, welcomes nan results: "Several years agone we tried to extract ancient DNA from dated Late Pleistocene manus stencils successful Sulawesi and Borneo," he says. "We had nary success, truthful I’m gladsome to spot nan promising results obtained by this team."

Brumm was 1 of nan scientists that recovered nan world’s earliest-known cave art connected Sulawesi, which is thought to beryllium much than 67,800 years old.

“The objection that quality DNA tin persist connected cave walls for thousands of years is encouraging,” he says. If successful, extracting ancient quality DNA from stone creation “will beryllium a game-changer that will revolutionise our knowing of early quality culture.”