STONE AGE ARTIST

Archaeologists Find Engravings That Are 14,000 Years Old

They show a Pyrenean ibex, which is now extinct.

Archaeologists digging in a cave in Spain have found engravings that date from the Paleolithic era and show an animal that is now extinct. ARTnews reports that the carbon dating indicated the engravings discovered in Lleida, an hour from Barcelona, are about 14,000 years old—and a 3D scan revealed the artist was depicting a Pyrenean ibex. Jorge Martínez-Moreno, a researcher from the Autonomous University of Barcelona, said the work was impressive. “There are elements and visual resources with which to narrate stories or specify spaces that denote that the person or persons who executed them were intelligent and technically skilled, and that combining few lines were capable of generating visualizations with a high empathic content that we have been able to decode thousands of years later,” he said.