Uranium-series dating shows cave engravings oldest in Britain.
A team of scientists from Bristol, The Open and Sheffield Universities have proved the engravings at Creswell Crags to be greater than 12,800 years old, making them Britain's oldest rock art.
An overdrawn photo of the stag engraving in Church Hole (Photo: Sergio Ripoll).
Creswell Crags which straddles the Nottinghamshire-Derbyshire border is riddled with caves which have preserved evidence of human activity during the last Ice Age. Recently, engravings on the walls and ceiling were found by archaeologists.
These engravings depict animals such as the European Bison, now extinct from Britain, and other more enigmatic figures. The nature and style of these engravings led archaeologists to wonder if this art was perhaps older than any existing art in Britain ... EurekAlert!
The meaning of Ice Age art has been endlessly debated, but evidence is increasing that some was religiously motivated, says Paul Bahn.
At least 70,000 years ago, our ancestors began to adorn their bodies with beads, pendants and perhaps tattoos; by 35,000 years ago, they had begun to paint and engrave animals, people and abstract motifs on cave walls, like those in Lascaux, France, and Altamira in Spain. They sculpted voluptuous figurines in ivory or stone, such as the Venus of Willendorf.
Ever since Ice Age art began to be discovered a century ago, people have wondered what it meant. How could we understand what these early artists were trying to express? Many theories have been put forward – "art for art's sake", totemism, hunting magic and so on ... Telegraph