Experts discover pre-school in prehistoric age

Updated on: Monday, October 03, 2011

Archaeological research indicates that 13,000 years ago hunter-gatherer children as young as three were creating art in deep, dark caves alongside their parents.

A conference on the Archaeology of Childhood taking place this weekend at the University of Cambridge will reveal the latest research into art made by young children in one of the most famous prehistoric decorated caves in France the complex of caverns at Rouffignac also known as the Cave of a Hundred Mammoths.

Cambridge archaeologist Jess Cooney will explain how meticulous research, using methodology tailor-made for the task, has made it possible to identify both the age and gender of the children who made the simple art form known as finger flutings around 13,000 years ago during the hunter gatherer period.

Her work reveals that some of the flutings studied were made by a three-year-old child with the most prolific young artist being a girl of five, a university release said.

Archaeologists first realised that children had produced some of the finger flutings back in 2006.

Fieldwork carried out earlier this year by Cooney, a Gates Scholar at Cambridge, and Dr Leslie Van Gelder of Walden University, USA, shows just how young they were.

Each year thousands of people visit the caves at Rouffignac in the Dordogne region of France to marvel at the extraordinary rock art: vivid images of animals drawn on the surfaces of the caverns deep inside a hillside.

However, the stunning drawings of mammoths, rhinoceros and horses represent just a small proportion of the art to be found within the 8 km cave system.

Also evident are thousands of lines a simple form of art or decoration known as finger flutings made by people running their hands down the soft surfaces of the walls and roofs of the many galleries and passages that make up the complex.

Though impossible to date accurately, the images found deep inside the Rouffignac caves a network created by river systems are likely to be at least 13,000 years old.

The caves themselves have been known since the 16th century; in 1575 François de Belleforest wrote about paintings in his book Cosmographie universelle.

For centuries visitors to the caves added their own graffiti creating a frustrating puzzle for archaeologists.

It was not until 1956 that experts realised that some of the most striking art including the images of animals was prehistoric. The drawings have been the subject of intensive study since. Only recently have archaeologists turned their attention to the less dramatic finger flutings, almost all of which are made without the application of pigment.

Clues suggest that they date from the same time period as the painted and engraved animals an era of hunter-gatherer culture known as the Magdalenian also responsible for the cave art at Lascaux.

Experts discover pre-school in prehistoric age

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