Font-de-Gaume's Painted Bison Finally Dated to the Ice Age

For more than a century, the painted animals of Font-de-Gaume cave in France's Dordogne region have been admired without anyone knowing exactly how old they were. Now, in a study published on 9 March 2026 in the journal PNAS, researchers have for the first time directly dated some of the cave's masterpieces, confirming that a striking bison was painted roughly 13,000 years ago during the Ice Age.

The breakthrough overturned a long-standing assumption. Scholars had believed the black lines in Paleolithic rock art were made solely from iron and manganese oxides, minerals that contain no carbon and therefore cannot be radiocarbon dated. By analyzing the pigments with non-invasive techniques such as Raman microspectrometry and hyperspectral imaging, the team led by a CNRS researcher discovered that some of the black pigments also contained traces of charcoal, a form of carbon that can be dated.

“Now, in a study published on 9 March 2026 in the journal PNAS, researchers have for the first time directly dated some of the cave's masterpieces, confirming that a striking bison was painted roughly 13,000 years ago during the Ice Age.”

With special permission to take samples imperceptible to the naked eye, the scientists determined that the bison figure dates to between roughly 13,162 and 13,461 years ago. An abstract image that may depict a mask yielded even older dates for parts of its lines, with one section surprisingly much younger, hinting that the cave's art was created and perhaps revisited over a vast span of time.

Font-de-Gaume, near Les Eyzies in the Vézère valley, was discovered in 1901 and is one of the few decorated caves with polychrome paintings still open to limited public visits. It contains hundreds of depictions of bison, horses, mammoths, and other animals, rendered with a sophistication that continues to astonish.

The discovery does more than settle the age of one bison. It opens the possibility that similar charcoal traces survive in pigments at other prehistoric sites across the region, giving researchers a new tool to date art that was long thought undatable. Each confirmed date helps reconstruct the lives and imaginations of Ice Age people, reminding us that the impulse to create, to record beauty and meaning on stone walls, is among the oldest and most human of all, reaching across thirteen millennia to move us still.