The South Ural archaeological expedition discovered new fragments of rock art in the Ignatievskaya and Kapova caves, located in the Chelyabinsk region and Bashkiria. According to the head of the expedition, the age of the finds can be up to 40 thousand years. This was reported in a press release received by Indicator. Ru.
According to previous estimates, the rock paintings found in the Ignatievskaya cave (280 km from Chelyabinsk) date back to the Holocene period, which lasts from 12 thousand years ago to the present. Research of the South Ural archaeological expedition not only made it possible to find new cave paintings, but also clarified the dates of those found earlier. “Now we can speak with even greater confidence about the Late Paleolithic age of a significant part of the red drawings of the pictorial ensemble of the Ignatievskaya Cave,” notes the head of the expedition, Candidate of Historical Sciences Vladislav Zhitenev.
Black horse in the Ipatiev cave. Vladislav Zhitinev / Moscow State University
Black horse in the Ipatiev cave. Vladislav Zhitinev / Moscow State University
They stopped letting tourists into the cave, which allowed archaeologists to conduct research more actively. In 2017, in the course of the work, new geometric signs and fragments of drawings were recorded that had not previously been noted in archival materials and scientific publications. The overwhelming majority of drawings made with red pigment stylistically do not correspond to the canons of European Paleolithic realism and are closer to the later Holocene images on rocks in the open air, the so-called scribble. At the same time, figural images made with charcoal find clear stylistic and meaningful analogies in the monumental art of the Ice Age of Europe.
A significant indirect argument for the Paleolithic age of red drawings is the presence of red pigments in the Upper Paleolithic cultural layer and their absence among cultural remains of the later (Holocene) time. During the research of the South Ural Archaeological Expedition, new methods were applied, which confirmed field observations of the 1980s with respect to the stratigraphic position of colorful pigments in the thickness of cave deposits.
Some of the rock paintings of the Kapova Cave are fingerprints, fingerprints, and possibly the lower part of the palm. On a number of panels, archaeologists have clarified the microstratigraphic position of the remains of deliberately erased images, on top of which the Paleolithic artist painted new animal figures and signs.
Ignatievskaya cave is located 280 km from Chelyabinsk on the banks of the Sim River. The rock art was found in it in 1980. Archaeologists have counted more than 50 images made with red mineral pigment and coal. The drawings are geometric shapes and single images of people, mammoths and horses. Kapova Cave is located 400 kilometers from Ufa, on the banks of the Belaya River in the Shulgan-Tash nature reserve in Bashkiria. The rock carvings were first discovered in the cave in 1959. On the walls of the cave you can find images of woolly rhinos, bison, horses and mammoths from 17 to 19 thousand years old. In addition to them, there are rare drawings that combine human and animal features.
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Work in the caves will continue, and subsequent analysis in the laboratories of the Faculty of History of Moscow State University will clarify and expand the results obtained in the field.