Dr. Genevieve von Petzinger

So sometimes you could be talking about something that's 20,000 years older, but it got covered up then.

That's what we, what we know is what we can tell you is the minimum age of it.

Isn't that neat?

So there you go.

There's your crash course in uranium series dating.

Oh, yeah.

It changed everything because now it didn't matter if it was an engraving or if it was red paint or black paint.

If it got covered with calcite, you could date it, right?

So this is – yeah, it cracked the whole field open, and that was about 15 years ago now.

So that's kind of where – that was the other genetics and dating methods like uranium are changing everything.

So El Castillo was the first cave where they successfully got some really cool dates, which was there was these sort of – they're called disks, and they're basically spit-painted, so like –

Like they're blowing it on the wall.

And these discs were made at least 40,000 years ago because that's when they were covered up.

And so the thing is, though, is there was no humans at that cave 40,000 years ago.

There were animals at that cave.

So this 2012 was the moment.

When suddenly people were like... There was the group who were like, hey guys, guess what?

Looks like Neanderthals are making art.

And then there was the people who were like, no, they didn't.

So then we got into a fight.