Dr. Genevieve von Petzinger

It is absolutely intentional.

Like somebody didn't just accidentally make four marks in a row with one more on top or bottom.

And it kind of has the same feeling to it as the gallery of discs, which is down in the heart of the cave where there's all of these spit painted discs all along this wall.

I think that this is where maybe it's been in front of us the whole time, but because that's from a 70,000-year-old dated layer.

We know that layer is at least 70,000 years old.

Those disks may actually be older.

It's just that they were covered up later.

We don't even know.

It may be that they're more in line time-wise.

with the artifacts.

And this is where you can see that it's such a puzzle, hey?

Like, this is what we do, is we try and put little puzzle pieces together to try and rebuild and understand what's happening.

And so it's like it happens slowly, right?

Because you need all the evidence to kind of weave together.

And then you've got, for instance, a burial at a place called La Féressie, which is in the Dordogne in France, which is a Neanderthal burial of a little girl.

there is a stone slab in the burial with her, which has those engraved pupils on it.

Like it is absolutely intentional.

And they buried it with like, it had to be buried with a Neanderthal by Neanderthals before modern humans were in the vicinity.

Like, so this is again, like it's been there.

But because of the way that we were looking and understanding the art, we didn't, we didn't think Neanderthals were capable of doing it.