Tristan Hughes

And we're going to go through them one by one, Genevieve, and we kind of describe the site itself, and then we'll explore the art associated with Neanderthals there.

And the first one I have in my list is El Castillo.

Now, not in Mexico, not the Maya, not the Great Pyramid at Chichen Itza, but this is something slightly different.

Can you tell us what El Castillo is, Genevieve?

And that's quite difficult for art as well, I'm guessing, to try and date something on the wall.

Yes.

Well, I mean, the next big question then is you've got these new dating techniques available and there seems to be lots of amazing cave art on these walls, which we'll explore.

So what were the dates that people started to get back when they started to date these various bits of art?

I'm just having a look at a picture of them on Google search now.

And they're just like kind of big red spots on the side of the wall, aren't they?

Yeah.

I mean, Genevieve, this is so interesting.

So to clarify, with the dating that's now available, let's say in the case of El Castillo cave, if the dating comes back 40,000 years, all the way back to maybe 150,000 years, that age range there, you know, from other artifacts, I'm guessing like bones and stuff like that and tools.

You mentioned that we knew that there were Neanderthals in this cave beforehand living there, that you can then say, okay, that's when Neanderthals were there.

Anything younger, okay, that's when it's like it was modern humans.

To then have those dates come back on that same stretch of world where you have evidence pre-40,000 years that we believe is Neanderthals.

And then hands probably left by early modern humans.

And then that development in art with actually a bison being shown on the same wall.

That's amazing to have that all in the same cave that you could still go and see today.

And you can see Neanderthal remains, artistic remains probably, and early Homo sapien remains in the same place.