By: Renee Jin

Long ago, Neanderthals used their fingers to make marks and paintings on the walls of a cave in France. According to new research, the marks are from 57,000 years ago, long before modern humans arrived there. One of the group’s earliest works of art is thought to be special engravings, which have a lot of dots, stripes, and lines.

To create the artwork, Neanderthals would have swiped their fingers across the cave’s once-soft walls in La Roche-Cotard, France. It’s a procedure known as finger fluting. It is believed that Neanderthal art is one of the earliest examples of its kind in western Europe.

According to the findings, sediments had sealed the cave’s entrance at least 51,000 years ago. Until it was rediscovered much later, at the beginning of the 20th century, scientists believed that this was the last time large animals and humans could enter the cave.