An worldwide crew of researchers has reported the invention of hand and foot prints from Quesang, within the Tibetan Plateau. The fossil impressions, which date to between 169,000 and 226,000 years in the past and appear to have been created deliberately, may signify the earliest recognized artwork of its variety.

Called parietal artwork, this type of historical visible expression sometimes crops up on cave partitions however will also be made on the bottom, as seems to be the case for the latest Tibet discovery. The fossil is a sequence of hand and foot impressions, none of which overlap.

Besides probably being the oldest recognized parietal artwork, the location is the earliest proof for hominins so excessive on the Tibetan Plateau, which sits about 12,000 ft above sea stage. The crew’s work describing the fossilized prints was published this week in Science Bulletin.

“How footprints are made during normal activity such as walking, running, jumping is well understood, including things like slippage,” stated Thomas Urban, a analysis scientist at Cornell University’s tree ring laboratory and a co-author of the brand new paper, in an e mail to Gizmodo. “These prints, however, are more carefully made and have a specific arrangement—think more along the lines like how a child presses their handprint into fresh cement.”

The prints—5 from palms and 5 from ft—had been made in what was then mud close to the Quesang Hot Spring. The mud lithified into travertine rock over the millennia. Different handprints close to the location had been found by lead creator David Zhang in 1988 close to a contemporary bathhouse, however the prints that the authors consider are paintings weren’t discovered till 2018. Though the estimated date vary for the fossils is broad, even the newest age predates cave work like these at Lascaux and Sulawesi by over 120,000 years.

Based on the scale of the prints, the crew believes the artists may have been a 7-year-old and a 12-year-old. (The footprints had been 7-year-old sized, however the handprints had been bigger.) That conclusion assumes that the prints had been made by Homo sapiens, although, which the researchers aren’t certain about. If the species of human that made the prints was not Homo sapiens, the age guesses could also be off. The timeline for the prints roughly aligns with Denisovan-like remains that had been discovered on the Tibetan plateau, in order that’s one different candidate for the track-makers.

Whether the prints are artwork in any respect can be up for interpretation. According to Matthew Bennett, a geologist at Bournemouth University who focuses on historical footprints and trackways, it’s seemingly that these historical imprints had been intentional. “​It is the composition, which is deliberate, the fact the traces were not made by normal locomotion, and the care taken so that one trace does not overlap the next, all of which shows deliberate care,” Bennett advised Gizmodo in an e mail.

“Whether such a behavior is artistic depends on the definition one applies—but it gets into a class of behaviors that is generally more complex that is seen with other animals,” Urban stated. “Symbolic behaviors such as language, religion, and art must have simpler manifestations early in the human story—so if you’re looking for the earliest art, don’t go looking for the Mona Lisa or you’ll likely be disappointed.”

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