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Font-de-Gaume, a cave in France's Dordogne famous for its Ice Age paintings, has had some of them dated directly for the first time. Charcoal found in the black paint showed that a bison was drawn about 13,300 years ago; the results were published in 2026.

PNAS study, 2026

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Radiocarbon dating measures how much of a slowly decaying form of carbon is left in material that was once alive, such as charcoal. The cave's black figures were long thought to be painted with manganese minerals, which contain no carbon and cannot be dated this way. A team led by France's national research centre, the CNRS, used Raman spectroscopy and hyperspectral imaging, methods that identify materials by the way they react to light, and found charcoal in two drawings: a bison and a face-like 'mask'. Their study, published in March 2026 in PNAS, the journal of the US National Academy of Sciences, dated the bison to about 13,300 years ago and two samples from the mask to between about 14,200 and 16,000 years. A third mask sample came out at about 8,800 years, which suggests part of the figure was added or retouched thousands of years later.

Türkçe oku
Font-de-Gaume, Fransa'nın Dordogne bölgesinde Buzul Çağı resimleriyle ünlü bir mağaradır ve bu resimlerin bazıları ilk kez doğrudan tarihlendi. Siyah boyada bulunan odun kömürü, bir bizonun yaklaşık 13.300 yıl önce çizildiğini gösterdi; sonuçlar 2026'da yayımlandı.
PNAS çalışması, 2026

Radyokarbon yöntemi, odun kömürü gibi bir zamanlar canlı olan bir maddede, yavaş yavaş bozunan bir karbon türünden ne kadar kaldığını ölçer. Mağaradaki siyah figürlerin uzun süre manganez mineralleriyle boyandığı düşünülüyordu; bu minerallerde karbon olmadığı için bu yöntemle tarihlenemezler. Fransa Ulusal Bilimsel Araştırma Merkezi CNRS'in yönettiği bir ekip, malzemeleri ışıkla etkileşimlerinden tanıyan Raman spektroskopisi ve hiperspektral görüntüleme ile iki çizimde odun kömürü buldu: bir bizon ve yüze benzeyen bir “maske”. ABD Ulusal Bilimler Akademisi'nin dergisi PNAS'ta Mart 2026'da yayımlanan çalışma, bizonu yaklaşık 13.300 yıl öncesine, maskeden alınan iki örneği ise yaklaşık 14.200 ile 16.000 yıl öncesine tarihledi. Maskeden alınan üçüncü örnek yaklaşık 8.800 yıllık çıktı; bu da figürün bir bölümünün binlerce yıl sonra eklendiğini ya da rötuşlandığını düşündürüyor.

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