Romanian rock art - as old as Chauvet?

A VERY ANCIENT ART IN RUMANIA - THE COLIBOAIA DATES
Published in INORA 61, 2011, pp. 1-3

An account of the discovery of paintings in the Coliboaia cave in the Natural Park of Mounts Apuseni, department of Bihor, Rumania, was published in INORA (Besesek et al. 2010).A French team, including two spelunkers (Marcel Meyssonnier and Valerie Plichon), a paleontologist who is a specialist of cave bears (Michel Phlippe), a prehistorian (Francoise Prudhomme) and two specialists of cave art (Jean Clottes and Bernard Gely), managed to reach the paintings on 16 May 2010. They established their authenticity. The team received logistical help from associations Speodava Ştei, Speowest Arad, France-Roumanie Speleologie, Orgnac - Grand Site de France, Grotte et Musee regional de Prehistoire (Region Rhone-Alpes) and the Apuseni Natural Park under the coordination of Viorel Lascu.

From the themes represented and the appearance of the animals, the initial hypothesis proposed for the dating of the drawings from seeing the first photographs was that they belonged to an ancient period of cave art, to the Gravettian or the Aurignacian (i.e. between 25,000 and 35,000 BP) (ibid.: 11). Another fact seeming to support the hypothesis was the association of a bone planted in the ground to a cave bear skull next to it, as similar examples were known from the Chauvet cave. During our May 2010 expertise, we could see that in fact the Coliboaia bones had been handled and deposited there in modern times, probably by spelunkers before the art was discovered. In the conclusion of their report, the two specialists of cave art however attributed - on stylistic grounds - the drawings they had long examined to the earliest period of cave art.

Calin Ghemis, an archaeologist with the Oradea Tanii Crisurilor Museum (Rumania), lifted two samples, the first directly from the extremity of a line in the interior of the head of one of the undetermined animals (a feline or a horse which had been scratched by bats); the other one being a piece of charcoal found quite close to that animal on a ledge below.

Finally, two very ancient dates have just been obtained by the 14C method with Artemis (LMC-14, CEA, Saclay) by the Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement at Gif-sur-Yvette (LSCE/UVSQ, France) (Valladas et al. 2001). The one for the animal is 27,870 +/- 250 BP, i.e. 31,450/32,820 years Cal BP (GifA11002/SacA23417). The other one, from the piece of charcoal is 31,640 +/- 390 BP, i.e. 35,120/36,780 years cal BP (GifA11001/SacA23416) (Reimer et al. 2009). Whatever the reason for the difference between these dates, they put the Coliboaia art within the most ancient period of cave art... [Read more]

Entrada relacionada: 17-06-10. Hallan en una cueva de Rumania el arte rupestre más antiguo de Europa Central.
Vídeo relacionado: Picturi rupestre de 35000 de ani in Pestera Coliboaia
Ver L.R.4 nº 51