Scientists claimed the world's oldest rock art is 67,800 years old. But is the science behind that estimate flawed?
Scientists have claimed that the world's oldest rock art is approximately 67,800 years old, but some researchers are questioning the accuracy of this estimate. The uranium-thorium dating method used to determine these ages may be overestimating the dates, according to Georges Sauvet. He argues that cross-dating with other methods is essential for ensuring the reliability of these findings.
- ▪The oldest rock art is claimed to be 67,800 years old, but its dating method is under scrutiny.
- ▪Georges Sauvet suggests that uranium-thorium dating may overestimate the ages of prehistoric art.
- ▪Sauvet emphasizes the need for cross-dating with other methods to ensure accuracy.
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| Original publisher | Live Science |
| Canonical URL | https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/scientists-claimed-the-worlds-oldest-rock-art-is-67-800-years-old-but-is-the-science-behind-that-estimate-flawed |
| Publication time | Fri, 22 May 2026 15:00:00 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-22T15:02:02.404Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-22T15:02:10.693Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | sVnPpjncMgjt |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
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| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Archaeology Scientists claimed the world's oldest rock art is 67,800 years old. But is the science behind that estimate flawed? A technique that has rewritten the timeline of prehistoric art may be overestimating the ages of cave paintings, some scientists say. By Sandee Oster published 22 May 2026 in News MEMBER EXCLUSIVE When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. A powerful method for dating prehistoric cave and rock art may be systematically overestimating how old they are, one scientist argues.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Live Science.
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