Ancient human DNA found on cave art for first time

A study sampling 11 caves in Spain and Portugal has found ancient human DNA on cave walls for the first time, including red markings in Portugal’s Escoural Cave. The findings suggest DNA can survive for millennia on rock art, potentially letting researchers “m

The first sign of it wasn’t a dramatic artifact pulled from the ground—it was DNA clinging to pigment marks on a cave wall.

Researchers studying caves in Spain and Portugal collected tiny samples between 2022 and 2025 from 11 sites containing rock art. much of it graphic imagery such as triangles. dots and hand stencils painted with red ochre. These are the kinds of drawings thought to be among the oldest forms of cave art. The team took shavings of paint or removed a thin layer of calcite mineral that forms on cave walls from water precipitation. then tested whether genetic material from the artists had survived.

For years, scientists have known that ancient human DNA can persist in the sediment on cave floors. What had never been found—until now—was ancient DNA on the walls themselves.

That changed with the discovery of ancient human DNA in some red markings in the Escoural Cave in Portugal that resemble a semicolon. “It’s the start of a new era. ” Genevieve von Petzinger of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. South Africa. said. “This gives us the potential to meet the actual artists, the individual who did this art. It’s extraordinary.”.

Not everyone is ready to declare the mystery solved. Alba Bossoms Mesa of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig. Germany. called the result “a happy surprise. ” but cautioned that the DNA can’t yet be proven to belong to the person who created the markings. “It could be from someone who touched the art later, or from someone who just sneezed.”.

Still, the idea matters—because it turns cave art from something seen into something potentially traceable. Hipólito Collado Giraldo. an archaeologist at the regional government of Extremadura in Spain. described it as a shift in what the walls might reveal: “It is as though the cave walls have become the pages of a blank book that. little by little. we will be able to fill with new discoveries.”.

The team’s work also forced a more complicated question about how the DNA got there. When researchers sampled areas of cave walls with no art—used as controls—they found ancient human DNA in some of them too. “presumably left over by prehistoric visitors to the cave who touched the walls.” Collado Giraldo said. “We were absolutely astonished.”.

That matters for the broader story: cave walls could carry genetic evidence not only where paintings exist. but also where there are no visible drawings or archaeological objects. In the Escoural case. the researchers also suggested the DNA most likely came from direct contact with ancient humans rather than from DNA that arrived via sediments deposited on the wall. The reasoning was straightforward: when DNA is found in sediment. it is typically mixed with that of different animals. while the genetic material on the Escoural wall was exclusively human.

The recovered genetic signals carried further clues about who those humans were. Three of the samples were mainly from females, while the fourth was predominantly male. The genetic profile was closest to a population known as western hunter-gatherers, dated to around 5200 to 17,000 years ago.

Exact dating wasn’t possible because there wasn’t enough DNA recovered. But the researchers pointed to the cave itself: the Escoural cave was sealed off between 4000 and 5000 years ago, so the DNA is probably older than that.

A key reality runs beneath the excitement. This study only detected ancient human DNA on the walls in one of the 24 rock art panels sampled. suggesting preservation may be the exception rather than the norm. Bossoms Mesa said. “The success rate is very low right now. ” adding that it could improve as researchers get better at extracting tiny amounts of DNA from cave material.

Earlier this month. First Art researchers—including von Petzinger and Collado Giraldo—carried out extensive sampling at other caves in Spain. That included Nerja and Ardales caves, which contain art attributed to Neanderthals, though the attribution remains heavily debated. Bossoms Mesa said, “One question that I would really love to answer… is whether Neanderthals were making art.”.

Outside the study, the potential is already clear—even if the caution remains. Francesco d’Errico of the University of Bordeaux in France. who was not involved with the research. described what this approach could eventually test: whether artists were men or women or both. whether animal drawings on the same panel were made by a single artist. and whether Neanderthal DNA could be found in very old paintings in the Iberian peninsula—as well as whether Denisovan DNA could turn up in hand stencils found in Indonesia.

For archaeologists, there’s another practical hope embedded in the result. Collado Giraldo said the prospect of gaining information without excavation is especially appealing because digging is inherently destructive. “Excavation inevitably removes part of the archaeological record,” he said. “However. this new discovery offers us the opportunity to uncover and reconstruct entirely new stories without excavation—stories that will help us better understand the people and societies of the past.”.

Right now, the wall still holds its secrets in fragments. But for the first time, scientists aren’t only reading cave art with their eyes. They’re trying to read it with biology—one tiny sample at a time.

ancient DNA cave art Spain Portugal Escoural Cave rock art red ochre calcite western hunter-gatherers Neanderthals First Art project archaeology