The previous year, her father, Mr. Sautuola, had visited the World Exposition in Paris where he became fascinated by prehistoric tools and small objects of art found in the caves of France. After speaking with the exhibit's experts about excavation techniques, he returned home to Cantabria, Spain, to explore nearby caves. While Mr. Sautuola was busy excavating Altamira's floor, his daughter ran in and out of the cave and happened upon the cave paintings. Although many examples of cave art had already been discovered throughout Europe, no one had recognized their age and antiquity. It was Mr. Sautuola who first proposed that the paintings were extremely old, but he was met with criticism and accusations of forgery due to the complexity and beauty of the artwork, as well as the lack of soot on the cave walls (it was later discovered that the artists used bone marrow fat to light the cave, which limited the soot). It wasn't until 1902 that the extreme age of the artwork was generally accepted, and Sautuola had already passed away 14 years prior.
In 2013, Garcia-Diez et al. used U/Th dating of thin, calcite precipitates over some of the paintings to determine that they were created over a 20,000 year period, roughly from 15,000 to 35,000 years ago.
Mr. Sautuola's discovery, made possible by the innocent curiosity of his daughter, is reminiscent of Newton's famous quote:
"I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me."
It raises the question of how many of us have experienced a similar sense of discovery, where something significant has been right in front of us all along…
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