Britain's earliest prehistoric art found in beauty spot cave

Painted rock art discovered in a Welsh cave has been confirmed to be the oldest in Britain.

The series of 10 red horizontal stripes was first found on the wall of a side chamber of Bacon Hole cave in Gower, Swansea, in 1912, before being dismissed years later as a natural phenomenon.

But archaeologists have now used scientific advances to date the rock art to at least 17,100 years ago - also making it the oldest in north-western Europe.

Archaeologist and prehistoric art specialist George Nash said the art could have been used as a "communication system" but that its meaning was something "way beyond our comprehension".

According to Nash, at the time of the cave art what is now the Bristol Channel was a "rich fertile plateau" between Gower and the north Devon coast.

This would have served as an important feeding ground in the summer for animals such as mammoth, bison, horse, elk, and reindeer, and would have in turn drawn hunter gatherers toward the area.

It's thought they would have used some of the 95 caves along the Gower Peninsula facing the Bristol Channel, where stone tools have been found during excavations.

At the time, the average summer temperatures would have been about -10C (14F) across the "treeless landscape" complete with melting water as glaciers began to retreat to central Wales.

While the research has been hailed as a significant "rediscovery", mystery remains around the meaning behind the art.

Nash, associate professor of the University of Coimbra, Portugal, and a research fellow at Liverpool University, said: "We, in our 21st Century mindset, call it art, but at 17,100 years ago BP (before present), it probably was a communication system, for example...

"It's something which is way beyond our comprehension, and that's the big problem. We can't work that one out. I mean, if we were to find a lot more panels like it, then we could start making quite important about it, but as yet, we've found nothing."

Speaking on Radio Wales, Nash added the horizontal bands could be "tally marks", perhaps from people telling others they had been at that cave for a number of years.

It is thought there could be also further prehistoric art hidden underneath the graffiti on the other side of the cave - painted by a local fisherman in the late 1800s.

In 1928, the initial discovery of the rock art was dismissed as "red oxide mineral seeping through the rock and not prehistoric art", the Guardian reported at the time.

It was rediscovered in 2022 after decades of being overlooked by archaeologists, partially due to the calcite flow on top of it making the rock art difficult to see.

Uranium-thorium dating has now been to examine the pigments, leading the international team conducting the research under Nash to conclude the lines were created by "human agency" rather than natural processes.