What was thought to be a stain turned out to be a human relic that has pushed the boundary of our knowledge.
Not blood, not paint: a red stain on a stone turns out to be the world’s oldest fingerprint dating back 43,000 years
What appeared to be an oblong pebble jutting out from the San Lázaro rock shelter in Segovia may never have caught the eye of researchers at the site — but it wasn’t long before they were speechless.
A simple red mark on the tiny rock was what attracted their attention. Stumped as to why the stone had such a curious feature, the team contacted the fingerprint specialists: the police.
Now, a new paper on the subject has revealed something extraordinary: hints of the oldest human fingerprint ever discovered.
San Lázaro is believed to have been inhabited by Neanderthals, and the study suggests that the fingerprint could indicate they had the capacity to create art.
The findings were published in the journal Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences on May 24.
A recent discovery in central Spain has unveiled what may be the oldest complete Neanderthal fingerprint, offering new insights into the cognitive abilities of our ancient relatives. Archaeologists excavating the San Lázaro rock shelter near Segovia uncovered a quartz-rich… pic.twitter.com/rmOKCulZWl
— Archaeo - Histories (@archeohistories) May 29, 2025
‘Uh, it looks like a face’
Study coauthor María de Andrés Herrero, a professor of prehistory at the Complutense University of Madrid, admitted they had no idea what they were looking at the first time they saw the stone: “When we saw [the pebble] the first time … we were looking at the stone, all the team and students, and we were like, ‘Uh, it looks like a face.’”
“We felt that the red dot had something — I don’t know what … and the only way we could know there was a fingerprint was to contact the main specialist in Spain for finding fingerprints. That’s why we contacted the police.”
Herrero said carbon dating was used to analyse the fingerprint, with the police — unaccustomed to such work — finding the process “very weird and very difficult.” Conclusions from the data show the spot did contain a fingerprint that dates back about 43,000 years. According to Herrero, it was unlike other artefacts found in the shelter, as it appeared to have no functional use — adding to their theory that it was, in fact, a prehistoric work of art.
Theories from the researchers suggest that the placement of the spot, made with ocher — a clay pigment — using a finger, could have been an attempt by the artist to create a face, given the curious shape of the pebble. “They were able to recognize faces in objects, just like you and me are able to recognise a lion in the clouds,” concluded Herrero.
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