# Oldest fingerprint found **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [May 29, 2025, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-fingerprint-found/1018967 "2025-05-29T17:37:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2025, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-fingerprint-found/1018967/1 "2025-05-29T17:37:39Z")
… and it’s from a Neanderthal. > **[43,000-year-old human fingerprint is world's oldest — and made by a Neanderthal](https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/43-000-year-old-human-fingerprint-is-worlds-oldest-and-made-by-a-neanderthal)** > > The discovery of a 43,000-year-old fingerprint in Spain is challenging the idea that Neanderthals were not capable of symbolic art. Seems to be a deliberate add-on to make a rock that looks kinda like a face look more like a face. So a definite understanding of symbolism. Couple of questions immediately spring to mind. What are the similarities/differences between this and a sapiens fingerprint? Could a Neanderthal spell pareidolia? ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2025, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-fingerprint-found/1018967/2 "2025-05-29T18:57:30Z")
How is this, at 43,000 years, the oldest fingerprint when we have entire handprints dated to 200,000 years ago? [https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/these-200000-year-old-hand-and-footprints-could-be-the-worlds-oldest-cave-art-180978702/](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/these-200000-year-old-hand-and-footprints-could-be-the-worlds-oldest-cave-art-180978702/) – I suppose maybe the fingerprints are no longer distinguishable within the handprints. But in the sense of being deliberate markings, there doesn’t seem to be much question that deliberate markings made with hominin hands are considerably older than 43,000 years. ---
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2025, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-fingerprint-found/1018967/3 "2025-05-29T19:08:31Z")
I believe that such prehistoric handprints were usually made by holding the hand up to a wall and spraying pigment around it from the mouth. Such a process would of course leave no fingerprints, it’s just an outline of the hand. I know this is true for the 20,000 year old Lascaux handprints; I’m not sure if it’s true for all handprints from that time and earlier. Your cite says “Early artists typically fashioned these prints with stencils and pigments, which they placed along the outer edges of their hands,” but it’s not clear to me if this applies to all of the prints discussed in that article. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2025, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-fingerprint-found/1018967/4 "2025-05-29T19:28:21Z")
The cite does say that; but it also says > “How footprints are made during normal activity such as walking, running, jumping is well understood, including things like slippage,” Urban tells _Gizmodo_. “These prints, however, are more carefully made and have a specific arrangement—think more along the lines [of] how a child presses their handprint into fresh cement.” So I think when they’re talking about outlined hand shapes, they’re talking about other later ones which have been found; but that the 200,000 year old ones were made by pressing the hands onto the stone. As they seem to be talking about pre-existing stone, however, and not about prints originally made into mud, I suppose the hands and feet would have had to have been dipped into something in order to leave marks. That particular article isn’t very clear about that. I’ll try to find something clearer. But they’re definitely talking about how they distinguished them from marks left accidentally; and I don’t see any way that silhouettes made by spraying pigment around the hand could be made accidentally. The impressions must have been made in some fashion that could be taken for accidental if not for their arrangement. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2025, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-fingerprint-found/1018967/5 "2025-05-29T21:53:17Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > there doesn’t seem to be much question that deliberate markings made with hominin hands are considerably older than 43,000 years. Indeed, the article I cited talks about 75,000 year old engravings and links to an article about a 130,000 year old carving, both credited to Neanderthals. That the marking was a fingerprint with identifiable whorls is what makes it distinctive and new as a finding. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2025, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-fingerprint-found/1018967/6 "2025-05-30T18:42:01Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > That the marking was a fingerprint with identifiable whorls is what makes it distinctive and new as a finding. Makes sense; though I think it would have made more sense if the article had explicitly said so. Instead they proceed to go on about whether it’s plausible that it could have been “symbolic” art; which is a much blurrier issue, because first you have to decide what’s symbolic and what isn’t. Does deliberately leaving handprints symbolize something? If not, why did later people (and possibly people during the time inbetween, in cases we haven’t found evidence of, at least not yet) leave handprints by the technique of blowing paint around them? If so, how do we know that the 200,000 year old case wasn’t symbolic? > [@thorny\_locust](#): > > As they seem to be talking about pre-existing stone, however, and not about prints originally made into mud, I was apparently wrong about that, though the first article I cited wasn’t clear. > **[Hand and footprint art dates to mid-Ice Age | Cornell Chronicle](https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2021/09/hand-and-footprint-art-dates-mid-ice-age)** > > An international collaboration has identified what may be the world's oldest work of art, a sequence of hand and footprints that date back to the middle of the Pleistocene era, on the Tibetan Plateau.  > A series of five handprints and five symmetrical footprints were stamped in travertine, a freshwater limestone that was deposited by a nearby hot spring, then hardened over time. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2025, 1:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-fingerprint-found/1018967/7 "2025-05-31T13:26:51Z")
Can cave looting charges be filed after all this time, based on a Neanderthal fingerprint?