Last year's record was broken: the oldest cave painting in the Czech Republic is 7,000 years old

21. 05. 2020

A year ago, the CRL laboratory managed to date the oldest cave painting discovered so far in the Czech Republic, over 6,000 years old and found in Katerinska Cave in the Moravian Karst. Now the bar has fallen for the second time: the black lines on the Brain stone in the same cave are 7,000 years old.

These are the so-called epigraphs - lines that completed the natural appearance of the stone, reflected in its current nickname Brain. According to archaeologist Martin Golec from the Department of History at the Faculty of Arts, Palacky University in Olomouc, it may have been part of a shrine, a spiritual place of prehistoric people for a ceremonial connection with the world of ghosts and ancestors. The Brain is located at the end of the Main Dome of the Katerinska Cave.

Because the dye was made from the ash of burnt wood, it was possible to date the age of the lines with the radiocarbon method - by measuring the content of the carbon isotope ¹⁴C, carried out in the CRL laboratory. But in the Brain case it succeeded until the third attempt.

The CRL laboratory, located in the Prague´s building of the Department of Radiation Dosimetry of the NPI, is jointly operated by the NPI and the Institute of Archeology of the CAS, Prague. CRL laboratory´s research in Katerinska Cave is supported by the RAMSES project.

Photo: Petr Zajíček, Cave Administration of the Czech Republic

Last year's record was broken: the oldest cave painting in the Czech Republic is 7,000 years old

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