Overview
- An international team published a Quaternary paper in early June 2026 that concludes red horizontal lines in Bacon Hole were intentionally applied by human fingers and date to roughly 17,100 years before present.
- Researchers used uranium–thorium dating on calcite crusts, microscopic pigment chemistry and image enhancement to separate deliberate hematite pigment from natural mineral staining.
- The panel vindicates the 1912 observation by Sollas and Breuil after a 1928 scholarly rejection, and the rediscovery of the panel in 2022 allowed targeted sampling in 2023.
- Authors and National Trust Wales have urged legal protection and careful site management because the cave art is fragile and the current chronology rests on limited samples that need further corroboration.
- Bacon Hole sits on the Gower coast and has a long record of human activity from pre‑Roman to medieval times, which frames the find as part of a millennia-long cultural landscape and raises questions about how Ice Age people used deep cave chambers.