Uranium-series dating shows the rock paintings in Yunnan created by Paleolithic hunter-gatherers

Uranium-series dating has shown that the rock paintings at Wanrendong cave at the Tiger Leaping Gorge, Jinsha River valley in Lijiang city, Southwest China's Yunnan province, were created by Paleolithic hunter-gatherers, according to an article published on Journal of Archaeological Science on Thursday.

Archeologists from several institutes, including the Yunnan Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, Nanjing Normal University and Wuhan University, began conducting research work on the rocks at the valley in the framework of global research on rock painting in 2008, said Wu Yun, one of the authors of the article and an archeologist at the Yunnan Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology.

The rock paintings at the valley include the naturalistic outlines of large mammals, which superficially resemble the Magdalenian rock art in Europe, said Wu.

"High precision Uranium-series dating of small speleothems, with subsamples overlying or underlying the pigment layers, revealed that the paintings were created during the Pleistocene–Holocene transition, representing the oldest dated rock paintings from China so far," said Wu.

At least three phases of the paintings in Wanrendong cave can be precisely constrained with the earliest being from 13,580 to 13,000 years ago, according to the article.

"The rock paintings at the Jinsha River valley have unique features, which make them different from the rock paintings in other places in China, and they have great significance in exploring the root of the civilization at the upper reach of Yangtze River," said Wu.

Rock paintings at the Jinsha River valley were discovered for the first time in 1988, and archeologists have found more than 70 sites of rock paintings in the valley to date.

The rock paintings vividly depict animals, including deer and rock sheep, as well as hand prints, bows and arrows and abstract pictures.