do kaufman has brought the limestone samples back to his laboratory at the max planck institute for evolutionary anthropology in let's say germany. the limestone contains radioactive thore and which can reveal when it was deposited. knowing how old the limestone is will reveal the minimum age of the painting beneath it. more often thought this is always the most exciting moment when you have all the data together and they produce an age it's quite nerve wracking unfortunately this time i'm not jumping up and down for joy. just sample here is from 13000 years ago so that's when the limestone was formed it which means the red pigment must have been painted on the ceiling some time before that. ward. but the analysis can't show just how long before hand so in this case they cannot determine who the cape painters were. of course we still can't rule out that the neanderthals were responsible for the paintings but this data doesn't prove it either. do kaufmann and the other archaeologists are continuing their search europe has thousands more undated cave paintings. the history of our species homo sapiens is also n