This may be the oldest, most complete Neandertal fingerprint ever seen

At an ancient rock shelter in central Spain, archaeologists have unearthed a stone marked by a unique red dot. That spot — made using red ochre, a natural pigment — holds what appears to be the oldest and most complete Neandertal fingerprint ever found.

The rock on which it’s found is shaped sort of like a human face. That red dot appears right where a nose might be. This hints that the Neandertal who made the mark may have been experiencing pareidolia, the scientists say. Pareidolia is our tendency to see familiar shapes, such as faces, in random objects.

When archeologists dug up this face-shaped rock marked with a red dot, they immediately recognized it as something exceptional.
D. Álvarez-Alonso et al/Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences 2025

Researchers shared these findings May 24. They describe them in Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences.

Archaeologists dug up the dotted stone in 2022 at a site not too far from the city of Segovia. Called Abrigo de San Lázaro, it’s a shallow cave carved into cliffs near the Eresma River.

The granite rock they found there is roughly 20 centimeters (8 inches) across. Carbon dating shows it emerged from a layer of earth dating back to roughly 43,000 years ago. That’s near the end of Neandertal history.

The layer of dirt holding the rock held few other stones. Most of these showed signs they had once been hammering tools. But the potato-shaped dotted rock was different. It didn’t look like a tool. Plus, it was larger than any other stone in the layer.

“From the first moment, we saw that it had a red dot,” says David Álvarez Alonso. A historian and archaeologist, he works at the Complutense University. It’s in Madrid, Spain.

Álvarez Alonso’s team found the dot’s precision and placement curious. So they inspected what it had been made from. Those minerals confirmed the dot was not a natural part of the rock. That led his team to suspect someone had made the mark.

Neandertal finger painting

An ancient person could have done this by dipping a fingertip into a mix of ochre pigment and water, then pressing it to the rock.

To test the idea, Álvarez Alonso’s team asked forensic experts in Spain’s national police for help.

At first, the forensic team doubted they could solve such a cold case. But they agreed to  look at the rock with multispectral imaging. This technique examines surfaces under different wavelengths of light. The resulting images revealed fingerprint ridges embedded in the dot.

It’s not clear which finger left the smudge. But comparisons to modern fingerprint databases suggest it was likely left by a man.

Neandertal fingerprints have shown up on other ancient objects. Resin balls found in Germany, for instance, bear prints likely made during toolmaking. The newfound print is special, though, because it looks like it was made for some symbolic purpose.

It is impossible to know what the painter intended. But to Álvarez Alonso, the rock clearly differs from ones used as tools.

Learn a bit more about where the fingerprinted stone came from, where it was found and what it might represent in the opening news segment of this video.

A sign of symbolism?

The new finding adds to an ongoing rethink of Neandertals’ mental abilities. For much of the last century, scientists didn’t believe Neandertals had symbolic thought. That’s the human ability to use images, words or objects to represent ideas, concepts or actions.

Let’s learn about Neandertals

But over the past two decades, that’s been changing. Scientists have found seashells and pendants painted by Neandertals. Caves in southern Spain bear geometric patterns and hand stencils made by Neandertals, too.

Finding a Neandertal that may have once booped the “nose” of an ancient rock face supports the view that these ancient people had symbolic thought after all.

“This is a beautiful and original study,” says José Ramos-Muñoz. An archaeologist at the University of Cadiz, Spain, he did not take part in the new research. “The oldest art consists of dots, lines and smudges,” he says. “This is another data point in the same direction.”