What is the oldest known artwork by a human ancestor?

The answer

In 2025, researchers announced the discovery of the oldest known art: a 43,000-year-old stone found in a rock shelter in central Spain, from a time when Neanderthals lived there. One side of the stone bears an ancient fingerprint made with red ochre pigment, deliberately placed so that the rest of the stone resembled a face - creating a kind of prehistoric pareidolia art. The discovery pushes back evidence of artistic expression by human ancestors and supports the growing view that Neanderthals were far more cognitively sophisticated than previously believed, capable of symbolic thought and aesthetic expression thousands of years before modern humans arrived in Europe.