The mystery of the missing fingers begins in a French cave. In 1985, explorer Henri Costs crawled 130 meters through submerged tunnels to reach a main chamber in Costa Cave. What he found was astonishing: prehistoric paintings depicting horses, seabirds, even a lion cub. The art was extraordinary — scenes of ice age life rendered by people who lived roughly 22,000 years ago during the Gravettian period.", "But something else caught his attention. Among the cave paintings were handprints — human hand stencils pressed directly onto the walls. These are among the most evocative forms of prehistoric artwork left behind. They're like ancient artists reaching through time to greet us.", "Yet these handprints were strange. Many were missing fingers."], "source": "Stefan Milo
In 1985, Henri Costs was exploring an underwater cave off the coast of Marles. After crawling and twisting over 130 m through submerged tunnels, he finally surfaced in the main chamber. What met his eyes astounded him. Horses, seabirds, even a lion cub, perhaps.
Incredible scenes of prehistoric life. Although this cave was now underwater 20,000 years ago during the ice age, sea levels were 100 m lower. And this cave stood in the cliffs above a large coastal plane, obviously teeming with life. For the people of the ice age, such caves were clearly special places.
And like Henri, they too made their way through the twisting tunnels, guided only by the light of a faint torch to paint these incredible scenes. They didn't just paint natural scenes, though. They also left behind handprints, the most evocative form of prehistoric artwork. It's like these ancient artists are reaching through time to greet us.
However, something about these handprints was odd. Some were seemingly missing fingers. In fact, a lot of them were. Of the 49 hand stencils in Costa Cave, 28 are missing fingers.
Why? Hello. Costco cave is not the only cave we've ever found where these hand prints are missing fingers. In Spain, the site of Moltravi and Fuente Del Tro both have them.
In France, L Grand Margo and Tibiran all have them. In fact, of the 10 handprints on the walls at Tibberan, all of them are missing fingers. They've even been found as far away as Indonesia, as shown in this paper. However, the site with the most missing fingers is definitely Gargas Cave, also in France.
Here, of the 231 handprints, a massive 114 are missing fingers. That's almost exactly half. That's a lot. Not all of these handprints have been dated and it can in fact be quite tricky to date cave art at times unless it's made with charcoal.
But the ones made out of ochre very challenging to date. However, it does seem to be that these date to the Gravettian period or roughly 22 to 27,000 years ago. The absolute height of the last ice age. Massive ice sheets covered northern Europe.
Much of the continent was tundra and step. People survived by hunting woolly rhinos and woolly mammoths, these huge ice age beasts. It was a different time. It was a very different time.
