The Ancients - The World's Earliest Cave Art

Episode Date: November 6, 2022

200,000 years ago in what is now Tibet, two children left a set of hand and foot prints on a travertine boulder, still identifiable today and is thought to be the earliest example of cave art.In today’s episode, Tristan Hughes is joined by Dr Sally Reynolds from the University of Bournemouth, who describes the evidence that suggests this was a deliberate act of creativity, highlighting the human urge to make art goes back millennia.We also learn that these feet and hands likely belong to Denisovans, predating Homo sapiens in Europe and Asia. It’s a fascinating discussion around not just art, but also the earliest evidence of humans living high altitude anywhere in the world, and a glimpse into what human behaviour would have been like to allow for children to be this creative nearly a quarter of a million years ago.For more Ancients content, subscribe to our Ancients newsletter here.If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - enter promo code ANCIENTS for a free trial, plus 50% off your first three months' subscription.To download, go to Android > or Apple store >

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancients ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's the ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host. And in today's podcast, we're in our last episode, we kicked off our new mini-series this November,

all about Tutankhamun as it's the centenary of the discovery of the boy king's tomb in the Valley of the Kings. But this November, we're not just going to be focusing in on Tutankhamun and ancient Egypt. No, no, no, no, no. Because today, we're heading much further back in time and we're heading much further east too. We're heading to prehistoric Tibet. We're going some 200,000 years back in time to look at some handprints and some footprints. What has been labelled the world's earliest known cave art. It's an absolutely incredible story dating to a period in prehistory, hundreds of thousands of years, more than 100,000 years before the likes of ancient Rome, ancient Athens, Memphis, Thebes, Jerusalem, before any of these cities were even a thing.

And it's a remarkable story to tell the tale of which I was delighted to go and interview a few weeks back Dr. Sally Reynolds from the University of Bournemouth. That name might ring a bell because Sally came on the podcast last year to talk about a new groundbreaking discovery in the United States, the oldest known footprints in the Americas found in white sands. Sally explained all about that incredible new discovery around about this time last year and now she's back to talk about the world's earliest known cave art. These handprints, these footprints, who do we think made them? Can we define it as art? What do we think this tells us about this very prehistoric society? Including

also whereabouts in Tibet these footprints and handprints were discovered because that in itself is also really extraordinary. So without further ado, to talk about the world's earliest cave art, here's Sally. Sally, it is great to have you back on the podcast. Thank you so much, Tristan. It's a great pleasure to be here. And it's wonderful that we're doing it in person. Last time we did it via Zoom, but this time we are doing it in person at Bournemouth University and last time we talked about these footprints from some 20-25,000 years ago we think this time similar topic but much further back into prehistory exactly much further back incredibly interesting in terms of what it tells us about the, what I think,

the human urge to make art, or at very least, leave one's imprint on a landscape when you see an opportunity to do it. Now, to kick us all off, set the scene, whereabouts in the world are we talking with this discovery? This discovery is close to a village called Kisang in the highlands of Tibet. So we're talking very high elevations in a very arid area, sort of blue skies and very white cliffs. And this is, it used to be a hot spring that was spilling out this soft travertine, which then hardened. And over time, this material, which is also beautifully known as moon milk, okay, because it starts out very soft and translucent, and then it dries and it becomes very hard, it becomes fixed like stone. This hot spring was existing on the landscape

hundreds of thousands of years ago, and probably drew ancient people to this landscape. And in Tibet at that time, although we know very little, it would certainly have been very high altitude, very cold, very hypoxic in terms of low oxygen levels, a challenging environment to be in. And yet the handprints and the fingerprints and the footprints that we have record the presence of two very young children in this extremely challenging environment. Sounds very exciting indeed. And in fact, they are children as well. But you mentioned the word travertine there, forgive my ignorance, but what exactly is the material travertine? So if you think about what you go into a cave and you see stalagmites and stalactites,

it's that same drippy material which drips. It's actually calcium that is in solution. It drips through the roof of the cave. It's in a soluble form and then it becomes a solid again in the forms of what we call speleotherms, which are stalactites and stalagmites. And while they are liquid in one phase and solid in another, they can actually then tell us a lot about the dating of the area. You get pollen, which is embedded often in the travertine, so we can explore the travertine. It's a really well-preserved archive, which can tell us several different things about the past.

It's an archaeologist's dream, isn't it? It is. Going really far back into prehistory. Absolutely. And I'm guessing with that material surviving, with these prints, which I'd love you to go into some detail explaining now, do we have a lot of anatomical detail surviving because of the material that they are set on?

It's a very fine-grained material, yes. So we can absolutely see beautiful traces of the little footprints and the little handprints. Unfortunately, though, they have been exposed to the elements for millennia. So we do see that the surface is perhaps not as crisp as it was on the day that they were made, but they're definitely still identifiable. Still identifiable. And talk me through some of the details, therefore, of these hands and footprints. How many pairs do we think they are? And can we see some notable differences between them? Well, we see that it's two children. I've got it here in front of me because it's such a beautiful image. Oh, yes. We see that it's two

children and their fingers actually seem very long and the palms seem quite short. And I think that is because the children are pressing their fingers into the sediment, which is seem quite short. And I think that is because the children are pressing their fingers into the sediment, which is probably quite soft, quite wet, but also very smooth, very translucent. You can think of it as a beautiful sort of patch of almost clear snow, that desire, that impression to be able to make an impression. So you can see that the handprints have gone in and then they've tried to angle the little footprints and the handprints around it. That is why we talked about it as a deliberate act of creation in terms of composition. There was a very limited amount of this beautiful travertine surface and that the two children amused themselves by placing their hands and feet in sort of interlocking ways so that they could fit all the hands and the feet in. And

unlike what we often see for hand and footprints is these are not related to locomotion, they're not traces of walking, traces of working. So we actually have some very interesting sites from Europe, for example, where humans are navigating their way down a slope of volcanic ash. And you can see the handprints because they're going down on their bottoms and the hands are being used as bricks. And that's sort of a working print. That's a print that shows you someone who's working with their hands. But this, this is purely decorative.

So from that, you can therefore presume that these children, they spot this rock, they think, oh, that looks really interesting. And as you say, this is deliberate. This isn't just putting your hands down accidentally. This is forcing your hand and then making these patterns. That's wonderful that you can learn that just from seeing the detail of these hands and footprint that have survived. It's an artistic pattern. We think that it is a deliberate act of composition, that the children were actually trying to make sure that they could get as much of their anatomical detail into this little pattern.

And I think that that is just lovely. Here you can see that there is actually the imprint of the forearm as well and you can so seeing that so people can see so you can hear at home we're listening to this that is this almost that that kind of tree bark like shape below the hand below the hand itself which if you think about if you were to put your hand down and then your arm down you would get this extension of your handprint coming out because that is your lower arm. And it's those beautiful little tiny details which allow you to imagine these two children playing around in this very arid, very alien landscape. And what does that really tell us about the desire to create art or to at very least leave one's mark. Leave one's mark almost as

though you were committing graffiti. That urge to say I was here, I'm leaving my mark. And this species, although we cannot recognize it from its handprints and its footprints because we don't know enough about what they looked like, this predates Homo sapiens in the area. These are not Homo sapiens children. Well, let's delve into that a bit more now. So that's the big question I'm sure many are dying to know the answer of as we've been talking, which is, first off, in regards to the date, how were the team, you and your team, how were they able to date these hand and footprints? So the travertine, which is the material that we talked about, can be dated using uranium series dating,

which is the decay of uranium, which is very large and very slow to decay, and therefore gives you a very long time scale in which you can watch the decay of uranium and its daughter elements. So the uranium was used to record the dates. The dates date from between 169 to 226,000 years. That's insane. It is. It's a quarter of a million years. It's a quarter of a million years. So at that time period in Tibet, we know we don't have Homo sapiens. We do have Homo sapiens that has emerged in both East Africa and Morocco, but we don't have Homo sapiens yet in Europe or certainly not in Asia or Tibet. So what does that therefore suggest? That this predates Homo sapiens in this area of the world? Which then leaves us with this potential implication that it may have been a Denisovan group, because we do know we have

Denisovan fossils that we are trying to understand from the regions in Tibet. So in terms of hominin species that we think were in the area at the time, the Denisovans are probably a very good candidate. But we don't know much about the Denisovans yet at all, do we? Because most of what we know is from very fragmentary bone material and mostly genetics. And there's no way to link these little prints with the genetics of the species that made them. So it's very tantalizing to think that these may be Denisovan-handed footprints. And Denisovans, do we think that they were the dominant Homo group in that area of the world, therefore, at that time?

Or were they sharing with other Hominin groups that we know at that time? Is there still quite a bit of speculation around that? We are finding more and more information about the interbreeding between the Denisovans and the Neanderthals. In fact, the very first little Denisovan individual we found had a Neanderthal mom and a Denisovan dad or vice versa, I forget. That was from the Old Thai Mountains, that Denisovan cave in Siberia, which again is another fascinating place I'd love to visit. So our very first understanding

of the Denisovans was to realize that they were also interbreeding between different hominin groups. And it's entirely unclear at the moment who was living in which areas and to what extent they were interbreeding, but we know the interbreeding was happening. Now, in regards to that, and I love that possibility as well, the possibilities are endless. In regards to these footprints and these handprints, how do we also know that these are, they're natural, that they do date to that far back, that they haven't been carved at a later date onto the rock itself, the travertine? How do we know that they were imprinted when that rock was softer and it was easier to do it? So what we have is an opportunity to look at the rock in cross-section and to be

able to date exactly the material around those fingerprints. And the fingerprints have deformed the sediment in a way that only an impression could do. And carving is impossible to achieve that level of detail. You would create something that would look like scratches and hacking on the surface. So we, together with our Chinese collaborators who did this work on the stuff in the lab, together with our Chinese collaborators who did this work on the stuff in the lab, very convinced that this definitely presents something that is a primary imprint on the travertine and that after it hardened, it hadn't been modified again in any way. And do we have any sites around the world that could be comparable to these in date? Not in date, but in Kisang, this hot spring accumulation did actually continue to attract

hominins at later times. And there is something that dates from the late Pleistocene or early Holocene. We have footprints which have been published in an earlier paper, but these are the earliest ones that we have from Kisang and the only handprints of this time period in the world anywhere. It's interesting how it's not other types of art that are practiced. You know, if this is this soft rock, they didn't try other things, these children, that they went just with hands and feet. In the later sediments which have been published from the site, there was something called finger fluting,

which is where you take your finger and you run it into it and you leave like a U-shaped funnel, basically, you can imagine a U-shaped trough in the sediment with these little rims which define the edge of it, which again is something that you wouldn't expect if you had carved it. You wouldn't expect these little expulsion rims at the side of these finger fluting marks. So it's clear that the human species, the hominin species, whatever it was, homo, spa at the moment, perhaps the Denisovans, were active in the landscape and coming back to these hot springs several times over multiple numbers of thousands of years and practicing different sorts of mark making, some of which would have survived and some of which wouldn't have.

some of which would have survived and some of which wouldn't have. The oldest figurative art is that lovely silhouetty pig from 40,000 years ago. Figurative art, then, is trying to create a picture of something. But we argue that this is an earlier form of art, simply coming from the idea that art is a facsimile of life, coming from the idea that art is a facsimile of life, which is sometimes one of the earliest conceptual ideas about what is art. This paper required us to really dig deep into the theory and the philosophy of what is art. And one of the main ideas is that art is a facsimile of life. And because these children are making facsimiles of their hands and feet, we argued that it fulfilled that criterion.

It must be so interesting for you, being involved in this study, having at the centre of it this great debate, a question about whether it's art or not, because of how far back in time you're going. I can imagine you can put forward one proposal, then there'll be counterattacks by another proposal. But I guess it's trying to really piece together, get a snapshot of these, well, in this case, these children who belonged to a larger society. We do have evidence from other cave sites in Europe that children were often involved in the creation of little statues or the creation of marks on the cave walls. And I love this idea that the

children are always present when this creation is happening. But often when we look at it with the eyes of professionals, we see that this is an example of poor art or inexpert art, which then never gets talked about or studied. But in fact, this may represent the efforts of these little artists to learn the skills they would later need. Every artist needs training. It would have been as true in the past. You don't just wake up one day and create those beautiful Lascaux images without practicing.

So it makes sense for us to look in the fossil record and the archaeological record for evidence of those less expertly executed pieces of work because they probably represent the work of children. Aeroplanes, spacesuits, condoms, coffee, plastic surgery, warships. Over on the patented podcast by History Hit, we bring you the fascinating stories of history's most impactful inventions and the people who claim these ideas as their own. We uncover exceptional stories behind everyday objects.

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And the thing that really makes it worthwhile is the fact that you could make it go on forever. So subscribe to Patented from History Hit on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts to catch new episodes every Wednesday and Sunday. Do you think, therefore, that this is, that we have here, quite a unique case because of the type of rock that the hands were imprinted on, the soft rock near this hot spring, or that there would have been other examples of this elsewhere, maybe in that area of the world on the Tibetan plateau, really high up. But we haven't found those examples yet.

Although this is such a staggering, extraordinary case, that there is potentially lots more examples out there. Yes, it's a good point. This, to my knowledge, is the only sort of site like this which has the evidence in the soft travertine which was then so well preserved. However, if you think about the number of hot springs that there could be on the plateau and the fact that humans or hominins may have been attracted to this area, yes, I believe that there should be more evidence like this and it would be fascinating to see if we could uncover more evidence like this. And it would be fascinating to see if we could uncover more evidence like this in the coming years. Have we found any other archaeological evidence from around this area that can perhaps give some light on these early hominins and why they were attracted

to these hot springs? Or is it literally just this? This is an isolated boulder with these marks on it. It's without an archaeological context. There's no sediment to go with it, which would preserve bones or stone tools. And that would really help us understand the sorts of people that we're dealing with. So at the moment, it is just this tantalizing, enigmatic snapshot, hands and little footprints of these little people. And we don't yet have any other associated material. And it would be lovely to know what the parents were doing. Were they hunting? What sorts of animals were they hunting in this high altitude environment? How are they living? How are they surviving? But those questions might have to await further

discoveries. I mean, talking about discoveries, last time you were on the podcast, Sally, we were talking about the White Sands discovery in Mesoamerica, North America, isn't it? So in the USA. It must be fascinating for someone in your profession going from footprints over there, potentially could be shifting back when people first, Homo sapiens first reached North America, to then footprints here. Because sometimes I feel as if footprints and handprints can be overlooked when going into prehistory, how important they are for giving us more information. But as these discoveries show, although they might be sometimes quite unique, we might not have many examples of them. You mentioned the word snapshot. They really reveal this incredible snapshot into these people,

and from which you can actually learn quite a lot. Well, what struck me with looking at White Sands and now looking at the Tibetan stuff is that we are capturing behaviour in a way that bones don't. So when we look at footprints, we can see the interaction between two individuals. One example is the mom carrying the toddler and putting the toddler down every now and again to rest and readjust her clothes. That action would not be recordable or visible on the bones. So we are looking at these tiny little narratives, these very small events, including motion and movement and intent and purpose, which are things that we don't see when we look at the bones. The bones tell us a lot about an individual, how they lived,

how they died, what deficiency they had, what their diet was. They tell us nothing about the actions of the individual when they were alive, when they were animated and living. And what I love about the technology is that you are looking at living beings moving on the landscape, and that is great. It's amazing snapshot. And just to re-emphasise that date, isn't it? Some 200,000 years ago, roughly around that time is when we believe? 169,000 to 226,000 years, which significantly predates the arrival of Homo sapiens in the region, which means we are looking at this enigmatic, possibly Denisovan group. We know that those children were not alone. They couldn't have survived by themselves. So obviously, when you see these two little children together, you've got to say, well, there was a parents, there was a family group. And all of these things together suggest this population living at these very high altitudes quite significantly earlier

than it was believed possible for human beings to do so. And even though Denisovans, like Homo sapiens, are relatively late in the homonym story, in regards to the Tibetan plateau, is this the earliest evidence we have from anywhere on this plateau for homonyms being there? So this is actually really interesting, not just in the art side of things, but also in regards to the presence of humans homonyms in this area of the world. Yes, you're right. There's a double claim here. We've pursued the art because we think that that is an interesting aspect of the behaviour. But in terms of what they mean, it is the earliest evidence of human presence on the Tibetan plateau.

It is the earliest evidence of human presence, high altitude, anywhere in the world. There's only three centres of high altitude anywhere in the world. There's only three centers of high altitude living on the planet. You've got the Andes, you've got Tibet, and you've got Ethiopia in East Africa. And so it's quite interesting to understand how humans have actually started to exploit these high altitude environments. And why would you? Because they're quite challenging. And until very recently, it was thought that humans had, you know, only very recently conquered these heights, scaling, you know, high heights, like we were scaling Everest. And actually, it turns out that this is something that we've been doing for a lot longer than we realised. The question is why? Why? What is the attraction

to living in such high altitude, arid environments? What is drawing them to these areas? Well, I was going to mention then Lake Titicaca in South America, but then you mentioned the word arid environment. So I'm guessing, although that's seen as another one of these cradles of civilization, the fact that you do have that lake there, that kind of makes it less arid. So it is interesting, as you say, something like the Tibetan plateau. I mean, is it habitable as a place, would you think?

Would it have, when we talk about the mid-Holocene back then, do we know whether it would have had the natural features, animals, plants, the vegetation, to support hominin groups, therefore? Yes, it would have done. However, it would have taken significant acclimatisation and adaptation on part of the human and the hominin groups to adapt to living in such high environment. It's an environment that would make you and I sick. We could develop altitude sickness. We wouldn't be able to think very clearly at those very hypoxic altitudes.

We would probably end up feeling quite unwell. So these people were up there living, breathing, hunting, existing, creating art, suggesting they had already gone through this period of acclimatization to these high altitudes. Perhaps, like the Lake Titicaca example that you mentioned, they were drawn to the hot springs. So in this arid, cold environment, perhaps the hot springs were the draw. And again, looking for the location of other hot springs then might yield other clues about activity in the area. Exciting. I'm guessing does travertine exist around all of these hot springs? Yes, potentially. So that's very exciting, potentially for the future, for more potential discoveries dating to this time. And I guess one last thing from me, it's also really staggering, isn't it, if this is one of the,

and correct me if I'm wrong, one of the earliest forms of parietal art that we know of in the world? Yes, it is. And we find it, as you say, not somewhere more lowland than we might expect, but instead in this incredibly highland area of the world where there are only three places like it, as you mentioned earlier. old? Were there only three places like it, as you mentioned earlier? So we divide the ancient art into these two forms. So you have the portable art, and then you have the parietal art, which is art that is made on caves. And I would have thought that the oldest art would be in caves, but this is also an open air setting. So it's quite unique for several reasons. It's an open air setting, it's around a hot spring instead of in a cave. It's not painting with pigments on the cave wall, but rather it's an impression in this impressionable surface

that could take the hands and the footprints. It's made by children. You'd probably expect the earliest art would be made by adults, be something quite sophisticated. So the Kisang is really fascinating on several levels. It's a very important discovery. I just keep thinking ancient art attack. That was like the kind of programs I grew up with. I just remember the handprint there. It's fascinating how far back that goes, isn't it? And I did see on an article it was mentioned as the earliest

cave art. Now you mentioned it's open air, but it is parietal art. It is parietal art. So can we call it cave art? Yes, you can. It's fixed art. It's art that is fixed on the landscape and can't be moved. So that's the definition of parietal art. And you're right to say that some of the very earliest motifs of cave art is hands. It is a very early motif. So the idea that early art in Tibet could be around the hands and the feet makes a lot of sense to me. It makes a lot of sense to me.

Because early art in other contexts, like European caves, you do see that the hands are very well represented. So this is just so interesting. And we'll wrap up very quickly. But having done a podcast on the Sulawesi discovery, it must have been over a year ago, almost two years ago now, with Adam Brum, and hearing all about that, which was fascinating. And then obviously going much further back in time to this area of the world, you know, Tibet, and looking at the handprints there. I know that we'll need more examples and there are more examples from the discoveries and the announcing of these discoveries, how you start

seeing this evolution of art from places across the world. And you can start almost, in a sense, linking them together. This is an interesting idea, is that there's something about our makeup, which allows us to be creative, allows us to want to leave our mark. And we have found this evidence of this mark making in lots of different contexts. And it exists with us today, because you have to not go very far in an urban setting, and you will find somebody who's either scrawled their name on wet cement, or has done graffiti on a wall. So there is something very powerful about this human need to sort of stamp their identity on the surface. And it's just interesting to think about how far back that desire goes.

Well, you're quite right there, actually. That's a great point to mention, isn't it? Think of Hollywood and the Walk of Fame, isn't it? You imprint your hand with your feet in there. But that goes back, in a sense, to these children some 200,000 years ago. Maybe they're not the celebrities of their day, I know, but as you say, it's almost that legacy of the handprint as art in its own right. Yes, yes. Well, this has been absolutely great. Before we wrap up and I ask about the future of this discovery, if there's any more work that'll be going around it,

is there anything else you'd like to highlight about these Tibetan hand and footprints? Probably the fact that it shows that the children are very important. If I can draw some parallels between what we see in White Sands, we've just recently released some art and some statements about children jumping in sloth puddles and here we have children creating this early mark-making and leaving evidence of their presence. And I think that that's quite interesting, is this move towards who is doing the work. The frazzled parents are too busy cooking and hunting and trying to keep everybody alive. And in fact, the sort of the creative hub is the children who are allowed to play and express themselves while the parents are working. And whether that is jumping in sloth puddles,

or whether it is playing with this beautiful soft surface and leaving their marks, I like the idea that there's this endless creativity in these little people. I have children myself, and the endless creativity that they're capable of is such a strong drive and it's lovely to see that drive in children today and still evidence of it in children in the past even if they were living in such different worlds. You mentioned different worlds and I think one of the great joys of ancient history and prehistory is sometimes being able to create or see parallels between different societies, different communities, sometimes living thousands of years apart, as for instance with White Sands and Tibet. And I guess that must be one of the great joys for you

when looking at the children and so much with your research, looking at these different sites and then being able to see these really interesting social patterns between them. I think it's one of the things that makes the art so relatable is that we all have children or we've observed children playing, making marks, playing with mud, and it just makes you realise that there are some elements of the human experience that are universal. And being a parent and watching children play

is one of those things that connects the human experience, even through humanity and into the older ancestral species. The idea that they've always been children playing, no matter how far you go back in prehistory, there's always children playing. I love that idea. Yeah, and that very relatable is also a great idea, whether it's dogs or children playing and so on. Things that we can relate to today and really kind of show that ancient history is still alive and kicking. Last things from me then, Sally, in regards to this discovery, what does the future hold? Lots, I hope. But it's up to our Chinese collaborators to decide how they will continue the fieldwork.

I'm excited. I think that the chances are very good that they will continue their prospection of the region. And hopefully we will have an opportunity to join them at some stage in the field, perhaps, and to contribute to more work in this vein. We're very excited and hopeful that there will be more discoveries to talk about in this vein. We're very excited and hopeful that there will be more discoveries to talk about in this area. And more discoveries because it almost feels like this is a microcosm with the advancements of scientific techniques, uranium dating and so on and so forth. There will be new discoveries announced in the future with their surrounding footprints, surrounding

handprints. That's going to reveal so much more about these people who lived thousands of years ago. There's so much more to discover. We'd like to know what sort of environments they were living in, the plants, the animals, what were they eating? How did they cope with these very challenging environments? So as we get more data, certainly we'll have even more questions that we want answers to, but that's the joy of research. It's the joy of research and it's very exciting for someone like me, therefore, to come and interview people like yourself about topics like this. Sally this has been absolutely great do keep in touch let us know if there are any new discoveries or announcements on the horizon and it just goes to me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come back on the podcast

today. Thank you very much Tristan it was a great pleasure. Well there you go there was Dr Sally Reynolds talking you through these handprints, these footprints, and what they suggest, what they've revealed about these prehistoric societies who lived in Tibet some 200,000 years ago. It's an extraordinary tale, and I love it when we can really delve deep into human prehistory. Not just ancient Rome, not just Greece, not just Egypt,

not even just civilizations we're more familiar with, whether it's the Sumerians, the Phoenicians, the Celts, and so on and so forth, but when we can go much, much further back in time to these very mysterious time periods deep in the Paleolithic. I love that episode, and I hope you enjoyed listening to it too now last things from me i've said it before and i'll say it again if you're kind enough to leave us a lovely rating on spotify and apple podcasts wherever you get your podcast from we the whole team we greatly appreciate it as we continue our mission to share these wonderful stories from our

distant past with you and long will that continue that is our mission to share these stories with you. And we're going to keep on going. We're still fresh as a daisy here, the Ancients team, and we will continue to be in the years ahead. And I will see you in the next episode.