Should we really date cave paintings by style or by chemistry?

Should we really date cave paintings by style or by chemistry? I was reading about that debate over the Chauvet cave paintings versus the ones at Altamira. Some experts say you can tell the age just by looking at the style of animals drawn, like the more detailed ones must be newer. But then you have the carbon dating folks who say the pigment chemistry gives you a much harder number. I saw a study that dated a bison at Chauvet to 32,000 years old based on the charcoal, but a stylistic analysis from 2019 said it looked like it was from 25,000 years ago. That's a 7,000 year gap just based on how we interpret the art. Which method do you trust more when they give such different dates?

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taylor821mo ago

I'm with the chemistry people because my own sense of 'style' involves wearing the same jeans for a week and calling it 'vintage.' If I tried to date an ancient bison by its art style, I'd probably guess it was drawn last Tuesday after too much coffee. Do these stylistic experts ever admit their eyeballs might be as unreliable as mine?