Cool Finds

These Archaeologists Set Out in Search of Animal Fat. Instead, They Found the Oldest Blue Pigment Ever Discovered in Europe

Blue residue on a 13,000-year-old stone artifact, long believed to be an oil lamp, may paint a new picture of Paleolithic art and culture

Mary Randolph | Correspondent

October 2, 2025

Share

Copy linkEmailSMSFacebookXRedditLinkedInBlueskyPrint

Add as preferred source

Researchers just found something that could change the way we envision color during the Paleolithic era—and it’s been sitting in a German museum for the past 50 years.

While re-examining a Paleolithic oil lamp housed at the Mühlheim City Museum, archaeologists from Denmark’s Aarhus University noticed small dots of blue pigment. This residue is around 13,000 years old, making it the oldest instance of blue pigment in Europe by 8,000 years, the team writes in the journal Antiquity.

The archaeologists initially analyzed the lamp in search of traces of animal fat. After spotting the pigment, the researchers joked that perhaps modern ink had gotten onto the artifact while it was in storage, the study’s lead author, Izzy Wisher, tells National Geographic’s Jaimie Seaton.

“This is actually one of the rare examples when we were completely surprised by the discovery,” Wisher says.

The newly discovered pigment is “nearly the oldest blue pigment in the world,” Wisher tells IFLScience’s Tom Hale. The only older known instance is pigment found on figurines in Siberia, which date to between 19,000 and 23,000 years ago.

For the study, Wisher’s team used X-ray fluorescence and microscopic imaging tests to determine that the pigmentation was human-made and created from a mineral called azurite, which is native to the area in Germany where the artifact was originally unearthed in the 1970s.

The study also found that the pigmentation occurred only on the concave part of the bowl-shaped object, which suggests it may have not been an oil lamp after all. Instead, it could have been a palette or a mixing tool used for creating blue pigment from azurite.

Until now, the Paleolithic world has seemed to be one of black, red and yellow hues, which often appear in paintings and art of the period. But archaeologists have long questioned the lack of other colors, as the presence of red and yellow reflects an ability to create pigments more broadly.

“I do think that the past was more colorful than we originally thought, but now we actually have evidence for it,” Elizabeth Velliky, an archaeologist at the University of Bergen in Norway who was not involved in the new study, tells National Geographic.

Now, researchers are wondering what this discovery may reveal about the culture and art of the Paleolithic era.

“The presence of azurite shows that Paleolithic people had a deep knowledge of mineral pigments and could access a much broader color palette than we previously thought—and they may have been selective in the way they used certain colors,” Wisher says in a statement.

Wisher and her co-authors believe that Paleolithic people may have used blue primarily for “archaeologically invisible activities” such as decorating skin or fabrics, she tells National Geographic. In the study, the researchers suggest that the presence of different colors in Paleolithic times was more widespread than originally thought and a question of artistic intent rather than access.

Earlier this year, a separate team led by scientists at Ca’Foscari University of Venice found traces of blue plant fibers embedded in 32,000- to 34,000-year-old grinding stones unearthed in modern-day Georgia, though the PLOS One paper did not confirm whether the blue was used as a dye.

Karen Hardy, a co-author of the Georgian study and an archaeologist at the University of Glasgow in Scotland, tells Science magazine’s Andrew Curry not to overinterpret her team’s findings—or Wisher’s—as evidence of widely used blue pigment.

Still, Hardy says, much about the Paleolithic period’s cultural pursuits remains unknown.

“Both of these finds are evidence of material culture that hasn’t survived,” she says. “These were highly developed people who did stunning things that weren’t related to subsistence.”

Mary Randolph | Read More

Mary Randolph is a former editorial intern with Smithsonian magazine.