Archaeologists have discovered the oldest blue paint ever found in Europe inside a Stone Age 'paint box' unearthed in southwest Germany. The vibrant blue pigment, made some 14,000 years ago, has surprised researchers because virtually all known Palaeolithic artworks relied on red, white, yellow and black pigments.
Blue is extremely rare in ancient art, with only one known group of Stone Age objects – blue-painted Siberian figurines – featuring the colour. This suggests that blue may have been used primarily for temporary purposes such as body decoration or colouring textiles and wooden artefacts, rather than for durable works. Blue minerals are also rarer than other pigment sources, and the colour may have carried symbolic meaning, possibly linked to protection against supernatural threats.
The pigment was found in a natural bowl-shaped stone, 20 centimetres wide and capable of holding just 30 cubic centimetres, discovered during an excavation near the River Main, east of Frankfurt. Made from ground azurite, a copper-based mineral, the paint box was excavated some 50 years ago, but its contents were only identified during scientific investigations in 2023 and 2024. The findings are published in the journal Antiquity.
Other evidence supports the broader use of blue in prehistory. Roughly 33,000 years ago, people in the Caucasus were processing a plant associated with blue pigment production, and in 2017 researchers revealed that Stone Age Siberians made blue pigment for figurines around 20,000 years ago. Advances in detection techniques over the past decade are now enabling scientists to identify otherwise invisible traces of ancient colours.
The prehistoric paint box was found at a riverside campsite containing stone tools, arrowheads and a ring of stones that once held down a circular tent. The inhabitants were probably among the last survivors of the Magdalenian culture, and were almost certainly not ancestral to modern European populations.
“Our investigation has helped begin the process of widening our knowledge of the use of colour in prehistoric times,” said Dr Izzy Wisher of Aarhus University, who led the team. “The colour range back then was almost certainly much wider than previously thought. We hope that our new atomic and molecular level detection techniques will eventually allow us to reveal the Stone Age world in full colour.”
