The Red Lady of Paviland, actually a man, was found 200 years ago in Wales by an Oxford professor.
A skeleton covered in red ochre, which is naturally occurring iron oxide, Prof Buckland presumed The Red "Lady" to be a Roman prostitute, or witch.
Prof Nash, who is also convener of the Welsh Rock Art Organisation, added: "You also have to bear in mind that Buckland was a clergyman and a creationist and - almost half a century before Darwin - his conclusions wouldn't have seemed that outlandish at the time. Solace concluded, correctly, that he, in fact, had been a hunter-gatherer or warrior during what is commonly known as the last Ice Age, though over the last 100 years his date has been pushed back from the Mesolithic period to the Palaeolithic era ."It's likely that many of the early attempts at carbon dating were contaminated by modern DNA rubbing off the fingers of the scientists handling the exhibits," he said.
He explains that the Gower landscape would have looked very different in those days, with sea-levels having retreated so far it would have been possible to walk from Northern Africa all the way to southern England and then over the Bristol Channel into the few navigable sections of south Wales. "I was brought up in Port Eynon, just down the road from Paviland, so I was always fascinated by the story, but when I went to Gowerton Grammar School my English master got me even more interested and I went to visit the cave for myself.
But Prof Nash cautions against the "Welsh Mysticism" which has been created around the Red Lady over the years.
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