A recent investigation of Basura Cave in northwestern Italy suggests that a small group of Late Upper Paleolithic visitors may have moved through deep underground passages with a simpler lighting system than earlier interpretations proposed: small pine twigs, carried and burned as portable lights.
The site, near Toirano in Liguria, is known for preserved human footprints, traces attributed to a canid traveling with the group, charcoal marks, finger marks and deposits of cave bear remains. The famous footprint trail has been linked in the research literature to an Epigravettian visit near the end of the last Ice Age, about 14,400 years ago, although several details of the cave’s research history and later activity remain best treated as study-reported rather than independently settled in this rewrite.
The new interpretation draws on several lines of evidence: pollen samples, charcoal fragments, excavated deposits and experiments carried out in a cave environment. Taken together, those sources point away from thick wooden torches and toward short pieces of pine that could be carried through constricted passages with less smoke, less glare and lower fuel demand.
What The Cave Evidence Suggests
Basura Cave preserves an unusual record because the underground route was not documented only through loose artifacts. Footprints and marks on the cave surfaces show movement through the space, while charcoal residues offer clues about how visitors produced light. Researchers working on the renewed study focused especially on an area known in the literature as the Hall of Mysteries, where earlier documentation had described footprints, finger marks and charcoal traces.
The pollen record described by the study points to a cold, open landscape with steppe vegetation and scattered pines. Plants associated with dry, cold conditions appeared often in the samples, while tree pollen was less common. Among the tree pollen, pine was the main signal, especially Scots pine or closely related species.
The team argues that not all of that pollen necessarily arrived through direct human activity. Cave bears may have carried pollen indoors on their fur as they moved between the surrounding landscape and the cave. Water filtering in from outside may also have moved plant material into the deposits. That matters because the pollen does not simply describe what people carried; it helps reconstruct the wider environment from which fuel could have been gathered.
Charcoal fragments provide the more direct evidence for lighting. The study reports 56 charcoal pieces from the Hall of Mysteries, with more than half attributed to Scots pine or similar pine species. Most of those pieces appear to have come from young branches less than two or three centimeters thick, while only a small share came from larger wood.
That pattern is important because it does not fit neatly with the idea of heavy torches made from thick branches. If the charcoal identification is correct, the fuel traces are more consistent with small pine twigs or slender branch sections, possibly collected from living trees and prepared before entering the cave.
Why Small Pine Twigs Made Practical Sense
To test whether that interpretation was workable, researchers carried out controlled burning experiments in a nearby cave with similar environmental conditions. The study describes dried Scots pine branches selected to match the archaeological samples, then burned while participants moved through dark passages.
The experiment was designed around the group size inferred from footprint research: five people. In the tests, two burning pine twigs reportedly gave enough light for a group moving in single file. Once participants’ eyes adjusted, visibility extended to roughly ten meters. The smaller flames also produced limited smoke and less glare than larger torches, which would have mattered in narrow passages where bright flame, smoke and uneven footing could all become hazards.
The safest arrangement, according to the experimental observations, placed one light near the front of the group and another near the rear. Participants maintained contact by touching the shoulder of the person ahead, a simple method that helped the line move through irregular ground and around cave formations without spreading out in darkness.
Fuel use was also modest. The experiments found that a burning twig lost about four centimeters of length per minute while the group was moving. On that basis, the researchers estimated that a round trip from the entrance to the Hall of Mysteries could have required about twenty pine twigs, each roughly thirty centimeters long, for a journey lasting around two hours. That estimate should be read as a modeled result from the experiment rather than a direct measurement from the prehistoric visit.
| Evidence or test | What it indicates |
|---|---|
| Pollen samples | A cold, open setting with pine available in the surrounding landscape |
| Charcoal fragments | Many pieces were linked to pine and small-diameter branches |
| Burning experiments | Two small pine lights could guide a five-person line through cave passages |
| Wall marks | Experimental charcoal traces resembled marks documented inside Basura Cave |
A Different Picture Of Cave Travel
The strongest value of the study is not just the claim that pine was used. It is the more practical picture of how people may have planned underground movement. A deep cave is not simply a dark room; it is a place where light, smoke, footing, body position and group spacing all affect whether a journey is possible.
Small pine twigs would have offered several advantages if they were available nearby. They were light to carry, easy to replace, and bright enough at close range once the group adjusted to darkness. They also appear to have left the kind of charcoal traces seen on cave walls, with small fragments accumulating below marks in a pattern similar to the archaeological deposits.
The interpretation also changes the comparison with larger torches. Thick torches can burn longer, but they also require more fuel, produce stronger glare and may create more smoke in enclosed spaces. The Basura Cave evidence, as presented by the researchers, suggests that a lighter and more flexible system may have been better suited to the route.
What Remains Uncertain
Several points still need careful wording. The broader research history of Basura Cave includes earlier interpretations and later dating work, but those details are not repeated here as hard fact beyond what the study-based account supports. The same caution applies to the start date and scope of the renewed Basura research project, the exact length of the cave system, and some excavation-history details.
The study also notes charcoal fragments trapped in a growing cave formation elsewhere in the cave. Radiocarbon results reportedly place those fragments in periods separate from the famous footprint trail. Their source is still uncertain, but they may point to additional human presence in the cave at other times.
For now, the main finding is more focused: the combination of charcoal evidence, environmental reconstruction and cave-lighting experiments makes small pine twigs a plausible lighting method for the prehistoric group associated with the Basura Cave footprint trail. It is a modest tool, but in the cave setting it may have been exactly the right one.