Manganese dioxide is abundant in nature, and owing to their colour, these oxides have been used as pigments since the Stone Age. Some of the cave paintings in Lascaux, France, for example, were produced with manganese-based pigments. In a series of compositional analyses, scientists from Leiden University and Delft University of Technology conclude that Neanderthals at Pech-de-l'Azé I in South Western France had a strikingly different use for this mineral 50,000 years ago.