In 1884, Georges Seurat strategically placed dots atop a canvas, leading people to believe they were looking at an image of park-goers lounging along the Seine River in France. The technique was known as pointillism, and it seemed new at the time. But 38,000 years ago, people living inside caves in southwest France were doing something similar, according to findings published last month in Quaternary International.

“Their skills speak of a very high ability to observe in detail what surrounded them and reproduce it with great economy of means,” said Vhils, a Portuguese street artist who is known for his own chiseling of dots and lines into walls, and was not involved in the study.

These pointillist creations of early modern humans were recently discovered when scientists revisited Abri Cellier, a cave site in France’s Vézère Valley. There, they found 16 limestone tablets left behind by a previous excavation. Images of what appear to be animals, including a woolly mammoth, were formed by a series of punctured dots and, in some cases, carved connecting lines. Combined with previous images from nearby caves in France and Spain, the tablets suggest an early form of pointillism, and a very early point on art history’s timeline.