One cave painting, worked on for 7,300 years

Make a timeline: change over time given a physical shape, so a stranger feels the length of it before reading a single number. One still image, 16:9 landscape, briefed for a GPT Image 2 class model whose real ratio list is 1:1, 4:3, 3:4, 16:9, 9:16, 3:2 and 2:3. A timeline is only worth making if the spacing is honest: the gaps between the marked moments must be to scale along the axis, so that the empty stretches do the talking. FACT (locked, build on it, do not re-research): a team led by a researcher at the CNRS published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on 9 March 2026 the first absolute dating of Palaeolithic paintings in the Dordogne, at the Font-de-Gaume cave near Les Eyzies in southwestern France. These paintings had been considered impossible to radiocarbon date, because they were assumed to contain only iron and manganese oxides and no carbon at all. Using Raman microspectrometry and hyperspectral imaging, the team found charcoal running uniformly through the black lines, which also ruled out contamination from later graffiti or from visitors. A bison was painted about 13,000 years ago. Three samples taken from one single figure, a mask like face, returned calibrated dates of 15,981 to 15,121, 15,297 to 14,246, and 8,993 to 8,590 years before present. The same figure was therefore returned to and worked on across a span of roughly 7,300 years. Use these exactly and leave out any figure we have not locked. GROUND (decide this, do not let the model default): the cave wall itself. Damp limestone with calcite bloom, mineral staining, the natural swell and hollow of the rock, and the drawing following the shape of the stone the way the originals do. White, pale grey, navy and parchment all FAIL, and so does a museum wall and a dark room with a spotlight. LIGHT: a single raking lamp low and to one side, so the relief of the rock is visible and the pigment sits in the texture rather than on top of it. DISTANCE: mid, close enough to see the tooth of the stone, wide enough to hold the whole span of the timeline. FLOOR (hard, this is the material standard): made with a real frontier image model, GPT Image 2 class or better. Flat vector, hand drawn SVG or HTML, and screenshot collage all FAIL. Text belongs to the artwork: type shares the piece's light, grain and material and reads as printed with it, never bolted on after. Archives will not be considered. CRAFT STANDARD (read all of it before you start). Composition: one clear focal that a stranger finds in under 3 seconds, then a second layer that rewards a longer look. Legibility: the piece will be judged first as a thumbnail on a phone, so the headline must survive at that size and any label too small to read there should not exist. Palette: pick 2 or 3 inks and hold them; a piece with 8 colours reads as a template. Labelling: every label points at something real in the image, no floating decoration. Finish: real material behaviour, mineral crust, charcoal dust, stone grain, carried consistently across the whole frame including the type. DIRECTION is yours. FOCAL: the emptiness between the marks. Whatever else the piece does, a stranger should feel how long nobody came back. YOUR CALL: what the axis physically is. A seam in the rock, a drip line of calcite, a run of charcoal, a chalked measure, or something nobody has thought of. SURPRISE ME: the obvious take caps your score, the boldest true take wins. JUDGED on wow, then subject, surprise, taste, craft, material. If your intervals are not to scale, the piece is disqualified, so lay the axis out before you draw anything on it. NOT THIS: no torch bearing cavemen, no fur clad figures, no campfire scene. No modern archaeologist in a hard hat. No horizontal arrow with evenly spaced dots, which is the shape of every timeline that has never been looked at twice. TEXT BUDGET: one headline that states the takeaway and names the subject, plus one short label per dated moment, 4 at most, only if they stay legible at phone size. NOTHING ABOUT HOW THE PIECE WAS MADE GOES ON THE PIECE: no process notes, no verification lines, no model or tool credit, no house credit, no timing or deadline text. Do not render any label from this brief, and never render the NOT THIS list, as type. Credit your model in the submission text instead. DELIVER: one finished hero image at the stated ratio, plus concept-note.md and sources.md. Self contained, no links out. Name your model in the submission text.