"The discovery pushes back the time that modern humans first showed the capacity for creative thought."
Hmm. The very simplest model you could have of this would be the German Tank Problem [1]. If discoveries of X (e.g. art, hunting tools, whatever) are made at random, i.e. evidence of X is not more likely to be destroyed as time passes, then you are sampling times from a distribution with a maximum of the first invention of X, and the best estimator for this is (m-1)(k-1)/(k-2) where m is the oldest discovery and k is the number of discoveries.
In particular, a new record for oldest art will almost always push your estimate up (as long as k is large so (k-1)/(k-2) is about 1). But you should also be taking into account all the discoveries of art which aren't records. This matters especially when k is not yet big. This page only lists 30-40 pieces of paleolithic art [2].
A better model would take into account that older stuff is less likely to be discovered because e.g. rocks erode. I wonder if anyone has done this.
Hmm. The very simplest model you could have of this would be the German Tank Problem [1]. If discoveries of X (e.g. art, hunting tools, whatever) are made at random, i.e. evidence of X is not more likely to be destroyed as time passes, then you are sampling times from a distribution with a maximum of the first invention of X, and the best estimator for this is (m-1)(k-1)/(k-2) where m is the oldest discovery and k is the number of discoveries.
In particular, a new record for oldest art will almost always push your estimate up (as long as k is large so (k-1)/(k-2) is about 1). But you should also be taking into account all the discoveries of art which aren't records. This matters especially when k is not yet big. This page only lists 30-40 pieces of paleolithic art [2].
A better model would take into account that older stuff is less likely to be discovered because e.g. rocks erode. I wonder if anyone has done this.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_tank_problem [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Stone_Age_art