What those purposes were, the archaeological record can only partially illuminate.

Gypsum — calcium sulfate — is a white powder when ground from its crystalline form.

It has been used across cultures as a pigment: applied as a white coating to bodies, to objects, to architectural surfaces.

Some researchers have proposed that the cave gypsum was used as body paint or face paint for ceremonial purposes — the vivid white of powdered gypsum being a color of significance in many Indigenous cultural frameworks.

This hypothesis is plausible and consistent with the evidence, but it remains a hypothesis.