So leaving aside the techniques of carbon dating that have been reliably used for decades and gets better and better with time despite the constant (intentional?)misunderstanding of how carbon dating works by creationists.
Here is a better image of it:
So you are in a cave and you see this thing? How do you know its designed and not naturally occurring?
You may ask yourself a number of questions:
- It is made of ivory…does ivory occur naturally in these surroundings?
- Certainly the ivory came from a mammoth or other elephant like creature with tusks, presuming those were around and lost their tusks occasionally, would this be a shape we would expect to occur form natural processes?
- Perhaps erosion and other natural processes are pinging our natural ability for paredolia. Do natural processes create symmetrical three-dimensional patterns? Do they do that while creating jagged cuts that go against the grain of the ivory?
- And finally, is there any other evidence of human existence in the place that this piece of ivory was found?
Obviously ivory does not just grow naturally in caves. If it got in there naturally from an animal, its not a shape we would expect to be produced naturally. But we do assign faces and human shapes to things all the time (and then sell them on Ebay), but the fact the its symmetric (which reduces the chances of it being a natural pattern), and having evenly spaced lines that go against the grain of the ivory, truly suggests that no natural process did this. But its not just this figuring, the cave also had paintings and there have been other figurines found in nearby caves.
Famous finds were chiselled petrified wood, a harpoon amde of an antler and needles from the Magdalénien. From the Gravetien some javelin heads and ivory jewelry items.
This is the sort of thing we do to answer whether something is designed or not. Consider the answers for the these questions if you consider a random rock in the cave and ask these same questions about it. There are tons of rocks all over the cave, made of the same material. There are fully understood mechanisms for those rocks to have gotten there. None of those rocks have shapes that even suggest human influence. The growth and erosion processes of the rocks are understood and can be observed. None of the marks on the rocks suggest any processes involved other than natural ones. And finally there is tons of evidence of other similar natural processes on other rocks in and outside of this cave.
