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Animal painting found in cave is 44k years old
- esnible3 7y agoAlso discussed on NPR: https://www.npr.org/2019/12/11/786760790/44-000-year-old-indonesian-cave-painting-is-rewriting-the-history-of-art https://www.npr.org/2019/12/11/786760790/44-000-year-old-ind... The NPR story quotes one of the authors of a paper published today in Nature... but then brings in an unrelated graduate student to say, without evidence, that painting was invented somewhere other than Southeast Asia: "Personally, I think ... Africa."
- SantalBlush 7y agoAnd in the very next paragraph, the author of the paper agrees with the opinion. "While not everyone in the field agrees, and no figurative cave art in Africa has been dated older than the Indonesian works, Brumm says he has the same gut feeling."
- barrkel 7y agoTo be clear, there's a logic behind this: the experts are looking at similarities between figurative art in Europe and Asia and hypothesizing a common ancestor rather than coincidence.
- wrnr 7y agoThats a fun theory, but how is that different than all the pyramids found around the word. I mean, it's sort of is the "easiest" big structure one can build.
- koboll 7y agoSurely the paintings that survived for 44,000 years aren't the only ones that were painted that early. There's no particular reason that art couldn't be older -- much older, even -- but not be able to survive for much longer than that.
- SantalBlush 7y agoI know nothing about this field, but could differences in climate or geology explain why they haven't found these types of paintings in Africa?
- notkaiho 7y agoI absolutely love the fact that the human-like figures are depicted with snouts and tails.
- shrimp_emoji 7y agoNotices megafauna OwO What's this?! Glomps to extinction x3 Hehe
- xaedes 7y agoTo be honest, it looks more like regular humans and animal hunter companions (dogs??). The resolution of the info graphic is a joke, here is one with better resolution, found by reverse image search: https://www.eltiempo.com/uploads/2019/12/11/5df119644b023.jpeg https://www.eltiempo.com/uploads/2019/12/11/5df119644b023.jp...
- chrisco255 7y agoI wonder if they wore animal pelts as helmets when they hunted?
- blotter_paper 7y agoI've always loved the idea that centaurs sprung up as a reaction of non-horse-riding cultures seeing hunters on horses, though I think our brains mashing together different forms we've seen in nature is explanation enough on its own.
- krilly 7y agoSome of the oldest depictions of hunans (e.g. the Löwenmensch figurine) are, err, furries. Anthropologists have attempted to make all sorts of conclusions from this.
- afterburner 7y agoMaybe they're wearing furs.
- poulsbohemian 7y ago
- melling 7y ago44,000 years later as we enter the third decade of the 21st century...
- shakezula 7y agoThis always really messes with me. We have a tendency to view our current civilization as permanent, but we could easily lose all of this progress with a few well-timed famines and be reduced back to barely-bronze-age tribes in the span of a few decades. We could collapse, nearly entirely disappear and face another genetic bottleneck event, then have to rediscover all of our current society some two or three thousand years in the future and the Universe wouldn't even have ticked a single second in the grand scheme of things.
- orthecreedence 7y agoThis article really pushed the point home for me: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/08/arrogance-anthropocene/595795/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/08/arroganc... It's about the geological insignificance of humans, and how we could have done this all several times already and we wouldn't have any idea.
- briga 7y agoInteresting how similar these look to cave paintings in Europe. Is it convergent cultural evolution, or was this a result of some sort of cross-continent cultural transmission? My guess is that the first paintings were painted much earlier than 44,000 years ago, although most of the older paintings have probably been lost to time.
- chrisco255 7y agoThis is probably correct. Homo sapiens appeared roughly 200-300K years ago and they had the same brains we do. I also suspect that humans painted regularly on animal canvas and that all of them have been lost to time long ago. When you look at the Lescaux caves paintings (27K years old) and the beautiful art work there, there's no way that was done without a very practiced artist. These were Da Vincis of their age.
- asdff 7y agoThe aurochs in that cave look like they were drawn by an art student today. Very impressive.
- asdff 7y agoHumans during this time followed game and ripening fruits. They had huge ranges compared to the neolithic. It's easy to imagine different bands frequently coming into brief contact and trading artwork or technology. If your band ranges over 200 miles in a year, it would only take a couple dozen bands to span from France to Japan across the eurasian steppe. The art was also not likely limited to caves. Painting on hides, or exposed to the elements would not survive. Caves are ideal conditions for preservation.
- b0rsuk 7y agoWow, those are some pretty talented animals.
- mouzogu 7y agoYou might also find the red ladder from la pasiega cave in Spain of interest. It's 65,000 years old which means it was painted by Neanderthals (based on current knowledge). It blows my mind to think that another human species walked on this same planet and drew this art. To me, that's as profound as the discovery, if ever, of another intelligent species in the universe. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/feb/22/neanderthals-not-humans-were-first-artists-on-earth-experts-claim https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/feb/22/neanderthals... Also worth considering, is the art of Chauvet Cave and the excellent Werner Herzog documentary about it. The artistry is incredible. It stands up to anything we could draw today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chauvet_Cave https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chauvet_Cave This art from when I last read is considered to have been done around the time that Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals were both present in Europe. It's incredible to see that these people who lived in ancient France where drawing wild animals such as Rhinos and Lions.
- blotter_paper 7y ago> It's 65,000 years old which means it was painted by a Neanderthal. I'm not saying it wasn't made by a Neanderthal, and I don't think it's unlikely that Neanderthals made cave paintings, but there were human expeditions out of Africa during that time[0]. > To me, that's as profound as the discovery, if ever, of another intelligent species in the universe. For me, the fact that Neanderthals are so closely related to us removes some of the amazement. If octopuses were making paintings on the ocean floor, that would seem more comparable to finding aliens doing the same thing. [0]: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/01/oldest-human-outside-africa-discovered-fossil-jaw-israel-science/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/01/oldest-human...
- danieltillett 7y agoWhat makes Neanderthals so interesting is they split from sub-Saharan humans long before what we now call modern humans evolved. That and the fact they still walk amongst us - everyone who is not of sub-Saharan decent is part Neanderthal.
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- Bayart 7y ago>"I think I said the characteristic Australian four-letter word out very loud." "Mate" ?
- Avyiel 7y agoProbably the other one
- ghostly_s 7y agoI genuinely don't know which word he's talking about, either. I mean I know plenty of 4-letter words but none that Australia has cornered the market on, to my knowledge.
- aaron695 7y agoAustralians have a meme they say cunt more than other cultures. Analytically the UK is actually higher I believe, but they are just to cool to brag about it - https://onemilliontweetmap.com/?search=cunt https://onemilliontweetmap.com/?search=cunt (Possibly a bit off atm because of elections)
- Merrill 7y agoProbably done by a senior hunter to explain how to corner and kill food animals. The earliest known example of a PowerPoint presentation.
- Zenst 7y agoAFAIK most early animal paintings in caves was to show what game/food/animals there was in the local area. Makes you wonder if future archaeologists would have the same ore and wonder at finding a McDonalds menu board buried some 50,000 years on from now. When you think of it like that, you wonder what people of the time would make of interpretations of them and how accurate they are. EDIT - Spilling error
- mouzogu 7y agoIt's interesting that some of those oldest sculptures discovered are considered to be a form of "proto-pornography". Shows that times may change but we sure don't. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_figurines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_figurines
- hutzlibu 7y agoHm, that seems to me like projecting our ideas to a time and culture where they may not apply. I rather think they have religious meaning.
- Zenst 7y agoMaybe the people of the time projected their ideas of that time, today we call it art.
- pbhjpbhj 7y agoTheir speculation seems as valid as yours; unless you've some evidence to add?
- hutzlibu 7y agoWell, to quote the wikilink: "The original cultural meaning and purpose of these artefacts is not known. It has frequently been suggested that they may have served a ritual or symbolic function. There are widely varying and speculative interpretations of their use or meaning: they have been seen as religious figures,[5] an expression of health and fertility, grandmother goddesses or as self-depictions by female artists"
- nancycut8 7y agoprofessional hackers for hire uk : https://www.hackerslist.co/ https://www.hackerslist.co/
- asdff 7y agoI love reading about these finds. Animals are drawn with astounding detail and accuracy, while drawings of humans are absent or strikingly diminished stick figure forms. These anonymous drawings seem to predate the ego that dominates our world today. This is truly the age of pure humanity. War was something that had to be invented, and only came about ~10k years ago. We are all descendants of the survivors of war, the most brutal and feared killers are our ancestors; the predisposition towards violence is in our blood. The humans who worked in these caves and elsewhere, consuming migratory reindeer and avoiding larger and more dangerous fauna, our ancestors slaughtered these men and enslaved these women. How different the world might be if war was never waged, it's hard to imagine as we've become so accustomed to constant warfare. Many historians feel that the neolithic revolution, with the resulting social stratification and development of warfare that has been with us ever since, was the worst development in human history.
- whatshisface 7y agoJust because there wasn't warfare doesn't mean there wasn't violence and blood feuds. That behavior has been seen even groups of other primates. If anything professional armies were an improvement because they laid the groundwork for a distinction between civilians and soldiers.
- asdff 7y agoViolence happened but was generally something to avoid in the paleolithic due to the risk. It was too costly and it wasn't until the neolithic were population sizes high enough to make that cost worth while, and grain and resource storage made a worthwhile reward. Systematic warfare didn't appear until the neolithic, that's when we begin finding mass graves of peoples slaughtered by weaponry and more depictions of warfare in art.
- chrisco255 7y agoThe reason for the mass graves of course, is the increase in human population as a result of agriculture. It's not necessarily that as a percentage, you were less likely to be a victim of violence in the Paleolithic era.
- Braggadocious 7y agoToday I learned there was a giant balloon cow god that existed 44000 years ago.
- umvi 7y agoI don't understand how the aging works. Pure calcite does not contain uranium. How do we know the calcite didn't form in an environment already containing traces of old decaying uranium and thus trapped both thorium and uranium as the crystal formed? Edit: I think I've figured it out (from the wiki[1]) > Thorium is not soluble in natural water under conditions found at or near the surface of the earth, so materials grown in or from this water do not usually contain thorium.[citation needed] In contrast, uranium is soluble to some extent in all natural water, so any material that precipitates or is grown from such water also contains trace uranium, typically at levels of between a few parts per billion and few parts per million by weight. So what I'm guessing is happening is this: Running water is dissolving uranium and going down a cave wall. The water contains no thorium because thorium is not soluble and the water is running (i.e. by the time the uranium decays it will not be on the wall anymore). Calcite forms using the minerals in the running water, and traps the dissolved uranium. Only then can it decay inside the crystal into thorium. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium%E2%80%93thorium_dating https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium%E2%80%93thorium_dating
- walrus01 7y agoNot the same cave, but I highly recommend this Werner Herzog documentary. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_of_Forgotten_Dreams https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_of_Forgotten_Dreams
- rafaelvasco 7y agoMind mind would blow up if it were discovered that there was already a civilization on Earth like 200,000 years ago.
- fungicide 7y agoIf you think that's cool check out some cave movies. https://kottke.org/12/09/cave-paintings-were-stone-age-animations https://kottke.org/12/09/cave-paintings-were-stone-age-anima...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- pvaldes 7y agoAlmost extinct, but not yet. Woo hoo! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EQvqbiNg0o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EQvqbiNg0o Nice little stabber. I can understand the attack plan.
- seltzered_ 7y agoIf anyone's curious about this domain and theories of human development associated with it, you may want to check out Jeremy Lent's "The Patterning Instinct". Slowly reading through it right now, and coming across the OP cave painting piece was interesting. Some rough notes below. ---- Rough timelines & theories: Theories: - Aiello & Dunbar "gradual and early" language hypothesis, Pinker, Chomsky - Bill Noble & Iain Davidson - "sudden and recent" - Ray Jackendoff (1999) - blend the two above theories, reframe from whether hominids "had language" to "what elements of a language capacity" Timeline: - 8 million yrs ago - Great rift valley challenges, birth of mimetic culture (see above) - 2.5 million yrs ago - Olduvai - Homo habilis - 2 million yrs ago - transition from mimetic forms to early language/symbolics? - Jackendoff's development - development of mimetic language - 300k yrs ago - under Aiello/Dunbar "gradual and early" theory, we "crossed the Rubicon" to modern state just before anatomically modern humans - Jackendoff, we developed protolanguage - small nets of symbols - 40k years ago - upper paleolithic revolution - Noble&Davidson, arguing this was a "sudden and recent" revolution and explosion of symbols, since we had less artifacts before this period. - Jackendoff, modern language (giant net of symbols) # Ch. 3 - The rise of mythic consciousness ## Great Leap Forward Theory - lascoux cave paintings from 17k yrs ago - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lascaux https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lascaux - [found recently] indonesian cave paintings from 44k yrs ago? - https://www.npr.org/2019/12/11/786760790/44-000-year-old- https://www.npr.org/2019/12/11/786760790/44-000-year-old- indonesian-cave-painting-is-rewriting-the-history-of-art - "great leap forward" theory (Jared Diamond) - If humans were anatomically modern 150k yrs ago, why did it take so long for the upper paleolithic revolution (40k yrs ago)? - "Why did it take so long for symbolic thinking to get going! This rather awkward question was first framed by archaeologist Colin Renfrew, who referred to it as the “sapient paradox“." ## Out of Africa - "The revolution that wasn't" theory (Sally McBrearty & Alison Brooks) - Contrary to "Great Leap Forward", argues things were slow and gradual. - "Out of Africa" theory / story, backed with some dna analysis - 70k yrs ago - humans expanded through africa, small contingent crossing red sea into arabia -> south asia -> australia
- chrisweekly 7y agoAnyone interested in this sort of thing is likely already aware of "Sapiens" by Yuval Harari. Mentioning it just in case. Highly recommended!
- contingencies 7y agoIIRC ancestors of Australian aborigines arrived from ~Indonesia around ~60k years ago, and the oldest rock art in the Northern Territory (the closest part to Indonesia) with confirmed dating is apparently https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabarnmung https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabarnmung at ~28k years old, although its site has ~44k years of confirmed human use, which is exactly the same age as this Sulawesi find. Very vaguely then ~60k years ago was "out of Africa", ~40-30k years ago was "Prehistoric Australasian art flourish", and ~4k years ago was "dawn of known civilizations". Makes you wonder what everyone was getting up to in the mean time... possibly killing off challengers! Nearby species died in the mean time - Flores hobbit[0] ~17k years ago, Red Deer Cave people[1] ~12k years ago. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_floresiensis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_floresiensis [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Deer_Cave_people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Deer_Cave_people
- droithomme 7y agoOld time people did a lot of cool stuff. Many discoveries still to come. It's not all about banging two rocks together.
- kindtocreatures 7y agoI suppose in theory that there might be some non-sub-Saharan people that don’t have Neanderthal DNA just by chance, but it is unlikely. There are also people that have far more than the average (2-3%) - for every person like your friend there are other with way more.
- mrtri 7y agohow do they date "paint" carbon dating? goes back max 50,000 years. they never tell which dating method was used.