6 ms·

Wielding lamps and torches shed new light on Stone Age cave art

57 points by diodorus 5y ago

necrotic_comp 5y ago
Is there a good video or animation of what this looks like ? I've seen a bunch of text descriptions but I'm curious how this actually appears.
- marshray 5y ago
  IIRC, Werner Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010) has some scenes where the cave walls are illuminated by flickering light.
  - tokai 5y ago
    Saw that in 3d. It was really interesting to see the paintings undulating over the cave walls. Still the only film I have seen where 3d had a real impact to the viewing experience.
- sandworm101 5y ago
  Try drawing a picture of a forest on a moonless night. It is very difficult to portray how we see things when our eyes are at the limits of their abilities. For instance, our peripheral vision can see better in dim light than our focused vision, causing us to see things in the corner of our eye that disappear when we look strait at them. Try simulating that effect in a photograph. Perception of color also changes over time. If you sit in a cave with a fire (mostly red/yellow) after several hours you will start seeing color differently. Something that looks yellow on a computer screen (lots of blue/green) may be perceived as white after hours bathed in the red/yellow of firelight. These are areas where painters are better than photographers. Nobody can make a good photograph of a dark forest and all the effects that entails. But a painter with a brush can communicate through artistic trickery.
dylan604 5y ago
"That suggests the artists may have wanted to keep their work hidden, the researchers say." Uh-oh, today's HN reader would be looking for a way to pirate that work so they could view any time they want. More seriously, were they wanting to keep it hidden because they weren't sure it was good enough? A bit of self-conciousness on how my stick figures are a lot less realistic than Bob's paintings in his cave? Were they afraid of the poparazzi effect of everyone wanting their autograph for being the rockstar painter of their day? Or are we just congecturing too much about wanting to keep them hidden? More questions than answers.
- ElViajero 5y ago
  > to pirate that work I doubt that copyright existed in the Stone age, so it's public domain. > they weren't sure it was good enough? A bit of self-conciousness on how my stick figures are a lot less realistic than Bob's paintings in his cave? It could have been a curse, a pay to get better hunting that some other people in the tribe or even a new religion. I agree that is difficult to say, I hope that future discoveries get more light into this drawings.
  - dylan604 5y ago
    >even a new religion. I was going to suggest it being against their religion. Maybe Ra was punishing them because they realized how to use the Stargate.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- atoav 5y ago
  Or they wanted it to be protected and stored away for the times. Or the act of getting to those paintings was some kind of special act that was carried out under certain circumstances (and therefore it being hard to reach was part of the plan).
  - handmodel 5y ago
    I have no idea the specifics but I do think about this a lot. For all we know of all art of the time 99.9% of it was done on wood outside in the elements but all those would be destroyed by now. We have a selection bias issue where we may be looking at a very small fragment of the total art/messaging done at the time.
aasasd 5y ago
There's a book ‘Shaman’ by Kim Stanley Robinson, who's said to do a lot of research for his writing. In one scene of the book, a man goes into a cave to paint such images. Well, when his fires go out, he then spends three days groping around for the exit in complete darkness and getting weaker from hunger, until people from the tribe come in search of him. Meanwhile I imagined real caves as mostly ’in and out’ kind of thing: out of light sure, but not three days worth of crawling.
bpodgursky 5y ago
But also just survivor bias? The art that survived was hidden away in caves protected from people & elements. Maybe every exposed rock was covered in graffiti / paintings 30k years ago and we just see the stuff in the back.

57 points by diodorus 5y ago

Is there a good video or animation of what this looks like ? I've seen a bunch of text descriptions but I'm curious how this actually appears.

marshray 5y ago
IIRC, Werner Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010) has some scenes where the cave walls are illuminated by flickering light.
- tokai 5y ago
  Saw that in 3d. It was really interesting to see the paintings undulating over the cave walls. Still the only film I have seen where 3d had a real impact to the viewing experience.
sandworm101 5y ago
Try drawing a picture of a forest on a moonless night. It is very difficult to portray how we see things when our eyes are at the limits of their abilities. For instance, our peripheral vision can see better in dim light than our focused vision, causing us to see things in the corner of our eye that disappear when we look strait at them. Try simulating that effect in a photograph. Perception of color also changes over time. If you sit in a cave with a fire (mostly red/yellow) after several hours you will start seeing color differently. Something that looks yellow on a computer screen (lots of blue/green) may be perceived as white after hours bathed in the red/yellow of firelight. These are areas where painters are better than photographers. Nobody can make a good photograph of a dark forest and all the effects that entails. But a painter with a brush can communicate through artistic trickery.

dylan604 5y ago

"That suggests the artists may have wanted to keep their work hidden, the researchers say." Uh-oh, today's HN reader would be looking for a way to pirate that work so they could view any time they want. More seriously, were they wanting to keep it hidden because they weren't sure it was good enough? A bit of self-conciousness on how my stick figures are a lot less realistic than Bob's paintings in his cave? Were they afraid of the poparazzi effect of everyone wanting their autograph for being the rockstar painter of their day? Or are we just congecturing too much about wanting to keep them hidden? More questions than answers.

ElViajero 5y ago
> to pirate that work I doubt that copyright existed in the Stone age, so it's public domain. > they weren't sure it was good enough? A bit of self-conciousness on how my stick figures are a lot less realistic than Bob's paintings in his cave? It could have been a curse, a pay to get better hunting that some other people in the tribe or even a new religion. I agree that is difficult to say, I hope that future discoveries get more light into this drawings.
- dylan604 5y ago
  >even a new religion. I was going to suggest it being against their religion. Maybe Ra was punishing them because they realized how to use the Stargate.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
atoav 5y ago
Or they wanted it to be protected and stored away for the times. Or the act of getting to those paintings was some kind of special act that was carried out under certain circumstances (and therefore it being hard to reach was part of the plan).
- handmodel 5y ago
  I have no idea the specifics but I do think about this a lot. For all we know of all art of the time 99.9% of it was done on wood outside in the elements but all those would be destroyed by now. We have a selection bias issue where we may be looking at a very small fragment of the total art/messaging done at the time.

aasasd 5y ago

There's a book ‘Shaman’ by Kim Stanley Robinson, who's said to do a lot of research for his writing. In one scene of the book, a man goes into a cave to paint such images. Well, when his fires go out, he then spends three days groping around for the exit in complete darkness and getting weaker from hunger, until people from the tribe come in search of him. Meanwhile I imagined real caves as mostly ’in and out’ kind of thing: out of light sure, but not three days worth of crawling.

bpodgursky 5y ago

But also just survivor bias? The art that survived was hidden away in caves protected from people & elements. Maybe every exposed rock was covered in graffiti / paintings 30k years ago and we just see the stuff in the back.