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I was about to say they have a powerful imagination to see camels in that eroded rock... however after a quick search, there are better photos online: https://w

I was about to say they have a powerful imagination to see camels in that eroded rock... however after a quick search, there are better photos online: https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/MAGAZINE-2-000-year-old-life-size-camel-art-found-in-heart-of-saudi-arabian-des-1.5812024 https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/MAGAZINE-2-000-year-old-...

aaron695 5y ago
Also very short. Smaller than a human in height - https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2017.221 https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2017.221
duxup 5y ago
I wonder how many places have the geology for these massive stone walls that can be carved and ... folks saw it and thought "Man we should make this really big sculpture!". My imagination makes me think that it's a pretty obvious thing to do for any number of reasons and that there have been quite a few that have been lost to time.
- delecti 5y ago
  As evidenced by the amount of grafitti in public places, people just really like leaving their mark wherever they can. There's grafitti in ancient ruins that (aside from the language) could be mistaken for grafitti in a bathroom stall. People are just gonna people.
  - duxup 5y ago
    I recall a note left on a piece of Greek pottery that said something like "<name1> made this and I bet <name2> can't do any better." Wonderful slice of some potter rivalry from long long ago ;)
    - rbalicki 5y ago
      There's a lot of bawdy graffiti that was discovered in Pompeii: https://kashgar.com.au/blogs/history/the-bawdy-graffiti-of-pompeii-and-herculaneu https://kashgar.com.au/blogs/history/the-bawdy-graffiti-of-p...
      - pizzaknife 5y ago
        this is hilarious and incredibly interesting, thanks for the link!
      - delecti 5y ago
        This is exactly the example I was trying to remember. I love things like this because it helps take the past off a pedestal. We've been the same raunchy species from the beginning.
  - irrational 5y ago
    This is exactly why I doubt all the expert opinions on cave art. "This undoubtedly had ritual significance." BS. It was probably just some teenagers screwing around.
    - delecti 5y ago
      I wouldn't go too far in the opposite direction though. Teenagers screwing around is more likely to be lewd carvings than life-size carvings of a camel. A rule of thumb I've heard is that "ritual significance" is code for either "we have no idea" or "probably a sex toy", depending on context. In cases like this, I think the default assumption should be "probably art".
      - AlotOfReading 5y ago
        "ritual" is a pretty general term that doesn't quite match its colloquial meaning and generally doesn't have anything to do with sex toys. Imagine you find an old PCB that you weren't quite sure the purpose of. Is it unfair to call it "electronic" when there's a more specific term that could be applied if you knew what its purpose was? The same objection applies equally to "art".
    - Tagbert 5y ago
      Much of the cave art required people to go deep into hard to access areas of caves. People created the art over long periods of time. Many of the pieces incorporated elements of the cave wall to enhance the 3D realism of the figures. These were not simple scratching done at random, they were done with care and intent by people with skill.
  - mannerheim 5y ago
    There is runic Old Norse graffiti in the Hagia Sophia that probably originally said something along the lines of 'so-and-so wrote this': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runic_inscriptions_in_Hagia_Sophia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runic_inscriptions_in_Hagia_So...
2rsf 5y ago
Wow, this is amazing
- ornornor 5y ago
  Even more amazing is that some people inject Botox into camels to make them look better… https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-42802901 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-42802901
  - dublin 5y ago
    Wow, that sounds like something right out of the Babylon Bee. I really don't envy the folks at the Bee - it's hard to make up satire that's weirder and more outrageous than the actual truth!
dublin 5y ago
Camel? Or Star Wars walker machine? Inquiring minds want to know... :-)
- masklinn 5y ago
  The very sloped back and back legs reveal they’re camels not AT-AT: the hind slope of the AT-AT is very shallow and its leg joint does not bend back.
- photon-torpedo 5y ago
  Can't see any long neck, so my vote goes to the Star Wars walker.
HWR_14 5y ago
Don't forget, they look so eroded because the sculptures have been eroding for 8,000+ years. Also, the original article (original with regard the this HN thread, not the older article you linked to) talked about examining the tool marks. It's not just examining the large shape, it's about seeing the method of construction on a smaller scale.
- dmix 5y ago
  I wonder if it was at ground level too when they carved it...
- cronix 5y ago
  After 8000 years of erosion, it's amazing they can even still find tool marks.
neonate 5y ago
https://archive.is/l3Vmm https://archive.is/l3Vmm http://web.archive.org/web/20210916005143/https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/MAGAZINE-2-000-year-old-life-size-camel-art-found-in-heart-of-saudi-arabian-des-1.5812024 http://web.archive.org/web/20210916005143/https://www.haaret...
- 0xdeadb00f 5y ago
  Thank you!
afterburner 5y ago
That article only mentions 2000 year old sculptures, not 8000, so maybe that one just hasn't been as weather worn yet.
- behnamoh 5y ago
  Or maybe previous dating was not correct.
- mcguire 5y ago
  According to the Smithsonian article, that was the original dating for the camels. The continuing work pushed the date back to 7000-8000.
- simonh 5y ago
  It sounds like you only skim read the first paragraph. The article says they were thought to be 2000 years old but have recently been found to be 6000 years older than that. The second paragraph makes the new dating range explicit.
  - afterburner 5y ago
    It sounds like you didn't read the comment I was actually replying to. It links to this article, different from OP, that does not mention what you claim it mentions: https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/MAGAZINE-2-000-year-old-life-size-camel-art-found-in-heart-of-saudi-arabian-des-1.5812024 https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/MAGAZINE-2-000-year-old-...
    - Talanes 5y ago
      They didn't miss the article you were referring to, they were just assuming you had read the topic article as well. The article your read refers to 2,000 year old sculptures because it was written years before the research that added 6,000 years, not because they're different camels.
      - afterburner 5y ago
peter_retief 5y ago
I never realized that camels originated in the Americas In contrast to popular wisdom, the camel did not originate in the Sahel or Levant. They apparently evolved in North America around 45 million years ago. From there they spread to South America (becoming alpacas, llamas and so on), Asia, and Africa some time in the Pleistocene, say the archaeologists. That isn't saying much, as the Pleistocene spans about 2.5 million years to 11,000 years ago. Anyway, based on camel remains, it seems the splay-footed quadrupeds reached Arabia in the Holocene, at least 7,000 years ago. (Camels are believed to have reached ancient Israel only about 3,000 years ago.)
kergonath 5y ago
It’s annoying that an article with this title has such a poor picture, even though much better ones are a quick search away. They talk about mind-boggling realism, but you would not believe it just from this photo. Thanks for the link!
nr152522 5y ago
They’re not camels, they’re AT-AT’s.

aaron695 5y ago

Also very short. Smaller than a human in height - https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2017.221 https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2017.221

duxup 5y ago

I wonder how many places have the geology for these massive stone walls that can be carved and ... folks saw it and thought "Man we should make this really big sculpture!". My imagination makes me think that it's a pretty obvious thing to do for any number of reasons and that there have been quite a few that have been lost to time.

delecti 5y ago
As evidenced by the amount of grafitti in public places, people just really like leaving their mark wherever they can. There's grafitti in ancient ruins that (aside from the language) could be mistaken for grafitti in a bathroom stall. People are just gonna people.
- duxup 5y ago
  I recall a note left on a piece of Greek pottery that said something like "<name1> made this and I bet <name2> can't do any better." Wonderful slice of some potter rivalry from long long ago ;)
  - rbalicki 5y ago
    There's a lot of bawdy graffiti that was discovered in Pompeii: https://kashgar.com.au/blogs/history/the-bawdy-graffiti-of-pompeii-and-herculaneu https://kashgar.com.au/blogs/history/the-bawdy-graffiti-of-p...
    - pizzaknife 5y ago
      this is hilarious and incredibly interesting, thanks for the link!
    - delecti 5y ago
      This is exactly the example I was trying to remember. I love things like this because it helps take the past off a pedestal. We've been the same raunchy species from the beginning.
- irrational 5y ago
  This is exactly why I doubt all the expert opinions on cave art. "This undoubtedly had ritual significance." BS. It was probably just some teenagers screwing around.
  - delecti 5y ago
    I wouldn't go too far in the opposite direction though. Teenagers screwing around is more likely to be lewd carvings than life-size carvings of a camel. A rule of thumb I've heard is that "ritual significance" is code for either "we have no idea" or "probably a sex toy", depending on context. In cases like this, I think the default assumption should be "probably art".
    - AlotOfReading 5y ago
      "ritual" is a pretty general term that doesn't quite match its colloquial meaning and generally doesn't have anything to do with sex toys. Imagine you find an old PCB that you weren't quite sure the purpose of. Is it unfair to call it "electronic" when there's a more specific term that could be applied if you knew what its purpose was? The same objection applies equally to "art".
  - Tagbert 5y ago
    Much of the cave art required people to go deep into hard to access areas of caves. People created the art over long periods of time. Many of the pieces incorporated elements of the cave wall to enhance the 3D realism of the figures. These were not simple scratching done at random, they were done with care and intent by people with skill.
- mannerheim 5y ago
  There is runic Old Norse graffiti in the Hagia Sophia that probably originally said something along the lines of 'so-and-so wrote this': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runic_inscriptions_in_Hagia_Sophia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runic_inscriptions_in_Hagia_So...

2rsf 5y ago

Wow, this is amazing

ornornor 5y ago
Even more amazing is that some people inject Botox into camels to make them look better… https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-42802901 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-42802901
- dublin 5y ago
  Wow, that sounds like something right out of the Babylon Bee. I really don't envy the folks at the Bee - it's hard to make up satire that's weirder and more outrageous than the actual truth!

dublin 5y ago

Camel? Or Star Wars walker machine? Inquiring minds want to know... :-)

masklinn 5y ago
The very sloped back and back legs reveal they’re camels not AT-AT: the hind slope of the AT-AT is very shallow and its leg joint does not bend back.
photon-torpedo 5y ago
Can't see any long neck, so my vote goes to the Star Wars walker.

HWR_14 5y ago

Don't forget, they look so eroded because the sculptures have been eroding for 8,000+ years. Also, the original article (original with regard the this HN thread, not the older article you linked to) talked about examining the tool marks. It's not just examining the large shape, it's about seeing the method of construction on a smaller scale.

dmix 5y ago
I wonder if it was at ground level too when they carved it...
cronix 5y ago
After 8000 years of erosion, it's amazing they can even still find tool marks.

neonate 5y ago

https://archive.is/l3Vmm https://archive.is/l3Vmm http://web.archive.org/web/20210916005143/https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/MAGAZINE-2-000-year-old-life-size-camel-art-found-in-heart-of-saudi-arabian-des-1.5812024 http://web.archive.org/web/20210916005143/https://www.haaret...

0xdeadb00f 5y ago
Thank you!

afterburner 5y ago

That article only mentions 2000 year old sculptures, not 8000, so maybe that one just hasn't been as weather worn yet.

behnamoh 5y ago
Or maybe previous dating was not correct.
mcguire 5y ago
According to the Smithsonian article, that was the original dating for the camels. The continuing work pushed the date back to 7000-8000.
simonh 5y ago
It sounds like you only skim read the first paragraph. The article says they were thought to be 2000 years old but have recently been found to be 6000 years older than that. The second paragraph makes the new dating range explicit.
- afterburner 5y ago
  It sounds like you didn't read the comment I was actually replying to. It links to this article, different from OP, that does not mention what you claim it mentions: https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/MAGAZINE-2-000-year-old-life-size-camel-art-found-in-heart-of-saudi-arabian-des-1.5812024 https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/MAGAZINE-2-000-year-old-...
  - Talanes 5y ago
    They didn't miss the article you were referring to, they were just assuming you had read the topic article as well. The article your read refers to 2,000 year old sculptures because it was written years before the research that added 6,000 years, not because they're different camels.
    - afterburner 5y ago

peter_retief 5y ago

I never realized that camels originated in the Americas In contrast to popular wisdom, the camel did not originate in the Sahel or Levant. They apparently evolved in North America around 45 million years ago. From there they spread to South America (becoming alpacas, llamas and so on), Asia, and Africa some time in the Pleistocene, say the archaeologists. That isn't saying much, as the Pleistocene spans about 2.5 million years to 11,000 years ago. Anyway, based on camel remains, it seems the splay-footed quadrupeds reached Arabia in the Holocene, at least 7,000 years ago. (Camels are believed to have reached ancient Israel only about 3,000 years ago.)

kergonath 5y ago

It’s annoying that an article with this title has such a poor picture, even though much better ones are a quick search away. They talk about mind-boggling realism, but you would not believe it just from this photo. Thanks for the link!

nr152522 5y ago

They’re not camels, they’re AT-AT’s.