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I've been here and to a few other, equally spectacular sites in this general part of Colombia. They're well-known among local people, but some are VERY hard to

I've been here and to a few other, equally spectacular sites in this general part of Colombia. They're well-known among local people, but some are VERY hard to get to (freight or chartered plane to a community completely unattached to the rest of the country by road + hours-long boat journey + hours of hiking). They can be quite sad though, e.g. the relatively newer images depict colonization encroaching upon the region - horses (introduced by the colonists), swords, and scenes that appear to show imprisonment of people.

cardamomo 3y ago
The "relatively newer" images you refer to seem to be nearly 12,000 years newer than the images mentioned in this article. They're likely from a different culture entirely. EDIT: Changed "older" to "newer."
- olddustytrail 3y ago
  You mean 12k years newer, not older.
  - freedomben 3y ago
    I'm not positive what GP meant either, but if they were talking about horses, that is mentioned in the article as being there about 12,000 years ago, which is significantly before colonization that first GP mentioned as having brought horses to the area: > the rock art shows how the earliest human inhabitants of the area would have coexisted with Ice Age megafauna, with pictures showing what appear to be giant sloths, mastodons, camelids, horses and three-toed ungulates with trunks.
    - amatic 3y ago
      Apparently, there were horses in the Americas, but they went extinct about 12k years ago, along with the other megafauna. What I understand is that different images could have been made in multiple time periods, from the first inhabitants up to today.
      - gort52467 3y ago
        s/went extinct/were hunted to extinction by man
        mc32 3y ago
        Horses are not extinct.
        nobody9999 3y ago
        >Horses are not extinct. "While genus Equus, of which the horse is a member, originally evolved in North America, these horse relatives became extinct on the continent approximately 8,000–12,000 years ago. In 1493, on Christopher Columbus' second voyage to the Americas, Spanish horses, representing E. caballus, were brought back to North America, first to the Virgin Islands; they were introduced to the continental mainland by Hernán Cortés in 1519. From early Spanish imports to Mexico and Florida, horses moved north, supplemented by later imports to the east and west coasts brought by British, French, and other European colonists. Native peoples of the Americas quickly obtained horses and developed their own horse culture.[5][6]" Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horses_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horses_in_the_United_States
        atlantic 3y ago
        Blaming megafauna extinction on humans aligns with current misanthropic fashions, but rapid global warming at the end of the last ice age is a far more likely culprit. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-21201-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-21201-8
        EdwardDiego 3y ago
        > but rapid global warming at the end of the last ice age is a far more likely culprit. Firstly, your linked paper is focused on North America, so we can't say it's also applicable to, say, the extinctions of Homo floresiensis and Stegodon florensis insularis that correlate rather well with the arrival of modern humans. Secondly, it repeatedly refers to global _cooling_ through the Younger Dryas Event. Just to clarify. And tbh, claiming the overkill/big black hole hypothesis is merely current fashion is overly simplistic. It was described in the 60s based on available data, and hey, we're getting better data now, so yay, science is incorporating new data, like we expect. And I'll note that the data points for human predation of megafauna used in that paper are likely to change also with time, so who knows how correct that paper's conclusions will be in another 20 years? I don't see why "it was probably both" shouldn't be the default position. We know humans hunted megafauna, but like the fossil record, we know that only some evidence will be preserved, and only some of that evidence has been found. But logically, both environmental change and the introduction of a novel predator (and other novel predators that predator may have brought with them) are bad for populations of species which a low replacement rate. Kākāpō are a very good example. Human settlement brought habitat loss, causing their numbers to decline, and their breeding success rates to drop (and they were slow breeders to start with) as the more clement habitat was modified by humans, thus pushing them into areas with lower productivity. But what ultimately pushed them to nearly going extinct was the introduction of very effective mammalian predators (mustelids). They had evolved for a land where the only predators were avian and sight based. So they became flightless because no point in flying away from danger when the danger was flying above you, and they developed cryptic colouration, they'd freeze when they sensed danger and became nocturnal. And most importantly, they used scent in lieu of dramatic colours to find each other in dense forest in the breeding season. No harm there, because raptors hunt by sight, not scent. But being a smelly bird who is camouflaged and nocturnal and stands still, is no defense against ground predators who hunt by scent and quite appreciate not having to run after you. I have the diaries of an explorer in the 1890s who would eat five kākāpō for breakfast, they were that easy for him to locate using his dogs, within 80 years of his parrot based breakfasts they were extinct on the mainland. But yeah, habitat loss reduced their range, then human hunting reduced their range, then feral dogs and later cats reduced their range. But they were still around in decent numbers. Then mustelids were introduced, and that was the tipping point, but only in the context of the prior stresses. So for megafauna, hunting pressure places a population under stress, especially in species with a low replacement rate. Climate change and the resulting changes in the ecosystem also puts populations under stress. Maybe one of those stressors was survivable, but probably not both. And for some megafaunal extinctions, especially on islands, it's pretty obvious humans were the deciding factor. Maybe not through hunting, just habitat loss could be sufficient (e.g., elephant bird), but often habitat loss went hand in hand with intensive hunting (e.g., moa) This paper's worth a read. https://www.academia.edu/2644492/The_Associational_Critique_of_Quaternary_overkill_and_why_its_largely_irrelevant_to_the_extinction_debate https://www.academia.edu/2644492/The_Associational_Critique_...
  - cardamomo 3y ago
    Yes, that's what I meant!
- seaknoll 3y ago
  The images are of various ages. This article describes the subset that are the oldest, but there are newer ones mixed in. In some places you get layers of them, where you can see that the older ones were drawn over. They can estimate how much later they were added based on the presence of animals and objects that did not exist there 12,000 years ago. It's true that there's a huge gap in time between the earliest paintings and the newer ones and so some aspects of the culture probably did change. But the area has been continuously populated for millennia.
Zamicol 3y ago
Horses are native to North America and became extinct after the introduction of humans. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_horse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_horse
- DanielVZ 3y ago
  your comment makes it seem like colonists reintroduced a native species (idk if that was the intention, but that’s how it reads), when in reality the horse species that were once native in South America was quite different from European Horses. It also makes it seem like their extinction was due to human action (again, idk if that was the intention), but it also could’ve been due to climate change.
  - gremlinsinc 3y ago
    The Mormon church believes Tapirs are what were being called 'horses' and what pulled chariots and such, as an apologetic way of covering the fact horses weren't on the continent, but Joseph Smith never knew that.
  - Zamicol 3y ago
    The key part from below is "Quaternary extinction event of most of the Pleistocene megafauna that is widely believed to have been a result of human hunting pressure." From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon#Extinction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon#Extinction >Fossil evidence indicates that mastodons probably disappeared from North America about 10,500 years ago as part of the Quaternary extinction event of most of the Pleistocene megafauna that is widely believed to have been a result of human hunting pressure. The latest Paleo-Indians entered the Americas and expanded to relatively large numbers 13,000 years ago, and their hunting may have caused a gradual attrition of the mastodon population. As far as megafauna and climate, see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revival_of_the_woolly_mammoth#Woolly_mammoths_and_sustainability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revival_of_the_woolly_mammoth#...

cardamomo 3y ago

The "relatively newer" images you refer to seem to be nearly 12,000 years newer than the images mentioned in this article. They're likely from a different culture entirely. EDIT: Changed "older" to "newer."

olddustytrail 3y ago
You mean 12k years newer, not older.
- freedomben 3y ago
  I'm not positive what GP meant either, but if they were talking about horses, that is mentioned in the article as being there about 12,000 years ago, which is significantly before colonization that first GP mentioned as having brought horses to the area: > the rock art shows how the earliest human inhabitants of the area would have coexisted with Ice Age megafauna, with pictures showing what appear to be giant sloths, mastodons, camelids, horses and three-toed ungulates with trunks.
  - amatic 3y ago
    Apparently, there were horses in the Americas, but they went extinct about 12k years ago, along with the other megafauna. What I understand is that different images could have been made in multiple time periods, from the first inhabitants up to today.
    - gort52467 3y ago
      s/went extinct/were hunted to extinction by man
      - mc32 3y ago
        Horses are not extinct.
        nobody9999 3y ago
        >Horses are not extinct. "While genus Equus, of which the horse is a member, originally evolved in North America, these horse relatives became extinct on the continent approximately 8,000–12,000 years ago. In 1493, on Christopher Columbus' second voyage to the Americas, Spanish horses, representing E. caballus, were brought back to North America, first to the Virgin Islands; they were introduced to the continental mainland by Hernán Cortés in 1519. From early Spanish imports to Mexico and Florida, horses moved north, supplemented by later imports to the east and west coasts brought by British, French, and other European colonists. Native peoples of the Americas quickly obtained horses and developed their own horse culture.[5][6]" Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horses_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horses_in_the_United_States
      - atlantic 3y ago
        Blaming megafauna extinction on humans aligns with current misanthropic fashions, but rapid global warming at the end of the last ice age is a far more likely culprit. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-21201-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-21201-8
        EdwardDiego 3y ago
        > but rapid global warming at the end of the last ice age is a far more likely culprit. Firstly, your linked paper is focused on North America, so we can't say it's also applicable to, say, the extinctions of Homo floresiensis and Stegodon florensis insularis that correlate rather well with the arrival of modern humans. Secondly, it repeatedly refers to global _cooling_ through the Younger Dryas Event. Just to clarify. And tbh, claiming the overkill/big black hole hypothesis is merely current fashion is overly simplistic. It was described in the 60s based on available data, and hey, we're getting better data now, so yay, science is incorporating new data, like we expect. And I'll note that the data points for human predation of megafauna used in that paper are likely to change also with time, so who knows how correct that paper's conclusions will be in another 20 years? I don't see why "it was probably both" shouldn't be the default position. We know humans hunted megafauna, but like the fossil record, we know that only some evidence will be preserved, and only some of that evidence has been found. But logically, both environmental change and the introduction of a novel predator (and other novel predators that predator may have brought with them) are bad for populations of species which a low replacement rate. Kākāpō are a very good example. Human settlement brought habitat loss, causing their numbers to decline, and their breeding success rates to drop (and they were slow breeders to start with) as the more clement habitat was modified by humans, thus pushing them into areas with lower productivity. But what ultimately pushed them to nearly going extinct was the introduction of very effective mammalian predators (mustelids). They had evolved for a land where the only predators were avian and sight based. So they became flightless because no point in flying away from danger when the danger was flying above you, and they developed cryptic colouration, they'd freeze when they sensed danger and became nocturnal. And most importantly, they used scent in lieu of dramatic colours to find each other in dense forest in the breeding season. No harm there, because raptors hunt by sight, not scent. But being a smelly bird who is camouflaged and nocturnal and stands still, is no defense against ground predators who hunt by scent and quite appreciate not having to run after you. I have the diaries of an explorer in the 1890s who would eat five kākāpō for breakfast, they were that easy for him to locate using his dogs, within 80 years of his parrot based breakfasts they were extinct on the mainland. But yeah, habitat loss reduced their range, then human hunting reduced their range, then feral dogs and later cats reduced their range. But they were still around in decent numbers. Then mustelids were introduced, and that was the tipping point, but only in the context of the prior stresses. So for megafauna, hunting pressure places a population under stress, especially in species with a low replacement rate. Climate change and the resulting changes in the ecosystem also puts populations under stress. Maybe one of those stressors was survivable, but probably not both. And for some megafaunal extinctions, especially on islands, it's pretty obvious humans were the deciding factor. Maybe not through hunting, just habitat loss could be sufficient (e.g., elephant bird), but often habitat loss went hand in hand with intensive hunting (e.g., moa) This paper's worth a read. https://www.academia.edu/2644492/The_Associational_Critique_of_Quaternary_overkill_and_why_its_largely_irrelevant_to_the_extinction_debate https://www.academia.edu/2644492/The_Associational_Critique_...
- cardamomo 3y ago
  Yes, that's what I meant!
seaknoll 3y ago
The images are of various ages. This article describes the subset that are the oldest, but there are newer ones mixed in. In some places you get layers of them, where you can see that the older ones were drawn over. They can estimate how much later they were added based on the presence of animals and objects that did not exist there 12,000 years ago. It's true that there's a huge gap in time between the earliest paintings and the newer ones and so some aspects of the culture probably did change. But the area has been continuously populated for millennia.

Zamicol 3y ago

Horses are native to North America and became extinct after the introduction of humans. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_horse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_horse

DanielVZ 3y ago
your comment makes it seem like colonists reintroduced a native species (idk if that was the intention, but that’s how it reads), when in reality the horse species that were once native in South America was quite different from European Horses. It also makes it seem like their extinction was due to human action (again, idk if that was the intention), but it also could’ve been due to climate change.
- gremlinsinc 3y ago
  The Mormon church believes Tapirs are what were being called 'horses' and what pulled chariots and such, as an apologetic way of covering the fact horses weren't on the continent, but Joseph Smith never knew that.
- Zamicol 3y ago
  The key part from below is "Quaternary extinction event of most of the Pleistocene megafauna that is widely believed to have been a result of human hunting pressure." From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon#Extinction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon#Extinction >Fossil evidence indicates that mastodons probably disappeared from North America about 10,500 years ago as part of the Quaternary extinction event of most of the Pleistocene megafauna that is widely believed to have been a result of human hunting pressure. The latest Paleo-Indians entered the Americas and expanded to relatively large numbers 13,000 years ago, and their hunting may have caused a gradual attrition of the mastodon population. As far as megafauna and climate, see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revival_of_the_woolly_mammoth#Woolly_mammoths_and_sustainability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revival_of_the_woolly_mammoth#...