

Indonesian Cave Paintings Are 40,000 Years Old - dnetesn
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/rockart-ages-indonesian-cave-paintings-are-40000-years-old-180952970/?utm_source=twitter.com&no-ist

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tokenadult
There are a lot of good stories about this being posted today. Rather than
make a new submission, I'll mention here another article about the same find
that I saw today and liked.[1] For background information about what we knew
about paleolithic art before these latest discoveries, I strongly recommend I
recommend _The Nature of Paleolithic Art_ [2] by R. Dale Guthrie, a book I
enjoyed reading several years ago. Guthrie is a field biologist and very
competent visual artist who specializes in Pleistocene megafauna like
mammoths. He went to most of the oldest sites of surviving cave art--although,
not as far as I know, to the one now described in today's news in Indonesia--
and personally looked at ancient drawings on site as he studied examples of
early art for his book. His book shows hand stencil blowpaint drawings and
depictions of prey animals much like those in the articles in the news today.
He devotes pages of thoughtful discussion to what early human drawings show
and what drawing problems early artists encountered. He even mentions
interesting evidence like figuring out how old the painters were by how high
up on cave walls the paintings are found--it's clear that little kids in olden
days practiced by making crude drawings, and became better at drawing as they
grew up and could reach higher.

[1] "World's oldest art found in Indonesian cave"
[http://www.nature.com/news/world-s-oldest-art-found-in-
indon...](http://www.nature.com/news/world-s-oldest-art-found-in-indonesian-
cave-1.16100)

[2] [http://www.amazon.com/The-Nature-Paleolithic-Dale-
Guthrie/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Nature-Paleolithic-Dale-
Guthrie/dp/0226311260)

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ghshephard
I tried to read this with an open mind, but, particularly because so much of
the story was about the dating methodology, and the suggestions of how
inaccurate carbon dating can be, the author didn't ask the obvious (to me)
question, "If you have a set of caves in the same area of Moras, with
paintings, and the ages of those paintings ranges from 25,000 years to 39,900
years, is it more likely that you have paintings across 14,000 years of human
experience, or is it more likely that there is some significant error levels
in your dating method?"

At the very least, It would seem to me that writing up a paragraph in the
article to describe how the artwork evolved (or did not) over 14,000 years of
human history would have added some insight.

I also find it highly suspect that they were comfortable going to three
significant digits of accuracy in their dating, mentioning specific ages like
"39,900 and 35,400" years old. Perhaps I've been away from science for too
long, but when there is some probable chance of error, isn't it traditional to
keep to the significant figures you are confident of (e.g. In this case -
40,000 years, 35,000 years)?

On the flip side - appeal to authority - this was a published paper in Nature
-
[http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v514/n7521/full/nature1...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v514/n7521/full/nature13422.html),
so I presume those who know more than me thought otherwise.

I do find it really cool to discover that hand stencils show up all around the
world in cave art though.

~~~
netcan
I tend to agree with you on dating method accuracy vs the likelihood of a
14,000 year period of activity. Such a long period of activity seems like a
stretch.

Regarding cultural evolution. There seems to be a historical trend of
accelerating evolution. Projected 10s of thousands of years back in time, this
means that 1,000 years of technological evolution produced very little change.
Prehistoric artifacts that survive are a small fraction of those made but
those we have lots of (mainly stone tools) do follow an accelerating evolution
path. Going back to cro magnum and older subspecies, we find 100,000s of years
where technology remains unchanged. Big stone axes manufactured in the same
places with the same methods. The Oldowan industry of ancient hominins
existed, often using the same quarries for hundreds of thousands of years.

Also, we have cave painting sites in Australia with thousands of years of
artwork where the tradition of cave painting survived into modern times. Some
ancient sites even recorded the arrival for colonialists.

Ancient human history is strange. I agree on every point but… I think it's
also good to keep an open mind and not allow our modern ideas of how human
societies change, especially the pace of change colour our conclusions too
much.

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tdicola
Wow very cool--also check out Werner Herzog's documentary Cave of Forgotten
Dreams for a fantastic look at the Chauvet cave in France. It's a typical
Herzog documentary that dives into the cave and the emotions it creates with
people rather than going over the rote history or facts about it. It's also
shot in 3D and if you have the hardware to see it in that format it is
absolutely worth it! The cave drawings twist and bend around the walls so
seeing it in 3D is a very rare instance where the experience is vastly
improved by the technology. You can still see the normal version on Netflix
streaming in the US though:
[http://www.netflix.com/WiMovie/70145740?trkid=13752289](http://www.netflix.com/WiMovie/70145740?trkid=13752289)

~~~
vermooten
Not in the UK of course, where Netflix's selection is like what you'd find in
a box of VHS cassettes in a car boot sale.

~~~
sanoli
My wife just got Netflix here in Brazil. I looked at the selection. You brits
are not alone.

~~~
personlurking
Not to mention the actual Brazilian films selection (something you think
they'd get right) is horrible, considering what it could be.

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danieltillett
What I find most interesting about this discovery is that it on the
Australasian side of the Wallace line [1]. This means the people had to have
invented boats to get to there as there never was a land bridge to Sulawesi
during the last ice age. This is technologically far beyond what any other
human groups around at the time were capable of. Mightily impressive.

[1][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace_Line](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace_Line)

------
kofein
_Scientists traditionally thought that humans began creating art once they
reached Europe from Africa, and that human art forms dissipated to the far
reaches of the globe from there. “It’s a pretty Euro-centric view of the
world,” says Aubert. “But now we can move away from that.”_

The idea of modern human behavior and modern culture/art (or even language, as
they're all tightly associated with each other) being connected with humankind
migrating to Europe has been shaky for quite some time already. Many of the
researchers have long considered Howiesons Poort (65kya) or Stillbay (70kya)
as equally representative of an emergence of modernity that would
significantly predate humankind's entry into Europe.

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cristianpascu
It's puzzling, to say the least, how domains like philosophy of mind battles
the hard problem of consciousness, how we're able of abstract thinking and
phenomenal experiences, and other domains of human thinking take it so lightly
as 'humans started to think abstractly x thousands years ago'.

Just because we see products of abstract thinking starting some point in time
says absolutely nothing about how abstract thinking is working. It's not like
since bones evolved, abstract thinking must have evolved too. Abstract
thinking, and all things consciousness, is something evolution must account
for to stand as a scientific theory of life on Earth. So far, consciousness is
a big black hole in the theory, IMO.

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ekianjo
Interesting point in the article regarding the origins of Man. It's only
slightly mentioned, but this discovery puts a question mark on the African
origins. And the African origins of Man are actually still a subject of
debate, because most of the clues supporting that hypothesis were in places in
Africa where excavation was easy compared to anywhere else. It's survivorship
bias at least as far as I understand the data we have so far. I would not be
surprised if we find out one day that humans "appeared" in different locations
not directly connected to each other.

~~~
danieltillett
Actually both theory turned out to be correct which is the way science
sometimes works. Most of our ancestry is traced back to Africa, but the
various populations outside of Africa are a mix of African and the various
related human species that had been living in the area. For example modern
Europeans and East Asian peoples are a hybrid of African humans and
Neanderthal human populations [1]. The modern Austronesian peoples (most
likely the descendants of the cave painters) are a three way hybrid between
African, Neanderthal and the Denisovian humans [2]. I find this all really
interesting.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaic_human_admixture_with_mo...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaic_human_admixture_with_modern_humans)

[2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denisovan](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denisovan)

~~~
drewblaisdell
>
> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaic_human_admixture_with_mo...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaic_human_admixture_with_modern_humans)

I've been looking for this!

The disappearance (really, the admixture with other hominids) of pre-homo
sapien hominids is fascinating to me. I asked a similar question on reddit a
while ago:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/27g6xx/homo_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/27g6xx/homo_sapiens_left_africa_200000_years_ago_but/)

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antidaily
For some added context, anatomically modern humans are thought to have evolved
200,000 years ago.

