[HN Gopher] Oldest known cave painting found in Indonesia
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Oldest known cave painting found in Indonesia
Author : known
Score : 79 points
Date : 2021-01-15 08:58 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (phys.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (phys.org)
| the_local_host wrote:
| What's striking to me is that prehistoric art in parts of the
| world that were unlikely to be in communication with each other
| tend to hit on common themes, e.g. the frequent depiction of
| animals (as opposed to depicting humans, which is apparently
| fairly rare). Where does the impetus come from?
| fit2rule wrote:
| There are basic shapes, which can be found in the human body,
| and which all cultures seem to have eventually discovered ..
| trianglem wrote:
| Especially negative human handprints. They're all over the
| place and doesn't seem intuitive at all to me. Holding a mix of
| red ochre + water in your mouth and blowing it against your
| hand held on a wall. Incredible!
| Zuider wrote:
| One possible explanation is that, in order to produce the
| desired clear outline of a hand, it would be more effective
| to use the 'stencilling' technique than it would be to
| attempt to transfer paint directly from the palm on to an
| uneven surface.
| andi999 wrote:
| To me I find the hand outlines strange. Personally I wouldn't
| do them. And it is interesting they show up in multiple
| pictures.
| yodon wrote:
| We're talking about drawing styles that were used for tens of
| thousands of years. Even if most people never travelled more
| than a couple miles from their birthplace, the information
| those people knew, like how to draw animals, is able to rapidly
| jump from person to person in order to cross continents. This
| isn't just the domain of lyric poetry. Modern electronics works
| the same way. When you press the return key on your keyboard,
| there are unlikely to be any physical electrons that travel
| from your keyboard to the CPU or even from one side of the CPU
| to another. It's surprising how fast these information
| transmission processes can happen even with comparatively
| immobile and lossy information carriers.
| gus_massa wrote:
| Was so rare to depict humans? I'm not an expert, but in
| https://www.google.com/search?q=cave+painting&tbm=isch
| approximately one half of the painting contains humans (and
| some are a photo of a single figure in a big painting).
| Zuider wrote:
| It is also striking how similar the style is between the
| Indonesian and European cave paintings, where the heads and
| feet of the animal are depicted as being smaller and more
| gracile than in life.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Ordinary handprints are a natural idea. Stenciled handprints
| are an absolutely unnatural idea. That they appear in
| practically every cave-painting site indicates cultural
| transmission spanning tens of thousands of years and miles.
|
| Similarly, "seven sisters" interpretations of the Pleiades are
| found from Africa to Australia and everywhere in between. The
| last time the Pleiades were recognizably seven stars was 40,000
| years ago. "Seven sisters" legends everywhere include an
| accounting of the missing sister.
| walrus01 wrote:
| Highly recommended Werner Herzog documentary film about a cave in
| France:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_of_Forgotten_Dreams
| ncmncm wrote:
| Previously discussed:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25767330
| zaroth wrote:
| 45,000 years is relatively such a blink of an eye. At the same
| time it's pretty impressive to have found this painting, it's
| also pretty amazing that the vast majority of human history is
| almost entirely unknown to us.
|
| For scale, this reaches back in time roughly 10-15% of the way to
| when Homo Sapiens first emerged.
|
| Then again, it took us 66 years to go from the first human flight
| to landing a person on the moon, and 60 years hence we'll have
| settled Mars, solved worldwide energy generation and storage, and
| invented AGI.
|
| It's just too bad we are unable to intellectually or socially
| progress at anywhere near the same rate as we scientifically
| progress.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > 60 years hence we'll have settled Mars
|
| Bullshit.
| unphased wrote:
| I think this is reasonable unless SpaceX runs into a wall at
| some point. Settle has a fairly wide range of interpretation,
| but yeah it may take longer than this before a "permanent"
| settlement can be established.
|
| I find AGI in 60 years to be more controversial than Mars.
| Not enough evidence yet. One can def hope though.
| nsomaru wrote:
| What's the likelihood that the fantastical myths of old are the
| stories of an advanced civilisation which was destroyed (along
| with their knowledge), and the myths are the fragments of
| memories of that time which became distorted by the passage of
| huge amounts of time?
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Zero.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Oral traditions of Australian aborigines record events going
| back at least 7,000 years, and as much as 13,000 years, old.
| Sea level rise dating that far back displaced people living
| on what is now seabed, called Sahul, between New Guinea and
| Australia, obliging people who lived there to move to
| Australia, causing conflicts whose negotiated resolution is
| still passed down.
|
| 20,000 years ago, the sea level was 400 ft lower. People had
| already lived there for tens of thousands of years. Even
| 13,000 years ago there were still millions of square miles
| now inundated. If there were _not_ legends reflecting such an
| event we would need to know why. As it is we do have such
| legends, everywhere. The flood did not recede; we call it the
| sea now. It happened gradually, but large flat areas would
| have been covered in a generation.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meltwater_pulse_1A#/media/File.
| ..
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundaland#/media/File:Map_of_S.
| ..
|
| What was Sundaland is girded by what are now Indonesian
| islands. The Yellow Sea west of Korea and the northern South
| China Sea off Viet Nam to Taiwan were dry land. Territory
| stretching out hundreds of miles around India, particularly
| to the west, south of Pakistan, shows evidence of
| construction (visible right before the big tsunami). Britain
| was not an island; we call the land where the North Sea is
| now Doggerland. The whole Persian Gulf was dry land, south of
| Mesopotamia. The oldest cities there border the gulf.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Doggerland3er_en.png
|
| See orange areas:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathymetry#/media/File:Mid-
| oce...
| baybal2 wrote:
| For most of homo sapiens history we didn't even knew stone
| tools.
| ndstephens wrote:
| Homo habilis ("Handy man") largely gets its name b/c some of
| its fossils are associated with early stone tools. Homo
| habilis dates back to roughly 2 MYA (million years ago). Home
| sapiens only dates back to about 300,000 years ago.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Stone tools predate the evolution of H. sapiens. Key words to
| search are "Oldowan" and"Acheulean" tools.
| [deleted]
| _Microft wrote:
| Thanks a lot - knowing the appropriate key words and terms
| makes all the difference when looking up new things.
| baybal2 wrote:
| I am so embarassed of my ignorance
| tsimionescu wrote:
| It is absolutely obvious that in 60 years we will have neither
| AGI nor a colony on Mars.
|
| For AGI, we are so far from even having a clear idea how to
| even approach this problem (no, deep learning and
| backpropagation are not promising avenues).
|
| For Mars, there are no real incentives, and the problem of a
| self sustaining colony underground in an irradiated environment
| with little oxygen and grabity is absurdly difficult. We might
| at best have essentially a space station on Mars in 60 years,
| but a self sustaining colony that wouldn't die off 2 years
| after something catastrophic happening to the Earth is far
| beyond our current engineering, much farther than any advance
| in the last 60 years.
|
| Not to mention, for any plausible catastrophe happening to the
| Earth apart from a gamma ray burst, the Earth will still be
| much, much more habitable than Mars. So even if you are
| motivated by survival of the species, trying to build a colony
| on Mars before having a huge array of self-sustaining
| underground habitats on Earth is putting the cart way ahead of
| the horse. You'd even get the first-hand experience needed to
| actually have any hope of building something like this on Mars.
| lrossi wrote:
| > and 60 years hence we'll have settled Mars, solved worldwide
| energy generation and storage, and invented AGI
|
| Unless we self destruct by then, possibly wiping out most life
| on this planet with us.
| notsureaboutpg wrote:
| None of what you predict for 60 years from now is guaranteed.
| Scientific progress relies on stable societies and intellectual
| and social stasis.
|
| When intellectuals progress, revolutions are often the result,
| and the same is true for when societies en masse evolve their
| ways of thinking about society itself.
|
| There have been documented periods of technological stasis
| because humanity was engaged more in sociopolitical battles and
| problems and could not effectively support technological
| progress.
|
| Technological and scientific progress are always going to be
| intertwined with social and intellectual changes. This is why
| so many scientists worked on the Atomic bomb project, this is
| why eugenics was popular and then profoundly unpopular. This is
| why you have scientists trying in vain to find a "gay" gene,
| etc. Etc. Science informs sociopolitics and vice versa. If one
| falls apart the other goes with it
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| > and 60 years hence we'll have settled Mars, solved worldwide
| energy generation and storage, and invented AGI.
|
| Even evolution cannot overcome the cold, hard limitations of
| physics. Unless by settled Mars you mean some transplanted
| bacteria survive there, and solved energy we consumed every
| reasonably reachable drop of fossil fuel.
| zaroth wrote:
| I'd say it's pretty well certain that between solar and wind
| there's abundant energy to be harvested. It's just a matter
| of storing it cheaply, and lithium supply is rather
| extensive.
|
| At this point it's "simply" a matter of scaling up the
| manufacturing base, which is one thing humans are
| astoundingly good at. Just look at silicon production scale
| over the last 40 years and extrapolate for lithium ion.
|
| Likewise, there's no boundary in physics, technology or human
| physiology to stop us from establishing a human colony on
| Mars.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| > there's no boundary in physics, technology or human
| physiology to stop us from establishing a human colony on
| Mars.
|
| There's no self sustaining settlement in Antarctica. Mars
| is much further away and less habitable.
| postingawayonhn wrote:
| There's not really any incentive to create one and the
| long dark winters aren't exactly ideal for food or energy
| production.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Yet, still overwhelmingly better in every way than Mars.
| skedaddle wrote:
| Are you talking about Antarctica or Mars?
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Mars being farther away makes it a better candidate for a
| self sustaining settlement. Why try to make a self
| contained settlement on Antarctica when what you want the
| scientists there to spend their time on is research? I
| mean it would be cool but I can understand why it isn't
| necessary there.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| That's true, but on the other hand, it's much, much, much
| simpler to have a self-sustaining colony in Antarctica
| than on Mars. And there's also nothing to be gained from
| Mars in any reasonable time frame other than research.
|
| I am extremely skeptical that we will even have a space
| station on Mars in the next 60 years. A self sustaining
| colony is laughably far off.
| ithkuil wrote:
| Necessity is the mother of invention. Often this become
| necessary for no good reason, but once that are necessary
| they can be the only reason that matters.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| This argument could be applied to anything that is not
| completely impossible, right? It essentially pre-supposes
| that if something is theoretically possible, humanity can
| do it with today's engineering practices. I don't think
| this is a safe assumption.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| > And there's also nothing to be gained from Mars in any
| reasonable time frame other than research.
|
| There is the prestige of having your nation expand, while
| others don't. It is hard for democratic states to
| maintain long-term goals because power changes hands
| every election cycle, but it's not impossible that a
| stable and developed authoritarian country like China
| could launch such a venture just to cement its status as
| the leading superpower. That is not to claim, of course,
| that that colony would be self-sustaining anytime soon.
| abecedarius wrote:
| Which physical limit specifically? I don't see any relevant
| one; 60 years is a long time.
| refactor_master wrote:
| Radiation, temperature and the lack of oxygen and gravity,
| for example?
|
| Tell me how many underwater and arctic settlements we have
| today. They should be unclaimed territories just teeming
| with possibility, in our own backyard.
|
| Yet they're... not? You'd think that after space flight
| we'd have 8 metro lines in the Arctic by now, if it was all
| just a matter of waiting around.
|
| And you want to fly _how far_ for something that supposedly
| is full of some untapped potential?
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Idk about others but Elon's stated goal for settling Mars
| is to keep a second seed for humanity if Earth is somehow
| destroyed. Elon isn't going to Mars for its appeal as a
| habitat directly, but because it can serve as a backup
| for humanity. It also makes other exploration of the
| solar system more likely as the ships needed to support
| Mars can also bring humans to the Jovian system etc.
| refactor_master wrote:
| So you're telling me a) there's going to be a self-
| sustaining colony on Mars, b) they're happy to be there,
| and c) they'll _also_ be happy to leave their cozy colony
| behind to come rebuild Earth that was somehow wrecked so
| badly that human civilization has been wiped out?
|
| This to me seems like an immense number of mental hoops,
| when you can't even make people wear a piece of cloth
| over their face _literally_ for the sake of humanity.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| What do you think could possibly happen to the Earth that
| would make it as un-inhabitable as Mars?
|
| Even an asteroid strike in the middle of a nuclear war
| wouldn't come anywhere close.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| There are quite a few permanent arctic settlements. Alert
| comes to mind, as does Resolute Bay. There have also been
| innumerable sea ice settlements, but obviously none were
| permanent. Are you thinking of the Antarctic instead?
| tsimionescu wrote:
| There are no self-sustaining Arctic settlements - i.e.
| Ones that grow their own food locally without hunting and
| without getting regular air drops, generate their own
| electricity, de-salinate or thaw their own water etc,
| create their own fabrics and building materials, and have
| some options to create their own microprocessors if
| needed. Oh, and that can launch its own rockets to space.
|
| Musk is purportedly dreaming of a colony on Mars that
| would survive if the Earth were destroyed. That means
| that not only do they need to grow food, get water and
| generate electricity from Mars, but they will also have
| to have the manufacturing capacity to make everything
| from tunnel boring machines to microprocessors. An
| actually self-sustaining colony on Mars would likely have
| to be closer in size to a large city on Earth than to a
| permanent base in Antarctica.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Even a large city today doesn't do most of those things.
| How many microprocessors are fabbed in London, rockets
| launched in NYC, or lumber harvested in SF? This seems
| like an unreasonable standard to measure by.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Well, can you imagine a colony that could survive
| indefinitely if the Earth were destroyed (Musk's stated
| goal) without having all these things? If they couldn't
| build another water processor chip, how long would the
| colony last?
|
| So I would look at it the other way: even a large city on
| Earth isn't entirely self sustainable. How could we hope
| to build a self-sustaining colony on Mars in 60 years?
| fit2rule wrote:
| > How could we hope to build a self-sustaining colony on
| Mars in 60 years?
|
| WE can hope, but we can also DO. Isn't that the point?
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Yes but regardless, I'm not going to pursue the fools
| errand of defending an elon musk schedule. That wasn't
| the bit my comment responded to. I simply pointed out
| there are already many permanent arctic settlements, and
| you came back with new goalposts that no city on earth
| meets.
| abecedarius wrote:
| "Cold, hard limitations of physics" is distinct from not
| yet having done all the engineering.
|
| Mars colonies are way down the list of things I think
| worth trying to do, but it's absurd to call them
| physically impossible, even on a 60-year deadline.
|
| Radiation: interpose some matter.
|
| Temperature: heater.
|
| Oxygen: Mars has plenty in situ.
|
| Gravity: current humans might actually find this a
| problem for long-term health, I'm not sure, but it's a
| bounded one, not likely to compare to long-term zero-g
| life. There's no barrier in _physics_ to spinning up big
| centrifuges, even though it 's ridiculous. Biomedical
| approaches are more likely for a biomedical problem.
| jacquesm wrote:
| 60 year relative to the first flight to the moon a
| _settlement_ is entirely off the deep end.
| peter303 wrote:
| "Progress" is a fairly recent philosophical concept. Up to a
| few hundred years ago there was no significant observable
| technological change between your life, your grandfathers and
| grandchildren. Some societies have ideas of utopias at the
| beginning or end of history, then some sort of ramp up or down
| hence.
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