[HN Gopher] In Indonesia, humanity's oldest art is flaking away....
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       In Indonesia, humanity's oldest art is flaking away. Can scientists
       save it?
        
       Author : PaulHoule
       Score  : 45 points
       Date   : 2023-12-14 16:57 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
        
       | jemmyw wrote:
       | Oldest art that we know of. I bet a lot of other art from that
       | era and before has already been destroyed. We should just count
       | it lucky that we've found and documented any of these things.
        
         | frogpelt wrote:
         | Good point. Once this one is gone, another oldest art will take
         | it's place.
        
         | throwup238 wrote:
         | It's only the oldest for purposes of simplifying pedagogy in
         | scientific education. In reality the error bars on half a dozen
         | of the "oldest" cave art in the world overlap so much that it's
         | impossible to really conclude which one was older. There are
         | even older works of art but they're more like patterns and
         | abstract scribbles than what we would consider drawings.
         | 
         | I do believe the Indonesian cave painting have the distinction
         | of being the oldest known art with distinct animal figures.
        
       | doublerabbit wrote:
       | ArtSavers Indonesia, coming soon to Discovery!
        
       | sureglymop wrote:
       | The page looks amazing on mobile!
        
       | AStrangeMorrow wrote:
       | Reminds me of the Chauvet Cave in France, which also holds cave-
       | painting, where the large number of visitors changed the
       | atmosphere of the cave, causing mold and damaging the paintings.
       | 
       | To preserve it a replica cave ended up being built for tourism,
       | with the original being closed off except for scientific
       | excursions
        
         | PaulHoule wrote:
         | See
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_of_Altamira#Cultural_impa...
         | and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_5MtGCWImE
        
         | m_t wrote:
         | You're thinking of Lascaux I believe.
        
           | masklinn wrote:
           | Kinda, the damage never happened to Chauvet because the
           | preservators learned from Lascaux and Altamira: they did not
           | open Chauvet to the public at all.
           | 
           | They did eventually open a _huge_ replica cave which you can
           | visit, the Caverne du Pont-d 'Arc aka Chauvet 2.
        
       | AndrewKemendo wrote:
       | " Lebe and others who work in the caves are convinced that dust
       | from Semen Tonasa's mines -- and others in the region -- is a big
       | problem. "Absolutely the dust comes into the caves," Lebe says,
       | "especially the caves situated near the mining and industries."
       | 
       | Plus climate change general impacts
       | 
       | This is very well laid out and beautiful, but I generally don't
       | come to nature for that type of article. So while it was engaging
       | to stay along with, it did take a while to get to the point.
        
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       (page generated 2023-12-14 23:00 UTC)