[HN Gopher] Oldest cave art found
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Oldest cave art found
Author : rntn
Score : 96 points
Date : 2024-07-03 21:47 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| nuz wrote:
| Almost rorschach painting levels of ambiguity in that thing
| talldayo wrote:
| "A pig? Looks like two bears high-fiving to me."
| red_trumpet wrote:
| I'd say the pig is somewhat recognizable, with four legs and a
| tail. The humans on the other hand...
| throwup238 wrote:
| _> This animal figure is represented as a pictorial outline
| shown in side (profile) view with an infill pattern consisting
| of painted strokes or lines. It is therefore consistent in
| style with the visual convention used to represent pigs and
| other animals in the dated Late Pleistocene rock art of South
| Sulawesi, including at Leang Bulu' Sipong 4_ [1]
|
| They base the interpretation off of other cave art in the area
| that's better preserved [2] and the fact that it's missing
| facial details of other animals found in the local cave art
| [3].
|
| There's usually other context in archaeological speak, like
| buried bones and fossils that limit the possibilities.
|
| [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07541-7
|
| [2]
| https://www.bradshawfoundation.com/bfnews/uploads/sulawesi_p...
|
| [3] https://cdn.sci.news/images/enlarge6/image_7902_1e-Leang-
| Bul...
| swayvil wrote:
| I heard that pigs, pre-selective-breeding, were pretty cute
|
| https://www.leidenmedievalistsblog.nl/images/uploads/_fullla...
| winety wrote:
| Wild piglets are very cute [1], adult wild pigs less so [2].
|
| [1]:
| https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:20180429-155847_Fris...
| [2]:
| https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ausgewachsenes_Wilds...
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| We used to have warthogs in Africa.
|
| Def not-cute.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warthog
| datameta wrote:
| They have an unbelievably small brain case for a medium-
| sized quadruped mammal
| usrusr wrote:
| The head of the pig in the cave is such a nice "friendly pink
| pig" cartoon of a modern breed that I do feel like it would be
| more appropriate to call it "drawing of a creature that happens
| to look deceptively like a drawing of a pig" instead of
| "drawing of a pig". Far more appropriate.
| riazrizvi wrote:
| > it would show humans at the time had the capacity for abstract
| thinking
|
| This was 50,000 years ago, they were Homo Sapiens, we are 200,000
| years old. We can see abstract thinking through the advancement
| of our early tools and through linguistic studies that trace
| lineage of abstract language patterns to points in time using
| archeological knowledge of migration periods. So this confirms it
| further I guess.
| Sharlin wrote:
| The "Upper Paleolithic Revolution" hypothesis proposes that
| around 50,000 years ago, there was some sort of a qualitative
| jump in human behavioral complexity, based on the fact that
| around that time we start seeing clear evidence of cultural and
| symbolic behavior such as rock art and burial rituals, and also
| of a period of rapid innovation in toolbuilding. Critics of the
| hypothesis counter that the apparent jump could just as well be
| merely a selection effect caused by the scarcity of evidence.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_modernity
| AnonHP wrote:
| > This was 50,000 years ago, they were Homo Sapiens, we are
| 200,000 years old.
|
| I don't know enough about the migration of human species and
| subspecies. Was this concluded in the article that they were
| Home Sapiens and not Neanderthals or Denisovans (or interbred
| between these and Homo Sapiens)? The latter two were around
| 50,000 years ago.
| throwup238 wrote:
| There's quite a bit of evidence that Homo sapiens,
| denisovans, and floresiensis might have coexisted in
| Sundaland (the land mass containing much of Indonesia before
| the oceans rose and created the SEA islands) at the time but
| the cave art is more consistent with Homo sapiens in the rest
| of the world than either of the other two. That's the default
| conclusion until more artwork conclusively belonging to other
| species is discovered.
| stainablesteel wrote:
| denisovans, neanderthals, and their hybrids are not out of the
| picture for that time period and location
| lkrubner wrote:
| The distance between the known examples of early art also further
| pushes back the date when humans became capable of art. Unless
| you believe that people from Indonesia painted this art 51,000
| years ago and then migrated to Europe, and thus brought art to
| Europe via migration, then instead you would have to believe that
| the artists who eventually arose in Europe and Indonesia had a
| common ancestor who was capable of art. If we have art in
| Indonesia at 51,000 years ago, and art in Europe about 35,000
| years ago, and if the last common ancestor of those 2 populations
| lived 100,000 years ago (hypothetically) then you'd have to
| believe that humans have been capable of this kind of art for at
| least 100,000 years.
| addaon wrote:
| ... or that the ability to create art arose independently in
| two separated populations. As for example writing did, many
| millennia later.
| mkoubaa wrote:
| Writing arose independently. The cognitive ability necessary
| to invent writing may have existing for much longer
| criley2 wrote:
| We call that anatomically modern human or early modern
| human, and we have fossils going back over 300,000 years.
|
| An infant from 300k years ago, if brought to modern times,
| should grow up and be capable of everything modern humans
| are.
| dash2 wrote:
| _Behaviourally_ modern is thought to be a bit more
| recent, isn 't it... partly because of evidence like art!
| mkoubaa wrote:
| Yes exactly. Though I would expect that they may be more
| neurotypical on average than modern humans
| moralestapia wrote:
| Wait, why couldn't the Indonesians migrate to Europe in a span
| of 20,000 years.
| mseepgood wrote:
| Google Maps says it takes about 5 months on foot from Borneo
| to Lascaux. So it could have been the same person who left at
| New Year's and was back home by Christmas.
| tim333 wrote:
| Plus you'd need a boat. Borneo is about a hundred miles
| from the mainland.
| bleuarff wrote:
| Not sure that was the case 50ky ago. That was during a
| glacial period, sea level was probably 100+m below
| current level.
| dekhn wrote:
| It's not impossible, but the mainstream theories such as 'Out
| of Africa' and most anthropological evidence suggests that
| the flow was from Africa to Indonesia and Africa to Europe,
| and not "back from Indonesia". But see
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Indonesia and
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynesia#History and
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/08/science/polynesian-
| ancest... as well as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiregio
| nal_origin_of_modern...
|
| Europe is mostly believed to have been settled via Africa,
| the Middle East, and Western Asia.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_history_of_Europe
|
| (I am absolutely amazed by all the various humanity and
| technology origins. It's almost as if there is a direct path
| from the first person who used teeth and fingernails to pry a
| rock and fiber to make a spear to kill an animal and use its
| bones to make high quality tools for knapping stone, all the
| way to the lathe, which was the tool that bootstrapped the
| industrial revolution).
| dekhn wrote:
| Based on a number of lines of evidence, I would suspect nearly
| everything related to early art (including abstraction) was
| done in africa first and radiated from there (from the Out of
| Africa hypothesis, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recent_Afr
| ican_origin_of_moder...)
|
| The history of anthropology is full of pushing events back as
| we improve our methods.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| The way they keep pushing things back such neat round numbers
| makes it feel like when tech evangelists say "Oh yeah we'll have
| everyone in self driving cars / BTC at $1M / safe AGI in 5 years
| / 10 years / 20 years / etc."
|
| I know there's science behind the dating of these artifacts, but
| it just feels that way to me.
| kergonath wrote:
| The tidy round numbers come from the uncertainty of the
| datation method. It makes no sense to say, e.g. that they are
| 32049 years old when the dates are accurate to, say, 2000
| years. The fact that uncertainty is usually not properly
| reported is a tragedy in the scientific literature, and
| unfortunate in vulgarisation.
| pikseladam wrote:
| radiocarbon is mostly just guess and most of the headlines are
| just there for clicks. radiocarbon dating is shows a range like
| 2000 to 50000 years. headlines takes 50K. radiocarbon date is
| also acknowledged to be the age of the material, not the date
| of the manufacture of an item. if item is a rock, mostly they
| don't know when the art is manufactured.
|
| probably they asked how old is the art and somebody said "it
| could bew oldest ever found" hence the headline.
| smokel wrote:
| There appears to be some more information here, also on the
| dating method used (which apparently is laser ablation U-series
| analysis):
|
| https://news.griffith.edu.au/2024/07/04/cave-painting-in-ind...
|
| I'm not entirely convinced about the human-like figures, though.
| Does anyone have more background knowledge on how one can jump to
| that conclusion?
|
| Edit: found the publication in Nature. The picture circulating in
| the media is a tracing of the actual painting, which is nearly
| impossible to see on the actual rock. Enjoy!
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07541-7
| throwup238 wrote:
| _> I 'm not entirely convinced about the human-like figures,
| though. Does anyone have more background knowledge on how one
| can jump to that conclusion?_
|
| I think they're basing it off another painting in South
| Sulawesi where the human forms are a little clearer [1]. It
| might be some kind of "protostyle" where they draw the animal
| much bigger than the humans hunting them.
|
| [1]
| https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1024/branded_news/2473/product...
| smokel wrote:
| Thanks for sharing. Note that that example is from the same
| research group, and also had its contrast artificially
| enhanced.
|
| I find it a bit odd that the humans are so small and lack
| details, whereas the boar even has fur, two distinguishable
| toes, and seems to bend its legs correctly.
|
| Then again, I have yet to publish something in Nature, so I'm
| probably a bit too skeptical for this game :)
| throwup238 wrote:
| You're not wrong to be skeptical. These papers are written
| for other archaeologists who have a lot more perspective on
| both the uncertainty inherent in the field and the games
| academics play thanks to publish or perish. They don't need
| the caveats repeated every paper like the rest of us.
|
| The people might have been added later by a less skilled
| artist or even just a child doodling, they could have been
| drawn with more detail in another other material that
| didn't survive but sketched with the longer lasting stuff
| underneath, or they could be artifacts of the process they
| use to increase contrast, etc. There's a bunch of
| possibilities but authors will usually gravitate towards
| the interesting conclusion.
|
| That said, animals drawn with higher detail than people is
| almost a trope in archaeology. They probably held a
| spiritual significance and the hunters would have spent a
| lot of time studying them.
| permo-w wrote:
| I'd like to see generative AI try to reconstruct the full image
| mock-possum wrote:
| Give it to that lady who 'restored' the painting of Jesus,
| let's see what she comes up with.
| petersonv wrote:
| hahahahahaha she would do a better job than generative AI
| brink wrote:
| That's not how AI works. It would distort it to match the
| examples it's been trained on.
| dash2 wrote:
| "The discovery pushes back the time that modern humans first
| showed the capacity for creative thought."
|
| Hmm. The very simplest model you could have of this would be the
| German Tank Problem [1]. If discoveries of X (e.g. art, hunting
| tools, whatever) are made at random, i.e. evidence of X is not
| more likely to be destroyed as time passes, then you are sampling
| times from a distribution with a maximum of the first invention
| of X, and the best estimator for this is (m-1)(k-1)/(k-2) where m
| is the oldest discovery and k is the number of discoveries.
|
| In particular, a new record for oldest art will almost always
| push your estimate up (as long as k is large so (k-1)/(k-2) is
| about 1). But you should _also_ be taking into account all the
| discoveries of art which _aren 't_ records. This matters
| especially when k is not yet big. This page only lists 30-40
| pieces of paleolithic art [2].
|
| A better model would take into account that older stuff is less
| likely to be discovered because e.g. rocks erode. I wonder if
| anyone has done this.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_tank_problem [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Stone_Age_art
| eafer wrote:
| That's for uniform distributions. We don't know the
| distribution here, that's part of the problem, but I would
| expect early cave art to be more sparse and worse preserved.
| dekhn wrote:
| It's commonly observed in anthropology that we keep pushing
| back the dates for all sorts of technologies as the methods
| improve and more cave sources are found.
|
| See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetlight_effect
| pyinstallwoes wrote:
| "These hand paintings in Sumpang Bita cave in South Sulawesi were
| once thought to be among the oldest paintings in the world at
| 39,000 years"
|
| Why are these cave paintings with hands all over the world? It is
| kind of ominous to think of the reasons and conditions why they
| are found everywhere.
| dekhn wrote:
| My understanding is that hand paintings like this fall out
| fairly naturally- after collecting and grinding the iron oxide
| for paint (there's a great but now unavailable Google+ post by
| Yonatan Zunger that explains why barns are red for the same
| reason: supernovas), you want to use some sort of mask or
| template, and a hand is pretty much the most available thing
| for early societies.
| wayeq wrote:
| ah Google+, speaking of archeology..
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