Life-size camel sculptures in Saudi Arabia are older than Stonehenge, pyramids
smithsonianmag.com
smithsonianmag.com
Also, the original article (original with regard the this HN thread, not the older article you linked to) talked about examining the tool marks. It's not just examining the large shape, it's about seeing the method of construction on a smaller scale.
Anyway, based on camel remains, it seems the splay-footed quadrupeds reached Arabia in the Holocene, at least 7,000 years ago. (Camels are believed to have reached ancient Israel only about 3,000 years ago.)
My imagination makes me think that it's a pretty obvious thing to do for any number of reasons and that there have been quite a few that have been lost to time.
Wonderful slice of some potter rivalry from long long ago ;)
A rule of thumb I've heard is that "ritual significance" is code for either "we have no idea" or "probably a sex toy", depending on context. In cases like this, I think the default assumption should be "probably art".
The article says they were thought to be 2000 years old but have recently been found to be 6000 years older than that. The second paragraph makes the new dating range explicit.
The article your read refers to 2,000 year old sculptures because it was written years before the research that added 6,000 years, not because they're different camels.
Unfortunately it's vague whether or not the different pictures are from different time periods, different sites, or what exactly.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/15/science/camels-sculptures...
That's leaving aside the ethical issues with photographing funerary sites/remains, which most archaeologists avoid by simply not releasing any such photographs to the media.
Once I asked a local archaeologist about why articles are always like that, and she told me that there's also a problem with looters. They try to only release pictures that don't give away the location, to prevent looters from ruining a site. Not sure if that's a general thing or her specific area of expertise.
Anyway, if you'd like an example of an "onsite" photo, I've uploaded one from an ancient settlement (2k+ years old): https://i.imgur.com/0ITzYZD.png
Bonus points if you can figure out which country it's from or better yet, pinpoint the location to within 50 miles.
I understand it would be possible with a photo to guess which side a rock faces, thanks to the sun/shadows, and then find all the rocks pointing this way in a country using satellite image, and filtering those which are not currently at war etc.
I sort of see what you mean about "unremarkable", at least without context. Knowing its an archaeological site of course raises questions: What does an archaeologist see in those rocks that I don't? What made people settle here 2kya (besides the water source)? Why dig here to begin with (instead of a km either direction, instead of 5m either direction, etc)?
Similarly, if I was reading about the dig (a report or article or whatnot), I'd be asking questions like: what does the place these ancient humans chose look like? What does "near the river bank" mean? etc. This photo would help me understand those.
As for timing, people had been in the area since the last glacial maximum. I actually have photos of a blade from prior to the LGM in a nearby area, but it has colleagues visible in it. We simply haven't found evidence of people building these kinds of structures much prior to then in that area. I should mention that I'm deliberately underestimating this particular site's age because definitive dating hadn't come back last time I heard and it makes the guessing harder.
Also, where did this 10-15 day estimate come from? They shouldn’t just drop a detail like that with no explanation!
Submission from the time, not really discussed (just to save you the search): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16391610
My intuitions and my knowledge of statistics hints that there's really no reason much, much older somewhat advanced "societies" couldn't have existed but have just not been excavated or have vanished because of porous materials.
Does anyone know of any good podcasts / books that delves into topics like this?
I've always found fringe theories of lost or "hyper-ancient" civilisations fascinating.
"Civilization is always older than we think; and under whatever sod we tread are the bones of men and women who also worked and loved, wrote songs and made beautiful things, but whose names and very being have been lost in the careless flow of time." - Will Durant
While I have only read his "The Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Time", his wife Ariel Durant and him co-wrote an 11 volume "biography" of civilization called "The Story of Civilization", which I believe deals with such things.
I also really liked this article, which talks about the difficulty of finding evidence of even large civilizations after enough time: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/04/are-we-e...
My favorite though is this documentary series on YouTube. The 2nd installment is especially good. Highly recommend:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwB8gn3XsXHiHDhY3e8XsavyS...
This is an excellent documentary where teams of archeological experts from around the world trying to unravel the mystery of one of the earliest man made monuments in northern Saudi Arabia [2].
If these people went as far as to carve camels in stones, that would mean these animals were prevalent in their areas and way of life which is in direct conflict with assuming their land were anything but hot and arid.
I have heard of the theory about different climate of Egypt and Iraq in ancient times. It seems logical that civilization should have started in a climate supportive for mass agriculture.
It's depressing when we think of earth's climate change over a time scale unimaginable for humans. The theory implies (at least for me) that the decline of quality of life in ME/NorthAfrica has more to do with a random external change not in control of insignificant humans.
However, a number of factors eventually led to the collapse of the civilisations in the fertile crescent. One factor has been the region getting warmer and drier, which poses a challenge even with irrigation. As an example of how different the climate is now from what it was then, Uruk used to be on a channel of the Euphrates, but now that riverbed is completely dried up. Meanwhile, Ur was once a coastal city, but is now ten miles inland.
Another factor for the collapse of these civilisations is that the process of irrigation accumulated salt in the soil. The very process that made complex civilisation possible in this part of the world eventually contributed to its end.
I recommend the Fall of Civilizations podcast for more on this and other societies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2lJUOv0hLA
But they could still only have camels as their pack animals, since that's all they'd domesticated. It's not like camels will die in non-arid locations
Likely the animal was venerated as a meat source.
As recently as 5,000 years ago, it was a much wetter place.
And the depicted ones were almost certainly wild, given that dromedaries were domesticated only 4000 years ago, well past when the first pyramids were build.
checkMATE science /s
So one wonders what is still to be found, what was lost to sea level changes or other climate erosion over time. But the level of craftsmanship old times long past still amazes me as the skills to achieve that was far more common in those times as a percentage of the populous than it is today. Which as tools developed, we have shifted that level of hand craftsmanship towards expensive art today.
Equally, one wonders what structures we build today would still be around in an equally period of time - building wise, not many that spring to mind and even then, not sure how the ravages of time would effect them. Certainly a large exercise but I wonder if anybody has done any climate modelling for that kind of duration and how today's monuments around the world would endure. Makes you wonder what would be left as even plastics would break down after 500 years - let alone 8,000 or 40,000 years from now.
Hunter-gatherer groups tend to be small and disparate. They don’t really have much impact on each other.
But they deal with animals, on a daily.
It’s not just primitive societies, either. Modern tribal groups tend to concentrate on animals and crops.
When your very survival depends on knowing as much as possible about prey and draft animals, weather, etc., these topics occupy your attention.
When they depicted other humans, it was often about conflict.
We may think of these as “quaint” beliefs, but these folks took this stuff seriously. Their survival depended on it.
Yeah, we should remember also that permanent or periodic nomadism was the norm on large swaths of the planet. Animals were obviously key to move significant numbers of people (women, children...), as well as to produce food on the go. If the camel-god says no, you're stuck in the middle of the desert, so you better keep him happy.
If you haven’t read Sir Terry, you don’t know what you’re missing.
Moreover, beware of possible biases which could explain what we see today: there is a difference between what we observe and what was. Remember for instance the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan [4], which happened less than 1,500 years after they were built. It is extremely unlikely that a work of art survives for 40,000 years, and some may be more likely to be destroyed than others, depending on location, weather, traditions, history, etc.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_of_Galgenberg
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_of_Hohle_Fels
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adorant_from_the_Gei%C3%9Fenkl...
This has likely been the case throughout history.
"Look, Bob's useless at hunting, but those cave paintings are pretty neat. Let him stay home."
That's as good as it's ever going to get. The rest will always be consumers.
I get that they thought they were newer, and now think they are older, still strange headline to lead with.
It's the pineapple/washing machine/stonehenge unit system. Not to be confused with firkin/furlong/fortnight. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FFF_system
It struck me how eager archaeologists were to get to work, and how happy they were in the field. Hot as hell, dusty, disease ridden, flies, bad food. And they were ecstatic.
They were all poor as fuck though, so there are trade offs.
We’re camels significantly different during this time? How much of their current features are things evolved to deal with the desert climate?
These Dromedary camels, Camelus dromedarius, are very much native to the region. The Dromedary likely evolved right in the Arabian peninsula, having separated from the Bactrian of Central Asia more than a million years ago. The North American ancestor, Paracamelus, arrived in Eurasia maybe 7.5 million years ago. While North America is the home of the last common ancestor of modern camelids, it is not the native home of any modern camels.
This new dating is certainly cool but it should stand on its own.