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Comment by illwrks | Hacker News Reader

I was about to say they have a powerful imagination to see camels in that eroded rock... however after a quick search, there are better photos online: https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/MAGAZINE-2-000-year-old-...

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Don't forget, they look so eroded because the sculptures have been eroding for 8,000+ years.

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.

I wonder if it was at ground level too when they carved it...

After 8000 years of erosion, it's amazing they can even still find tool marks.

https://archive.is/l3Vmm

http://web.archive.org/web/20210916005143/https://www.haaret...

Thank you!

It’s annoying that an article with this title has such a poor picture, even though much better ones are a quick search away. They talk about mind-boggling realism, but you would not believe it just from this photo. Thanks for the link!

I never realized that camels originated in the Americas In contrast to popular wisdom, the camel did not originate in the Sahel or Levant. They apparently evolved in North America around 45 million years ago. From there they spread to South America (becoming alpacas, llamas and so on), Asia, and Africa some time in the Pleistocene, say the archaeologists. That isn't saying much, as the Pleistocene spans about 2.5 million years to 11,000 years ago.

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.)

I wonder how many places have the geology for these massive stone walls that can be carved and ... folks saw it and thought "Man we should make this really big sculpture!".

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.

As evidenced by the amount of grafitti in public places, people just really like leaving their mark wherever they can. There's grafitti in ancient ruins that (aside from the language) could be mistaken for grafitti in a bathroom stall. People are just gonna people.

I recall a note left on a piece of Greek pottery that said something like "<name1> made this and I bet <name2> can't do any better."

Wonderful slice of some potter rivalry from long long ago ;)

There's a lot of bawdy graffiti that was discovered in Pompeii: https://kashgar.com.au/blogs/history/the-bawdy-graffiti-of-p...

this is hilarious and incredibly interesting, thanks for the link!

This is exactly the example I was trying to remember. I love things like this because it helps take the past off a pedestal. We've been the same raunchy species from the beginning.

This is exactly why I doubt all the expert opinions on cave art. "This undoubtedly had ritual significance." BS. It was probably just some teenagers screwing around.

I wouldn't go too far in the opposite direction though. Teenagers screwing around is more likely to be lewd carvings than life-size carvings of a camel.

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".

"ritual" is a pretty general term that doesn't quite match its colloquial meaning and generally doesn't have anything to do with sex toys. Imagine you find an old PCB that you weren't quite sure the purpose of. Is it unfair to call it "electronic" when there's a more specific term that could be applied if you knew what its purpose was? The same objection applies equally to "art".

Much of the cave art required people to go deep into hard to access areas of caves. People created the art over long periods of time. Many of the pieces incorporated elements of the cave wall to enhance the 3D realism of the figures. These were not simple scratching done at random, they were done with care and intent by people with skill.

There is runic Old Norse graffiti in the Hagia Sophia that probably originally said something along the lines of 'so-and-so wrote this': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runic_inscriptions_in_Hagia_So...

That article only mentions 2000 year old sculptures, not 8000, so maybe that one just hasn't been as weather worn yet.

Or maybe previous dating was not correct.

According to the Smithsonian article, that was the original dating for the camels. The continuing work pushed the date back to 7000-8000.

It sounds like you only skim read the first paragraph.

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.

It sounds like you didn't read the comment I was actually replying to. It links to this article, different from OP, that does not mention what you claim it mentions: https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/MAGAZINE-2-000-year-old-...

They didn't miss the article you were referring to, they were just assuming you had read the topic article as well.

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.

I read both, and they have different pictures. The original article, with the older time estimate, had a much more worn camel pic than the other one with the 2000 year estimate. Hence my wondering if that maybe means something.

Unfortunately it's vague whether or not the different pictures are from different time periods, different sites, or what exactly.

They’re not camels, they’re AT-AT’s.

Wow, this is amazing

Even more amazing is that some people inject Botox into camels to make them look better… https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-42802901

Wow, that sounds like something right out of the Babylon Bee. I really don't envy the folks at the Bee - it's hard to make up satire that's weirder and more outrageous than the actual truth!

Camel? Or Star Wars walker machine? Inquiring minds want to know... :-)

The very sloped back and back legs reveal they’re camels not AT-AT: the hind slope of the AT-AT is very shallow and its leg joint does not bend back.

Can't see any long neck, so my vote goes to the Star Wars walker.

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