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Comment by astine | Hacker News Reader

Artwork such as this is not just important from an artistic perspective, it's important from an archeological, historical, and paleontological perspective. There is a lot we have learned from ancient rock art and probably a lot that we have yet to learn. For example, by exampining the kinds of animals in ancient cave paintings paleontologists have been able to learn certain details about the appearance and behavior of now extinct megafauna.

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Considering the security established around it and the knowledge of what it was, I find it hard to believe that enough photos, samples, etc, weren't taken before this vandalism to have gained or have the capacity to gain any knowledge these drawings may provide.

Having access to the original artifact itself is still important. We have a lot of second hand accounts of things that happened in the distant past but for many of these things, we are missing original accounts or original artifacts from the events in question. It would be nice to pick a wild example, to be able to see what the Ark of the Covenent actually looked like despite having a pretty good description of it, because we have no way of knowing (aside from faith I guess) how accurate the description is or what it leaves out and what that would tell us about the people who built it. Also, even the most complete description of an artifact is still bundled with the assumptions and presuppositions of those doing the describing. There may be things that future generations would wish to learn that we simply currently lack the grounding to explore.

There's a parellel in the early expeditions to Pompeii or Troy which did a lot to destroy the sites in question and destroyed a lot of knowledge in the process.

You'd be surprised, especially since the security wasn't as tight to keep them out. There aren't as many archeologists or anthropologists as they are other types of researchers out there.

This is correct. There are hundreds of archaeological sites world-wide that have yet to be excavated, simply because archaeologists haven't had time to excavate them all.

Out of interest, is that a matter of funding (not enough Archaeologist positions) or people actually going into the discipline? (Not enough applicants for positions)

I'm not sure but it's likely both. I'm a physicist and google says there are about 10k in the US while there are 5.3k archeologists in the US, and physics is already niche amongst the physical scientists. Compare for example, there are 33k biologists, and I assume that's only pure researchers, not doctors, lab techs, etc.

edit: corrected a number. Also, I looked at "employed" meaning full time or part time research vs. just having a PhD in it. Like physics PhDs are 58K which sounds about right, just few actually get a faculty position, temporary (post-doc, staff scientist) or otherwise.

As for why I say both, the number of positions tends to also put downward pressure on number of applicants I think and makes it more likely people who study it or consider studying it consider other fields or jobs before even applying.

This is going to sound cynical or possibly even dismissive, but not all cave art is alike and it is possible that the cave in question wasn’t prioritized for study or preservation because it was common or relatively unremarkable from an archaeological perspective.

I’m not saying it was unworthy or worthless, but given the limited amount of resources and grant money to go around, this cave may simply have been neglected in favor of the others.

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