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Comment by Tom3849 | Hacker News Reader

Survivor bias. In Europe, art painted on external walls or cliffs, would not survive elements for 30k years. Caves have extremely stable microclima (humidity, temperature, UV light exposure). In modern times paintings are endangered by breath and heat emissions from visitors!!

I can not believe "educated" people would not come with this solution, and instead have to invent this spiritual stuff.

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Many caves with art in are extremely inaccessible. You need to explain why someone would risk their life and crawl through tiny openings in the pitch black to reach a specific location in order to make their art.

I can not believe that educated people think you can explore and explain human culture without considering "spiritual" stuff.

If you’re living in a cave entrance a lifetime of exploration is very different than what we think of as spelunking. Add generations of kids to the mix and little is going to remain unknown and unexplored.

No need for spiritual explanations for something that mundane.

People do seemingly crazy, risky things for seemingly innane reasons today. Why would ancient humans be different in that regard?

Yeah modern people go to extreme lengths to do the most out of reach graffiti

https://www.observatoriodoespacopublico.com/post/olhares-uso...

Caves evolve, perhaps there was a landslide that covered old entrance, and that is the only reason why paintings survived. I do not believe paintings would survive in open easily accessible cave. Just the urine from bats...

As for spirituality, people 30k years ago very quite sophisticated. They had paintings, music, maps, religion, porn... But entire population of Europe was like 100k people. And there was no need to crawl into one way death trap, when they had 1000km^2 to explore!

You're just restating the parent comment's point.

Assume that prehistoric people drew pictures all over the place, which, given the inclinations of modern humans seems to be true. Then assume that every easily accessible place is likely to have its art erased over overwritten by later humans. Also a reasonable assumption.

What's left? The only ancient cave art we find is the stuff that's highly inaccessible.

In other words, the cave art we see today doesn't reflect the behavior of the original artists as much as it reflects the behavior of later humans that would intercede.

Exactly! The article is asking the wrong question. Ancient people would have been painting and marking all suitable surfaces in their environment, including each other. Just like modern day graffiti artists (and tatooists) do. But only those paintings and markings sheltered from weathering and decay have survived.

> I can not believe "educated" people would not come with this solution, and instead have to invent this spiritual stuff.

Why would you think the Ice Age world would be less spiritual than today? Seems in our modern, "educated" world there's plenty of people believing in some form of god.

Consider this for a while longer yourself. Even if many such paintings have been made in easily accessible locations and they do not survive for this reason, the fact remains that more than a few cave paintings have turned up in locations that are very inaccessible and were likely also very inaccessible at the time they were made. The paintings appear to be complex enough that they cannot be discarded as merely graffiti by people who found themselves in an inaccessible location by accident and wanted to leave a mark.

Survivor bias explains why these paintings still exist. It does not explain why they were made.

But we agree.

I am saying people made thousands, most likely millions paintings like that. Only very small fraction survived.

But there is no need for some extra ordinary explanation like "artists were high-status shamans".

I paint random stuff like rocks in my garden.

Regular acrylic paints degrade after a few years of regular exposure. I hope some of my work survives and someone thinks I was a high status shaman, but more importantly I know that little children walking by have been delighted by a rock painted like a bug. It's the little things.

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