Indonesian Cave Paintings Are 40,000 Years Old | Hacker News Reader

Indonesian Cave Paintings Are 40,000 Years Old

smithsonianmag.com

98 pointsdnetesn20 comments

There are a lot of good stories about this being posted today. Rather than make a new submission, I'll mention here another article about the same find that I saw today and liked.[1] For background information about what we knew about paleolithic art before these latest discoveries, I strongly recommend I recommend The Nature of Paleolithic Art[2] by R. Dale Guthrie, a book I enjoyed reading several years ago. Guthrie is a field biologist and very competent visual artist who specializes in Pleistocene megafauna like mammoths. He went to most of the oldest sites of surviving cave art--although, not as far as I know, to the one now described in today's news in Indonesia--and personally looked at ancient drawings on site as he studied examples of early art for his book. His book shows hand stencil blowpaint drawings and depictions of prey animals much like those in the articles in the news today. He devotes pages of thoughtful discussion to what early human drawings show and what drawing problems early artists encountered. He even mentions interesting evidence like figuring out how old the painters were by how high up on cave walls the paintings are found--it's clear that little kids in olden days practiced by making crude drawings, and became better at drawing as they grew up and could reach higher.

[1] "World's oldest art found in Indonesian cave" http://www.nature.com/news/world-s-oldest-art-found-in-indon...

[2] http://www.amazon.com/The-Nature-Paleolithic-Dale-Guthrie/dp...

I tried to read this with an open mind, but, particularly because so much of the story was about the dating methodology, and the suggestions of how inaccurate carbon dating can be, the author didn't ask the obvious (to me) question, "If you have a set of caves in the same area of Moras, with paintings, and the ages of those paintings ranges from 25,000 years to 39,900 years, is it more likely that you have paintings across 14,000 years of human experience, or is it more likely that there is some significant error levels in your dating method?"

At the very least, It would seem to me that writing up a paragraph in the article to describe how the artwork evolved (or did not) over 14,000 years of human history would have added some insight.

I also find it highly suspect that they were comfortable going to three significant digits of accuracy in their dating, mentioning specific ages like "39,900 and 35,400" years old. Perhaps I've been away from science for too long, but when there is some probable chance of error, isn't it traditional to keep to the significant figures you are confident of (e.g. In this case - 40,000 years, 35,000 years)?

On the flip side - appeal to authority - this was a published paper in Nature - http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v514/n7521/full/nature1..., so I presume those who know more than me thought otherwise.

I do find it really cool to discover that hand stencils show up all around the world in cave art though.

I tend to agree with you on dating method accuracy vs the likelihood of a 14,000 year period of activity. Such a long period of activity seems like a stretch.

Regarding cultural evolution. There seems to be a historical trend of accelerating evolution. Projected 10s of thousands of years back in time, this means that 1,000 years of technological evolution produced very little change. Prehistoric artifacts that survive are a small fraction of those made but those we have lots of (mainly stone tools) do follow an accelerating evolution path. Going back to cro magnum and older subspecies, we find 100,000s of years where technology remains unchanged. Big stone axes manufactured in the same places with the same methods. The Oldowan industry of ancient hominins existed, often using the same quarries for hundreds of thousands of years.

Also, we have cave painting sites in Australia with thousands of years of artwork where the tradition of cave painting survived into modern times. Some ancient sites even recorded the arrival for colonialists.

Ancient human history is strange. I agree on every point but… I think it's also good to keep an open mind and not allow our modern ideas of how human societies change, especially the pace of change colour our conclusions too much.

Wow very cool--also check out Werner Herzog's documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams for a fantastic look at the Chauvet cave in France. It's a typical Herzog documentary that dives into the cave and the emotions it creates with people rather than going over the rote history or facts about it. It's also shot in 3D and if you have the hardware to see it in that format it is absolutely worth it! The cave drawings twist and bend around the walls so seeing it in 3D is a very rare instance where the experience is vastly improved by the technology. You can still see the normal version on Netflix streaming in the US though: http://www.netflix.com/WiMovie/70145740?trkid=13752289

Not in the UK of course, where Netflix's selection is like what you'd find in a box of VHS cassettes in a car boot sale.

I've had luck accessing non-US content with services like http://unotelly.com/unodns/whatisunodns – the reverse might work too. Good luck!

My wife just got Netflix here in Brazil. I looked at the selection. You brits are not alone.

Not to mention the actual Brazilian films selection (something you think they'd get right) is horrible, considering what it could be.

Netflix in Europe without something like Unblock-Us or a similar VPN is almost a waste of money.

You need the chrome addon 'Hola better internet' https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hola-better-intern...

I'm in the UK too and use it to get all the US shows.

What I find most interesting about this discovery is that it on the Australasian side of the Wallace line [1]. This means the people had to have invented boats to get to there as there never was a land bridge to Sulawesi during the last ice age. This is technologically far beyond what any other human groups around at the time were capable of. Mightily impressive.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace_Line

Scientists traditionally thought that humans began creating art once they reached Europe from Africa, and that human art forms dissipated to the far reaches of the globe from there. “It’s a pretty Euro-centric view of the world,” says Aubert. “But now we can move away from that.”

The idea of modern human behavior and modern culture/art (or even language, as they're all tightly associated with each other) being connected with humankind migrating to Europe has been shaky for quite some time already. Many of the researchers have long considered Howiesons Poort (65kya) or Stillbay (70kya) as equally representative of an emergence of modernity that would significantly predate humankind's entry into Europe.

It's puzzling, to say the least, how domains like philosophy of mind battles the hard problem of consciousness, how we're able of abstract thinking and phenomenal experiences, and other domains of human thinking take it so lightly as 'humans started to think abstractly x thousands years ago'.

Just because we see products of abstract thinking starting some point in time says absolutely nothing about how abstract thinking is working. It's not like since bones evolved, abstract thinking must have evolved too. Abstract thinking, and all things consciousness, is something evolution must account for to stand as a scientific theory of life on Earth. So far, consciousness is a big black hole in the theory, IMO.

Interesting point in the article regarding the origins of Man. It's only slightly mentioned, but this discovery puts a question mark on the African origins. And the African origins of Man are actually still a subject of debate, because most of the clues supporting that hypothesis were in places in Africa where excavation was easy compared to anywhere else. It's survivorship bias at least as far as I understand the data we have so far. I would not be surprised if we find out one day that humans "appeared" in different locations not directly connected to each other.

There is a preponderance of evidence for African origins of Man.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recent_African_origin_of_modern...

It's about as controversial in the scientific community as global warming.

You know, it's good to actually read Wikipedia before linking it. From your link :

> The major competing hypothesis is the multiregional origin of modern humans, which envisions a wave of Homo sapiens migrating earlier from Africa and interbreeding with local Homo erectus populations in multiple regions of the globe. Most multiregionalists still view Africa as a major wellspring of human genetic diversity, but allow a much greater role for hybridization.[12][13]

And no need to put a Strawman about global warming in your answer.

Your own quote still maintains "Africa as a major wellspring of human genetic diversity".

The multiregional "hypothesis" merely puts the "out of Africa" hypothesis earlier in time, i.e. puts back the date at which modern humans migrated out of Africa, rather than disputing that central fact.

There is as yet no evidence for pre-modern humans anywhere but in Africa. Further, genetic evidence we have today does not support interbreeding of modern humans with Homo erectus outside of Africa, which would be necessary for the "multiregional" hypothesis to have any weight.

The exception to this would be if you were to classify Neanderthals or Denisovans as non-human.

Edit: There is now also evidence for a return migration of Europeans back into Africa:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24988-humanitys-forgot...

Actually both theory turned out to be correct which is the way science sometimes works. Most of our ancestry is traced back to Africa, but the various populations outside of Africa are a mix of African and the various related human species that had been living in the area. For example modern Europeans and East Asian peoples are a hybrid of African humans and Neanderthal human populations [1]. The modern Austronesian peoples (most likely the descendants of the cave painters) are a three way hybrid between African, Neanderthal and the Denisovian humans [2]. I find this all really interesting.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaic_human_admixture_with_mo...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denisovan

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaic_human_admixture_with_mo...

I've been looking for this!

The disappearance (really, the admixture with other hominids) of pre-homo sapien hominids is fascinating to me. I asked a similar question on reddit a while ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/27g6xx/homo_...

For some added context, anatomically modern humans are thought to have evolved 200,000 years ago.

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