Oldest art that we know of. I bet a lot of other art from that era and before has already been destroyed. We should just count it lucky that we've found and documented any of these things.
It's only the oldest for purposes of simplifying pedagogy in scientific education. In reality the error bars on half a dozen of the "oldest" cave art in the world overlap so much that it's impossible to really conclude which one was older. There are even older works of art but they're more like patterns and abstract scribbles than what we would consider drawings.
I do believe the Indonesian cave painting have the distinction of being the oldest known art with distinct animal figures.
> Isn't that just understood? If I say my grandfather is my oldest relative, nobody is like "oldest LIVING relative"
You might think so, but no, very few people understand this. People are constantly being shocked when a technology that is obviously highly developed in one archaeological period turns out to have precursors in earlier periods.
You might also compare the common claim that one human language is older or younger than another one. With a few obvious exceptions, this claim is gibberish, but that doesn't stop people from making the claim or believing that it means something. It's that tendency to believe things despite the fact that half a second of thought would be sufficient to disprove them that causes trouble here.
It's gibberish because the concept itself fails to make any sense. Think about it. How would it work?
You can say that Latin is younger than French. But you can't say that Sardinian is older than French or that Telugu is older than Hindi; those claims are incoherent.
Reminds me of the Chauvet Cave in France, which also holds cave-painting, where the large number of visitors changed the atmosphere of the cave, causing mold and damaging the paintings.
To preserve it a replica cave ended up being built for tourism, with the original being closed off except for scientific excursions
Kinda, the damage never happened to Chauvet because the preservators learned from Lascaux and Altamira: they did not open Chauvet to the public at all.
They did eventually open a huge replica cave which you can visit, the Caverne du Pont-d'Arc aka Chauvet 2.
and it's very nice to visit! Not too far also (from an US point of view :D ) is the cave Chauvet. The original is 37m underwater, but a replica opened few month ago in nearby marseille
I have a controversial opinion on that, but I seriously don't see the point of locking areas out of the public just to preserve them.
Learning more about cavemen from paintings that have been studied for decades is not going to enable scientific discoveries that will advance humanity, it will not change anything to the present or the future of humanity. It literally serves no purpose other than to tell stories of a past so distant it does not hold lessons that are important for the future.
So what is left beside just the enjoyment of the public? What is the point of preserving those paintings by forbidding anyone from ever seeing them?
We have thousands of pictures of those paintings, gatekeeping their access to a handful of scientists is no different than letting them disappear entirely.
Photos only show what camera/film of the time could capture (in some lighting condition), not everything that every possible test could. Just how certain are you that there will never be a technique or technology discovered that would reveal information prior studies didn't?
> what can we expect to learn from those paintings that will further human civilization.
Perhaps not the painting. Perhaps we develop a technique which can learn from the dust on the ground, or the sediments accumulated in the cave.
It is a very small cost to keep the cave closed. And in the history of humankind we have multiple times destroyed stuff later generations could have learned from.
Just look up for example the history of the Herculaneum papyri[1] and all the attempts to unroll them with destructive methods. Many of those were destroyed forever without being read or only partially read. And it very much seems like we are on the precipice of having the tech to read them non-destructively.[2]
And if all you want is to ogle at the paintings then you can do that in the replica cave?
Have you ever read "Collapse" by Jared Diamond? Understanding and learning from that past is literally crucial to the continued existence of the human race. More crucial than any technology anyone here has ever created.
The book directly pulls on the kind of data on early societies that the scientists studying these caves produce.
“ Lebe and others who work in the caves are convinced that dust from Semen Tonasa’s mines — and others in the region — is a big problem. “Absolutely the dust comes into the caves,” Lebe says, “especially the caves situated near the mining and industries.”
Plus climate change general impacts
This is very well laid out and beautiful, but I generally don’t come to nature for that type of article. So while it was engaging to stay along with, it did take a while to get to the point.
It could have been rock stacking, I don't know why you're being nasty about saving people from having to look at a clickbait story to confirm what a title is talking about.
At first I didn't think they meant it literally. I thought it was intended like 'craft'. Which is a lot like 'profession', so I was curious why humanity's oldest profession started flaking away..
It will fade away, preserve the information instead.
Make good copies in enameled brass or bronze, inscribe some words about their context, and sell them as souvernirs or collector's items to people that are interested in these things.
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[ 1.4 ms ] story [ 75.6 ms ] threadI do believe the Indonesian cave painting have the distinction of being the oldest known art with distinct animal figures.
You might think so, but no, very few people understand this. People are constantly being shocked when a technology that is obviously highly developed in one archaeological period turns out to have precursors in earlier periods.
You might also compare the common claim that one human language is older or younger than another one. With a few obvious exceptions, this claim is gibberish, but that doesn't stop people from making the claim or believing that it means something. It's that tendency to believe things despite the fact that half a second of thought would be sufficient to disprove them that causes trouble here.
Why is this gibberish? Languages are pretty tied to time/place, and some are undoubtedly older than others?
You can say that Latin is younger than French. But you can't say that Sardinian is older than French or that Telugu is older than Hindi; those claims are incoherent.
To preserve it a replica cave ended up being built for tourism, with the original being closed off except for scientific excursions
They did eventually open a huge replica cave which you can visit, the Caverne du Pont-d'Arc aka Chauvet 2.
Learning more about cavemen from paintings that have been studied for decades is not going to enable scientific discoveries that will advance humanity, it will not change anything to the present or the future of humanity. It literally serves no purpose other than to tell stories of a past so distant it does not hold lessons that are important for the future.
So what is left beside just the enjoyment of the public? What is the point of preserving those paintings by forbidding anyone from ever seeing them?
We have thousands of pictures of those paintings, gatekeeping their access to a handful of scientists is no different than letting them disappear entirely.
At some point the past has nothing to teach anymore.
Perhaps not the painting. Perhaps we develop a technique which can learn from the dust on the ground, or the sediments accumulated in the cave.
It is a very small cost to keep the cave closed. And in the history of humankind we have multiple times destroyed stuff later generations could have learned from.
Just look up for example the history of the Herculaneum papyri[1] and all the attempts to unroll them with destructive methods. Many of those were destroyed forever without being read or only partially read. And it very much seems like we are on the precipice of having the tech to read them non-destructively.[2]
And if all you want is to ogle at the paintings then you can do that in the replica cave?
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herculaneum_papyri 2: https://scrollprize.org/
The book directly pulls on the kind of data on early societies that the scientists studying these caves produce.
Plus climate change general impacts
This is very well laid out and beautiful, but I generally don’t come to nature for that type of article. So while it was engaging to stay along with, it did take a while to get to the point.
Make good copies in enameled brass or bronze, inscribe some words about their context, and sell them as souvernirs or collector's items to people that are interested in these things.