Rock analysis suggests France cave art is ‘oldest’

[Alexandre]

Rock analysis suggests France cave art is ‘oldest’

http://dawncompk.files.wordpress.com...pg?w=670&h=350

This undated photo provided by the Pech Merle Prehistory Center shows a cave painting of pair of spotted horses, found in the Pech Merle Cave in Cabrerets, southern France.

Scientists estimate the drawing, measuring about 4 meters wide by 1.5 meters high, is about 25,000 years old. An ancient DNA study found that Ice Age artists drew horses based on their observations rather than imagination.

WASHINGTON: Experts have long debated whether the sophisticated animal drawings in a famous French cave are indeed the oldest of their kind in the world, and a study out Monday suggests that yes, they are.

Rock analysis suggests France cave art is

[Opus131]

An ancient DNA study found that Ice Age artists drew horses based on their observations rather than imagination.

Leave it to scientists to always state the obvious and act like it is some sort of groundbreaking revelation. Of course they based their art on their observations, how else, or more importantly, why would you draw an horse if you had never seen one in action?

Of course, they also used their imagination, being artists. Modern individuals, particularly those with a "scientific" disposition (that is, a rationalist or rather "anti-intellectual" one) would never understand that naturalism is an aberration, and that a true artist always strives to capture the essence of a given subject. It wouldn't be art if the point was to reproduce an image photographically.

[Errigal]

Originally Posted by Opus131

Leave it to scientists to always state the obvious and act like it is some sort of groundbreaking revelation. Of course they based their art on their observations, how else, or more importantly, why would you draw an horse if you had never seen one in action?

Of course, they also used their imagination, being artists. Modern individuals, particularly those with a "scientific" disposition (that is, a rationalist or rather "anti-intellectual" one) would never understand that naturalism is an aberration, and that a true artist always strives to capture the essence of a given subject. It wouldn't be art if the point was to reproduce an image photographically.

Yes, I've found these scientific types love to frame almost everything in terms of a thinly veiled put-down.

[limit]

I believe carbon dating may be fundamentally flawed.

[piscamaniac]

Originally Posted by Opus131

Leave it to scientists to always state the obvious and act like it is some sort of groundbreaking revelation.

what makes you think a scientist wrote that? I think the sentence is a failed attempt to convey that scientists have discovered that horses had spots in the ice age -it was previously thought the spots were a negroesque exercise in pimping the pictures.

[Ixion]

You're going to hell.

[Ahknaton]

The research shows that an overhanging cliff began collapsing 29,000 years ago and did so repeatedly over time, definitively sealing the entrance to humans around 21,000 years ago.

That would mean the drawings had to have been done before that, bolstering the notion that they were created by people in the Aurignacian culture, which lived 28,000 to 40,000 years ago.

The dates for this are all over the place. I was curious to read about the Aurignacian culture, which according to Wikipedia existed "between ca. 47,000 and 41,000 years ago in terms of the most recent calibration of the radiocarbon timescale". So maybe the rock paintings are not Aurignacian after all? However, the same article dates the Aurignacian period as variously "45,000 to 35,000 years ago", "37,000 to 27,000 years ago on the uncalibrated radiocarbon timescale", "40,000 to 30,000 BP", and "40,000–26,000 BP". The article linked in the OP gives the period as "28,000 to 40,000 years ago". No two the same!

[Ambrosio Spinola]

This is quite interesting since in February it was anounced that the oldest painting dated was one in southern Spain to 42.000 years. Leave it to the french to skim over such things when making their own anouncements.

http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2012/0...328619357.html

[limit]

Originally Posted by Ambrosio Spinola

This is quite interesting since in February it was anounced that the oldest painting dated was one in southern Spain to 42.000 years. Leave it to the french to skim over such things when making their own anouncements.

http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2012/0...328619357.html

Those paintings are Neanderthal.