44,000-Year-Old Indonesian Cave Painting Is Rewriting The History Of Art
December 12, 2019 8:35 AM Subscribe
In the 1950s, scientists evaluated primitive rock art discovered in caves on the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia (Google maps), but assumed it younger than 10,000 years old because they thought older paintings could not survive in a tropical climate. Then, as reported in 2014, more recent analysis of the pictures by an Australian-Indonesian team has stunned researchers by dating one hand marking to at least 39,900 years old (The Guardian; paywalled article in Nature), placing it close to, if not pre-dating, art from the Chauvet Cave in France (Archeologie.Culture.Fr) that is dated as old as 37,000 years (PNAS). In 2017, the scientists in Indonesia found a massive hunting scene, stretching across about 16 feet of a cave wall. And after testing it, they say it's the oldest known figurative art attributed to early modern humans (NPR). They published their findings in the journal Nature (paywalled).
They appear to be human, but they seem to have some features or characteristics of animals," Brumm says. One appears to have a birdlike head, and another has a tail. He says these part-human, part-animal figures might signal early religious beliefs, because they indicate that ancient humans could imagine things they had never seen.
Sure, if you want to go with the most boring possible explanation*.
* Mostly kidding; this is still very exciting. I would still prefer this as evidence of bird-people, though.
posted by Parasite Unseen at 9:05 AM on December 12, 2019 [6 favorites]
Sure, if you want to go with the most boring possible explanation*.
* Mostly kidding; this is still very exciting. I would still prefer this as evidence of bird-people, though.
posted by Parasite Unseen at 9:05 AM on December 12, 2019 [6 favorites]
I'm nearly done my PhD in archaeology, but I've pivoted out of academia at this point and have no plans to go back. I'm happy with my decision 99% of the time, but it's news like this that makes me sad I'll never get to excitedly tell undergrads about the incredible stuff archaeologists find all the time.
posted by thebots at 9:34 AM on December 12, 2019 [6 favorites]
posted by thebots at 9:34 AM on December 12, 2019 [6 favorites]
I would really like to know why we haven't found similar figurative art in the Americas.
posted by timdiggerm at 9:37 AM on December 12, 2019
posted by timdiggerm at 9:37 AM on December 12, 2019
it's news like this that makes me sad I'll never get to excitedly tell undergrads about the incredible stuff archaeologists find all the time.
There's always MetaFilter! As a bonus, we're not undergrads, which means you won't have to grade our work, or deal with our nonsense :)
posted by filthy light thief at 9:37 AM on December 12, 2019 [2 favorites]
There's always MetaFilter! As a bonus, we're not undergrads, which means you won't have to grade our work, or deal with our nonsense :)
posted by filthy light thief at 9:37 AM on December 12, 2019 [2 favorites]
I would really like to know why we haven't found similar figurative art in the Americas.
At all, or within these ancient timeframes? If it's about the chronology, I'm guessing that's because of migration waves out of Africa, which took much longer to get to the "new world" (Wikipedia images).
Which means that earliest art in the Americas is much newer, 9,500 BCE (Earliest Art of Prehistory, from Visual-Arts-Cork.com).
posted by filthy light thief at 9:50 AM on December 12, 2019 [4 favorites]
At all, or within these ancient timeframes? If it's about the chronology, I'm guessing that's because of migration waves out of Africa, which took much longer to get to the "new world" (Wikipedia images).
Which means that earliest art in the Americas is much newer, 9,500 BCE (Earliest Art of Prehistory, from Visual-Arts-Cork.com).
posted by filthy light thief at 9:50 AM on December 12, 2019 [4 favorites]
We know nothing about our history, we just claim that we know :)
posted by irakli.cf at 9:53 AM on December 12, 2019
posted by irakli.cf at 9:53 AM on December 12, 2019
The humanoid stain: art from our distant ancestors
posted by The Whelk at 10:56 AM on December 12, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by The Whelk at 10:56 AM on December 12, 2019 [1 favorite]
I would really like to know why we haven't found similar figurative art in the Americas.
Well, there's plenty of stuff like this...
posted by notsnot at 11:06 AM on December 12, 2019 [2 favorites]
We think of this as "cave art", but it may be that it's only survived in caves, I like to think that their whole world was decorated this way
posted by mbo at 11:11 AM on December 12, 2019 [13 favorites]
posted by mbo at 11:11 AM on December 12, 2019 [13 favorites]
My 50,000 year old could do that
posted by thelonius at 11:19 AM on December 12, 2019 [17 favorites]
posted by thelonius at 11:19 AM on December 12, 2019 [17 favorites]
mbo: We think of this as "cave art", but it may be that it's only survived in caves, I like to think that their whole world was decorated this way
I think this is probably not far from the truth. For example: A New History of Arabia, Written in Stone (New Yorker, May 23, 2018; previously), which notes that there are "more than fifty thousand such texts found in the deserts of the southern Levant." That makes me think that like fossils (Fossil Museum.net), preservation of written records requires specific conditions.
posted by filthy light thief at 11:41 AM on December 12, 2019 [2 favorites]
I think this is probably not far from the truth. For example: A New History of Arabia, Written in Stone (New Yorker, May 23, 2018; previously), which notes that there are "more than fifty thousand such texts found in the deserts of the southern Levant." That makes me think that like fossils (Fossil Museum.net), preservation of written records requires specific conditions.
posted by filthy light thief at 11:41 AM on December 12, 2019 [2 favorites]
I first read about the Lascaux Cave paintings as a child, in a popularised shamanistic account in which the art was done by a solitary genius as a magical act, an attempt to invoke a successful hunt for his starving tribe. If I recall correctly, he was also supposed to be lame. What the actual fsck. Even at the time this level of detailed imagination seemed implausible and I'm glad that the consensus seems to have shifted away from it.
Art isn't a solitary act: it's a conversation that builds on the past. There must have been all sorts of media used by artists, in all environments. The quality of some of these works tells me that there were many artists creating millions of artworks in wood and leather and stone, almost all of which have perished.
Maybe the artists did have a religious or magical intent in creating their art. Maybe they didn't – we make art for all sorts of reasons. Maybe these works were boasts, maybe they were polemical, maybe satirical. Religion and magic are such reductive, patronising explanations for something that's clearly a core part of the human experience.
The paintings that were produced in extreme environments tell us that art was a communal endeavour. Forget about the solitary (male, starving, crippled) genius: these were made by a collective that helped with obtaining pigments, grinding them, erecting scaffolding, and holding torches. That solidarity and desire to cooperate says much more to me than speculation about a religio-mystical motive. The art shows their message to each other and to us, their many-times descendants: We are here. We will help you. We will support you.
posted by Joe in Australia at 1:42 PM on December 12, 2019 [9 favorites]
Art isn't a solitary act: it's a conversation that builds on the past. There must have been all sorts of media used by artists, in all environments. The quality of some of these works tells me that there were many artists creating millions of artworks in wood and leather and stone, almost all of which have perished.
Maybe the artists did have a religious or magical intent in creating their art. Maybe they didn't – we make art for all sorts of reasons. Maybe these works were boasts, maybe they were polemical, maybe satirical. Religion and magic are such reductive, patronising explanations for something that's clearly a core part of the human experience.
The paintings that were produced in extreme environments tell us that art was a communal endeavour. Forget about the solitary (male, starving, crippled) genius: these were made by a collective that helped with obtaining pigments, grinding them, erecting scaffolding, and holding torches. That solidarity and desire to cooperate says much more to me than speculation about a religio-mystical motive. The art shows their message to each other and to us, their many-times descendants: We are here. We will help you. We will support you.
posted by Joe in Australia at 1:42 PM on December 12, 2019 [9 favorites]
Yeah but zero likes on Instagram. Like, if you're a bird-man with a tail, and you spear a wild boar, and your agents paint you on a random island cave wall using uranium isotopes 44,000 years ago... ok boomer.
posted by saysthis at 2:37 PM on December 12, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by saysthis at 2:37 PM on December 12, 2019 [1 favorite]
Oh, the heartbreaking thought at the end of the NPR piece.
posted by doctornemo at 2:59 PM on December 12, 2019
posted by doctornemo at 2:59 PM on December 12, 2019
I would really like to know why we haven't found similar figurative art in the Americas.
Maybe we did, but it wasn’t preserved by the discoverers.
posted by Autumnheart at 5:55 PM on December 12, 2019
Maybe we did, but it wasn’t preserved by the discoverers.
posted by Autumnheart at 5:55 PM on December 12, 2019
It may just be a selection effect: you need a surface that people could get to then, but which subsequently became inaccessible. Those must be pretty rare. Maybe it takes things like an ice age, to drive humans out of an area so that nobody finds the cave before erosion has concealed it again.
posted by Joe in Australia at 12:22 AM on December 13, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by Joe in Australia at 12:22 AM on December 13, 2019 [1 favorite]
How do we know it was painted by humans and not Neanderthals? Asking because I remember some articles that said Neanderthals may have been more advanced that we initially assumed.
posted by Anonymous at 4:24 AM on December 13, 2019
posted by Anonymous at 4:24 AM on December 13, 2019
How do we know it was painted by humans and not Neanderthals?
In Indonesia, no. Neanderthals lived in Central Asia, Europe and the Middle East, but not in Southeast Asia.
posted by nangar at 5:43 AM on December 13, 2019 [2 favorites]
In Indonesia, no. Neanderthals lived in Central Asia, Europe and the Middle East, but not in Southeast Asia.
posted by nangar at 5:43 AM on December 13, 2019 [2 favorites]
Maybe the artists did have a religious or magical intent in creating their art. Maybe they didn't – we make art for all sorts of reasons. Maybe these works were boasts, maybe they were polemical, maybe satirical. Religion and magic are such reductive, patronising explanations for something that's clearly a core part of the human experience.
This drives me crazy. I don't know if this is bad science reporting or something else but every time humans and pre-humans are found to have done something that wasn't strictly survivalist the supposition is that it must have been for religious reasons. Maybe it was just for fun! Freaking crows do stuff for fun, it's not a stretch to think early humans did things for fun or the joy of it.
posted by Mitheral at 10:40 PM on December 13, 2019 [3 favorites]
This drives me crazy. I don't know if this is bad science reporting or something else but every time humans and pre-humans are found to have done something that wasn't strictly survivalist the supposition is that it must have been for religious reasons. Maybe it was just for fun! Freaking crows do stuff for fun, it's not a stretch to think early humans did things for fun or the joy of it.
posted by Mitheral at 10:40 PM on December 13, 2019 [3 favorites]
every time humans and pre-humans are found to have done something that wasn't strictly survivalist the supposition is that it must have been for religious reasons
Look at these Neolithic sippy cups, particularly the one shaped like some weird animal. From the context we can be pretty sure that they are sippy cups, but out of context? Sure, they'd be religious artefacts of some sort, maybe little vessels to receive offerings or dispense sacred food.
I have to confess that one class of ancient artefacts (the fat women with big boobies) do look religious to me, but it's just as plausible that they're children's playthings, or pornography, or something to point to when saying "well, your mother looks like this!". Yeah, it drives me up a wall too.
Mind you, suppose that you were resurrected in a hundred thousand years and asked about Barbies. How would you distinguish between children's dolls and religious artefacts like crucifixes, statues of saints, non-Christian 3D depictions of deities etc.? You'd probably just convince them that you were prejudiced against Barbie worshippers.
posted by Joe in Australia at 4:35 PM on December 14, 2019 [1 favorite]
Look at these Neolithic sippy cups, particularly the one shaped like some weird animal. From the context we can be pretty sure that they are sippy cups, but out of context? Sure, they'd be religious artefacts of some sort, maybe little vessels to receive offerings or dispense sacred food.
I have to confess that one class of ancient artefacts (the fat women with big boobies) do look religious to me, but it's just as plausible that they're children's playthings, or pornography, or something to point to when saying "well, your mother looks like this!". Yeah, it drives me up a wall too.
Mind you, suppose that you were resurrected in a hundred thousand years and asked about Barbies. How would you distinguish between children's dolls and religious artefacts like crucifixes, statues of saints, non-Christian 3D depictions of deities etc.? You'd probably just convince them that you were prejudiced against Barbie worshippers.
posted by Joe in Australia at 4:35 PM on December 14, 2019 [1 favorite]
Joe in Australia: How would you distinguish between children's dolls and religious artefacts like crucifixes, statues of saints, non-Christian 3D depictions of deities etc.? You'd probably just convince them that you were prejudiced against Barbie worshippers.
I'm no expert, but I imagine the placement of objects, and what is adjacent to them could be used to infer their role in society. Modern Barbies: found in our midden heaps, often damaged, and there are gobs of them. Modern religious images: found in structures, often in locations that could be the focus of the room or space, to treat the image or object with reverence, even though there are numerous icons, and generally not found in midden heaps.
posted by filthy light thief at 8:07 AM on December 16, 2019
I'm no expert, but I imagine the placement of objects, and what is adjacent to them could be used to infer their role in society. Modern Barbies: found in our midden heaps, often damaged, and there are gobs of them. Modern religious images: found in structures, often in locations that could be the focus of the room or space, to treat the image or object with reverence, even though there are numerous icons, and generally not found in midden heaps.
posted by filthy light thief at 8:07 AM on December 16, 2019
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