Prehistoric cave paintings took up to 20,000 years to complete

Telegraph ^ | 05 Oct 2008 | Telegraph

[Covenantor]

When “researchers” become dazzled by technology new to them and the promise of grant monies, fancy takes flight into improbable realms.

Leaving aside for the moment the questions regarding the decay tech application, let me mention the basic questions the have intrigued me as a casual reader National Geo for 50 yrs.

First very few photos ever show the scale of these and their relative positions to the proximate cave floor levels. Using the three photos published. [which may or may not be stock photos] one can see several things.

These paintings are rather large compared to humans. They seem to be rather higher than the photographed ‘researchers’.

So how did they manage to paint all this without some sort of rudimentary scaffold? Standing on the shoulders of giants?

“’ ‘Scuse me mate, but could you move a bit to the right, this bison rump turned out a bit larger than I envisioned. No, a bit more please. Yes, that’s it.”

“Yo, ground crew. I can’t see or breathe, it’s so damn smoky up here. Could flap some hides or something?”

“Pass up another paint pot. Gurn’s gone crazy with the size of the bisons again. Red, we need lots of red.”

It’s been indicated that they believe they’ve discovered ancient charcoal in the chambers. Where are the traces of fossilized scaffold elements?

Now let’s consider lighting. These caves are....surprise!...dark. Ok, so where is the evidence of ground fires, the easiest means of illuminating the space? Maybe the charcoal sticks? And where are the carbon smudges on the walls and ceilings from any fires? Show me the calcified skim on the carbon smoke stains.

There are more basic forensic questions but the really big one is this,

What other directed and focused human endeavor has endured continuously for 20,000 years?

One would think that 20,000 years of tracking back and forth, forth and back of painters priests, pilgrims and looters would have produced some damn impressive pathways especially in stone. Let’s see some aerial recon photos.

...maybe the locations are just inter-galactic pit-stops for space aliens

[TXnMA]

I'll check. Don't know if the archaeological report (survey prior to construction of I-10) has adequate images.

There are a few color photos on http://www.texassbeyondhistory.net -- such as this

and this

(Those are, of course, pictographs [paintings], which are sometimes painted over petroglyphs [engravings])...

[dsc]

Thanks much.

[Bellflower]

The paintings look anything but primitive. They are very well done.

[668 - Neighbor of the Beast]

Primary rule of art, “When you’re done, stop.”

[<1/1,000,000th%]

Give it time.

The sphinx has been worked on for 4500 years.

[ari-freedom]

The sphinx has been worked on for 4500 years.

yeah? it can sure use a nose job!

[<1/1,000,000th%]

I figure they’ll fix that with sheets of carbon nanotubes sometime after the Vulcans arrive.

[Manic_Episode]

"Makes more sense that something is incorrect in the dating process."

====================================

Seems the obvious answer but no one seems to want to talk about that or its implications.

[Candor7]

Well, this is intersting because of the implications.

These caves were shamanistic religious sites where prehistoric people would go to invoke magic for their hunt.

They used the same caves for 20,000 years or so to paint their images and invoke the strength and focus they would need to survive another winter, as the herds moved from their summer to their winter grazing areas.

Now lets think about that. Christianity has a history that is about 2000 years old.

These hunters performed their ritual painting for ten times that long, and their spiritual path worked for them over a very long period of time indeed.

I believe that this art is sacred art. It has a godliness about it. One can imagine them being concerned for the survival of their families, of having enough fur, meat, fat and bone to make the impliments, clothes, food and medications they would need for the cold winters. All this without steel , just stone.

They must have been extraordinarily blessed and incredibly tough.

We are their result.

I feel sort of thankful to these distant ancestors.

I am going to throw a steak on the coals, and think about them a little, maybe raise a glass.

[wildbill]

Just think how many years of thinking and olfactory moments it took to create the ending of this grafitti:

Here I sit, brokenhearted...

sort of like the infinite numbers of monkeys on infinte number of typewrtiters eventually coming up with Shakespeare.

(For those of you who dont know what a typewriter was, it was a tool for writing that followed the clay tablet. See also ‘liquid paper’...)