Posted on 01/16/2016 11:37:55 PM PST by SunkenCiv
Chauvet-Pont D'Arc cave, in southern France, is one of the world's oldest and most impressive cave-art sites. Discovered in 1994 and popularized in the Werner Herzog documentary 'Cave of Forgotten Dreams', Chauvet contains hundreds of paintings that were made as early as 37,000 years ago.
Fearsome animals such as woolly rhinoceroses, cave lions and bears dominate Chauvet's imagery. But one of its innermost galleries -- named after a giant deer species, Megaloceros, that is depicted there -- also contains a series of mysterious spray-shaped drawings, partly covered by the Megaloceros painting. A nearby gallery holds similar spray imagery, as does a wall near the cave's original entrance, but researchers have not determined what the images represent.
The depictions are unique to Chauvet, notes Sebastien Nomade, a geoscientist at the University of Paris-Saclay in Gif-Sur-Yvette, France, who led the study. The Bas-Vivarais volcanic field, a well-known site containing more than a dozen extinct volcanoes, lies just 35 kilometres from the cave, but only eruptions that happened before humans occupied Chauvet had been dated, Nomade says...
In the hope of calculating the dates of younger eruptions, Nomade visited Bas-Vivarais in 2012 and sampled rock from three volcanic centres. By measuring the levels of different isotopes of radioactive argon gas, his team determined that the region had been lit up by a series of eruptions between about 19,000 years and 43,000 years ago. The events would have been dramatic 'strombolian' eruptions, Nomade says -- named after those typical of the Stromboli volcano in Italy -- with lava spewing 200-plus metres into the sky and flowing down the volcanoes' slopes. Each cone would have erupted once or twice before going extinct.
(Excerpt) Read more at nature.com ...
Spray-shaped drawings in an inner gallery of the Chauvet cave may depict a volcanic eruption. Left: general view; right: traced detail, with an overlaid charcoal painting of a giant deer species removed (lower right). D. Genty (left)/V. Feruglio/D. Baffier (right)/CC BY 4.0
fascinating article.
i wonder what the most dangerous animal that no longer exists, existed at the beginnings of man being in the world.
Sabre tooth cats, cave lions, cave bears, dire wolves among the predatory animals. Early elephant types and rhinos, aurochs among non carnivores.
Sabre tooth cats!!! Good Lord.
it’s amazing we’re still around.
i guess it was a numbers game.
or we became intelligent enough to fight them off.
or they died off.
i have no clue lol!!
The hungry ones?
probably bad to be around a famished tiger!!
Neolithic Mural in Turkey May Illustrate Ancient Volcanic Eruption
Popular Archaeology Magazine | 08 Jan 2014 | Popular Archaeology Magazine
Posted on 01/09/2014 2:21:41 PM PST by Theoria
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3110118/posts
Macro-Etymology: Paleosigns [writing 20,000 years ago?]
Macro-Etymology Website | prior to May 20, 2005 | the webmasters thereof
Posted on 05/19/2005 11:00:18 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1406892/posts
You’d think there were cavemen who could draw better than a modern day 5 year old. It’d sure help in trying to guess at what the drawings meant.
pbbbt!
That’s no volcano eruption picture.
What it is, is a pic of a camel that was drinking a glass of milk when the other critter (the squiggle on the left of the pic) told a joke that was so funny it made the camel expel the drink from its nose.
Fighting Wolves
;’)
that is terrifying. man has no capability of winning a battle with one of these things if it were 10 to 1, without weapons.
why did the sabre tiger die out??!!
with those teeth and its size and strength must have been incredible.
i am dumbfound how a completely different kind of creature once dominated the planet, then after destruction, a new species came to dominate.
how did the “mix” of chemicals end up being dinosaurs one time and humans the next?
i know it is a simplistic question, but his stuff is way out of my grasp.
Catalhöyük Mural: The Earliest Representation of a Volcanic Eruption? 9,000-year-old painting thought to depict an eruption at Hasan Dag [neighboring town was indeed buried by an eruption]
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