Posted on 04/18/2016 8:22:05 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
The cave, declared a UNESCO World Heritage site two years ago, was discovered in the south of France in 1994...
Now, scientists have assembled more than 250 radiocarbon dates made from rock art samples, animal bones and the remains of charcoal used by humans... The newly synthesized data suggest the first period of human occupation lasted from 37,000 to 33,500 years ago.
The second prehistoric occupation began 31,000 to 28,000 years ago and lasted for 2,000 to 3,000 years, the researchers wrote...
The two groups, separated by millenniums, had no connection with each other, they said. The first round of human occupation was likely longer than the second. It is also when most of the drawings were done.
Bears, which also left their mark on the cave walls through scratches over and under the art, appear to have used the cave from 48,500 to 33,300 years ago.
The authors were also able to determine that the end of each human occupancy of the caves coincided with rockfalls that may have sealed off the entrance to the cave, hiding it from humans for thousands of years.
The authors said the chronology of who used the cave and when will continue to become more precise as more data points are added to their model. But still, many questions remain. For example: Are the red paintings as old as the black paintings?
"Only the black paintings have been dated," Quiles and Geneste wrote. "The dating technique for the red paintings has yet to be developed."
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Before the fall when they wrote it on the wall
When there wasn't even any Hollywood
They heard the call
And they wrote it on the wall
For you and me we understood
Steely Dan - The Caves of Altimira
“If it looks like I could have painted it, it ain’t art. “
Have you ever been to Modern Art Gallery?
Trust me, if you can paint Window frames you’re better with Paint than they are. (!)
I could never have painted the animals at Chauvet. They may seem crude to us, given later centuries of representational art; but they’re expressive and ‘kinetic’; lifelike; and the result of very careful observation. They also have an artistic cohesion that’s remarkable.
-JT
Thanks for posting.
If an artist needs to explain to me what his or her piece means, or stands for, or expresses, it ain't art. That aside, I agree. And I would get paint on the panes. My wife does the painting in the family. I'm only good for the hard to reach stuff, and spray paint.
lol!
My pleasure.
A lot of people try to say that he was just a morose guy, and that the statement about ‘selling-out’ was a product of that, depression, and unfulfilled idealism. I think he was telling the truth, whatever the cause.
Though I do like some of the ‘Blue Period’, I think he just couldn’t sustain or build upon the kind of work he did in ‘The Old Fisherman’; and decided to be fashionable, instead.
(Donning my asbestos suit, in case of Picasso-loving viewers ;-)
-JT
I like Rossetti; but my favorite of the PRB is Edward Burne-Jones; especially ‘Love and the Pilgrim’, and ‘Love Among the Ruins’.
-JT
Yes a period of approximately 2-3000 years each time. Thousands of years apart. Then aomething happened that covered the cave...something catastrophic perhaps. Perhaps man rises and falls over and over again in this planet. It’s a pet theory of mine based on the story “Nightfall” by Isaac Asimov.
I think you may be right, in a way. I haven’t read the book you reference, but maybe we’re just doing everything over and over again, in an ever upward, ever widening spiral.
-JT
It’s neat. In the book, the planet has two suns and every, say, 5000 years both suns line up with the single moon in a total eclipse. And this happens to a race that has never known dark. They go mad each time and destroy their civilization and it takes 5000 years to rebuild until the next eclipse.
Well, that’s not exactly what I was thinking of; but it sounds like a very interesting book :-)
-JT
Ok, now is it me or it strange I mention Guernica and here on the next day is an article including a mention of Guernica on FR?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3422669/posts
Danged lurkers. ;’)
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