Stone Age artists are getting older

Among the motifs is an "anthropomorph", a humanoid figure, according to Dr Alberto Broglio. It is full face, with two horns which "may be a mask" on its head; the arms are by its side and the legs are spread. "The right hand is holding something which is hanging downwards, probably a ritual object," Dr Broglio says. Another figure shows a four-legged animal seen from the side and "resembles the profile of a small statuette from Vogelherd". Radiocarbon dates from the Vogelherd caves, near Ulm on the upper Danube, also give dates between 36,000 and 30,000 years ago, Dr Nicholas Conard points out in a new book discussing the importance of the Fumane paintings. He agrees that "the red paintings from Fumane are of extreme importance" for a number of reasons, among them the contrast between the rather simple form of the Fumane figures and the more sophisticated detail of the Vogelherd carvings, which include a famous horse carved from mammoth ivory and less than two inches long, found in 1931.

Ah, okay, here's more: http://www.dpri.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~kazan/sakurajima_e.html "The acivity of Sakurajima volcano started approximately 13,000 years ago as a post-caldera volcano on the southern rim of Aira Cald[e]ra." http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?bibcode=1984JGR....89.8485A&db_key=PHY&data_type=HTML&format= "About 22,000 years ago a series of large-scale pyroclastic eruptions produced the Aira caldera (20 km¥20 km wide at the northern end of Kagoshima Bay in southern Kyushu. It started with a Plinian pumice erution (Osumi pumice fall, 98 km3) followed by oxidized, fine-grained Tsumaya pyroclastic flow (13 km3), both erupted from a vent located at the present site of Sakuraijima volano, 8 km south of the caldera center. After a very short pause, violent explosive ejection of the basement rock fragments and pumiceous materials occurred at the central vent, gradually changing itself to a huge eruption column rapidly collapsing to form the Ito pyroclastic flow about 300 km3 in volume. The earliest phase produced up to 30-m-thick Kamewarizaka breccia developed along the caldera rim and charged with basement (lithic) fragments up to 2 m across. The breccia is a near-vent variety of the bottom concentration zone of lithics in the Ito deposit. Various textural features and monotonous petrologic character indicate that the main part of the Ito pyroclastic flow was emplaced by a simple, short-lived eruptive mechanism. The Aira-Tn ash, a fine-grained counterpart of the Ito pyroclastic flow, covered a wide area more than 1000 km from the vent. Evacuation of more than 110 km3 of rhyolitic magma produced a funnel-shaped collapse structure with the center of the magma chamber about 10 km deep. Like many other Japanese Quaternary calderas, the Aira caldera is considered to have formed not by a piston cylinder-type subsidence utilizing a ring fracture but by coring and high-angle slumping of the wall rocks into a funnel-shaped central vent. The outline of the caldera was strongly controlled by the faults bounding the volcano-tectonic graben forming Kagoshima Bay." Off the top of my head... Vesuvius is the modern volcano; the older cone with a larger crater is Monte Somma. I guess Vesuvius is Monte Somma's rev- ...nope, I won't say it...

http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/EarthSC202Slides/VOLCSLID.HTM

"The high peak is the present summit of Vesuvius (4800 feet). To the right is part of Monte Somma, a ring of ridges that surrounds most of Vesuvius. Long thought to be prehistoric, Monte Somma now seems to be the remains of Vesuvius after the 79 A.D. eruption. Roman paintings of Vesuvius show only a single cone, without a hint of Monte Somma. Also, drawings and paintings of medieval and Renaissance eruptions of Vesuvius, without exception, show the summit of Vesuivius lower than Monte Somma."

Thanks for the additional info. on Sakura-Jima/Aira. Glad you check further. I am usually pretty careful about what I state as a fact, although I might be off on a detail like an old name. As to Monte Somma, that may not be really old, but years ago I read in a National Geographic about Vesuvius being in a very large old caldera. Here is a list I encountered recently (don't ask me the name of the site, I didn't write it down) of major Vesuvius events.

80-30,000 BP Trifolum eruptions
25,000 BP "Codola" Plinian eruption (Mt. Somma?)
22,500 BP "Sarno" Plinian eruption
17,000 BP "Basal" Plinian eruption
15,500 BP "Greenish" (Verdoline) Plinian eruption
11,400 BP "Lagno Amendolare" Plinian (?) eruption
8,000 BP "Mercato" or "Ottaviano" Plinian eruption
3,760 BP "Avellino" Plinian eruption (3Km cubed tephra)

For those who don't know, BP means Before Present, and is pegged to 1950, after which C14 data began to be affected by atmospheric atomic contamination (correct me if I am wrong on the C14 info.).

I would love to have more info on the size of these various eruptions. I wonder if the 3,760 BP Avellino was involved in the invasion and conquests in Egypt by the Hyksos. Historians have paid very little attention to the effect of natural phenomena on historical events. For example, the 1783 Laki Fissure event in Iceland, in addition to killing 10,000 Icelanders, probably had a significant effect on European crops. Crop failures in France (let'em eat cake) may have been a significant precipitating event in the French Revolution. The climate effects were noted by Benjamin Franklin, then in France.

I am very interested in the interaction of natural events and history, and would appreciate any info. pertaining thereto. For example the Toba vulcanism, resulting in a Caldera l8 x 50 miles, is suspected of reducing humankind to no more than 5-10,000 people 73 thousand years ago. There is also a noticeable temperature blip at that age.

wowzo, the formatting didn't hold up. Must have been some ampersands in the text or something.

Ah, okay, here's more:

Sakurajima Volcano Research Center
DPRI
The acivity of Sakurajima volcano started approximately 13,000 years ago as a post-caldera volcano on the southern rim of Aira Cald[e]ra.
Formation of the Aira Caldera, Southern Kyushu, ~22,000 years ago
Aramaki, Shigeo
About 22,000 years ago a series of large-scale pyroclastic eruptions produced the Aira caldera (20 km¥20 km wide at the northern end of Kagoshima Bay in southern Kyushu. It started with a Plinian pumice erution (Osumi pumice fall, 98 km3) followed by oxidized, fine-grained Tsumaya pyroclastic flow (13 km3), both erupted from a vent located at the present site of Sakuraijima volano, 8 km south of the caldera center. After a very short pause, violent explosive ejection of the basement rock fragments and pumiceous materials occurred at the central vent, gradually changing itself to a huge eruption column rapidly collapsing to form the Ito pyroclastic flow about 300 km3 in volume. The earliest phase produced up to 30-m-thick Kamewarizaka breccia developed along the caldera rim and charged with basement (lithic) fragments up to 2 m across. The breccia is a near-vent variety of the bottom concentration zone of lithics in the Ito deposit. Various textural features and monotonous petrologic character indicate that the main part of the Ito pyroclastic flow was emplaced by a simple, short-lived eruptive mechanism. The Aira-Tn ash, a fine-grained counterpart of the Ito pyroclastic flow, covered a wide area more than 1000 km from the vent. Evacuation of more than 110 km3 of rhyolitic magma produced a funnel-shaped collapse structure with the center of the magma chamber about 10 km deep. Like many other Japanese Quaternary calderas, the Aira caldera is considered to have formed not by a piston cylinder-type subsidence utilizing a ring fracture but by coring and high-angle slumping of the wall rocks into a funnel-shaped central vent. The outline of the caldera was strongly controlled by the faults bounding the volcano-tectonic graben forming Kagoshima Bay.

Off the top of my head... Vesuvius is the modern volcano; the older cone with a larger crater is Monte Somma. I guess Vesuvius is Monte Somma's rev- ...nope, I won't say it...

Interesting to me that 22,000 years ago (not 17th, 16th, 15th, 14th, or 13th c BC) is about the same vintage as the formation of the Thera caldera.

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