What's Wrong With This Article?

Cro-Magnon, or modern men, were already in Europe by this date and we know they did some pretty good artwork there at the same period. Presumably the same folks, that is, modern men, could put together a picture or too in India.

This is 38,000 BC they are talking about - relatively recent stuff - not 7 to 12 million years ago when our line separated from that of the other great apes.

My first thought is that there is no way humans 40,000 years ago rode horses, and then I wondered if humans even did cave paintings 40,000 years ago.

Not being a student of history or archaeology, my intuition on that came from having seen wall murals that were very primitive in Mexico, as I showed on another of your threads. Those were dated around 1300 B.C., and this pic is not much more primitive than that.

I was an art and art history student, so I have studied a lot of these primitive works over the years and have a good eye for style. Intrigued, I tried my best to find the original AP article on these rock paintings in Banda India and this is what I found.

The most ancient evidence of the production of art predates the generally accepted earliest dates for the appearance of modern humans. Cup marks and a meandering line were etched into a sandstone cave in India two or three hundred thousand years ago.
The Dawn of Prehistoric Rock Art, ©1998 by James Q. Jacobs

Here is a sketch of something similar, but even more primitive, and dating only 300 to 800 B.C.

Villagers Greeting a Hunter
Prehistoric (~ 800 to 300 B.C) painting from Hirebenagal Caves in Karnataka (India)

For a pretty cool quicktime movie showing a rock painting, go to: Main wall of the shelter site of Wananga Pazham. From the Northern section of the Nilgiri Foothills. This is supposedly from the Megalithic Period, approx. 500 B.C.

There is no way the image you posted could be from 40,000 years ago, and I wonder how AP made such a mistake. Maybe it was 400 B.C.

Still, look at the comparison to the art done sometime between 300 - 800 B.C. The rock art in the AP article is much more advanced than the pic I posted. They have uniforms, heck, they have clothes on! I just can't believe that the AP pic is older than 300 to 400 B.C.

The quote I found from a study did say that they believe humans have expressed themselves in art 2-300,000 years ago, but this AP pic is fairly modern in terms of cave art, I would think.

Thank you for the link about horses. I bookmarked it to read tomorrow and possibly comment. I have never been known to not have something to say about anything. ;-)

Tonight I am trying to find the pics of the Dems yukking it up at the "Memorial" service to send to my sis, who doesn't read FR. Funniest thing, they seem to have disappeared. Guess it didn't happen.

Interesting comment !

Tool use and settlements are seen in Italy, in open air and cave sites, dating back 30,000 yrs. (BP)

The "Old Stone Age" is generally stated to have extended from 500,000 BC to 10,000 BC ; however, in the Petralona Cave , found in Greece, the skeleton of a white male was found, together with stone tools, and evidence of regular use of fire. This date is given as 700,000 BC.

Also in Greece, a cave in Thessalisa-dating to 100,000 BC -was found to contain stone tools.

At Epirus Louro-50,000 BC-800 paleolithic stone tools were found, and at Alonissos, stone tools, and the fossilized bones of rhino, hippo, and other large mammals were found.

Stone ART, in the form of drawings incised in limestone, was found at Kokkinopolis, and dated to 33,000 BC.

Personally, in view of the continuing discoveries in anthropology and archaeology,I think I would be pretty "iffy" in drawing any conclusions - on the simple ground we really don't know that much yet !

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