Posted on 07/14/2004 7:05:36 AM PDT by Winniesboy
Experts hail elaborately carved cave ceiling
With its drooping bill and beady eye, the ancient bird looks like a cross between a podgy curlew and a dodo. The strikingly realistic image was etched into the soft limestone roof a Nottinghamshire cave by a paleolithic artist around 13,000 years ago.
He or she (or some contemporary colleague) also carved a menagerie of birds, bison, deer and bears on the same roof in a gallery that has caused the jaws of experts to drop with amazement.
These relics of a land still shivering in climatic change came to light in the bright sun of a spring morning in the 21st century and are now hailed collectively as "the world's most elaborately carved cave ceiling ... the Sistine Chapel of the ice age".
Discoveries last year of images of animals, dancing girls and female sexual parts at Creswell Crags near Worksop showed conclusively that ancient Britons were part of, rather than excluded from, a continent-wide culture.
But this year's finds are seen as sensational, proving that Britain was up there at the top of the cave art league.
"We thought that last year we had a big discovery with 12 figures," Sergio Ripoll, a Spanish expert on cave art. "Now we have found 96 figures - it is a very, very great discovery.
"We think this is the most elaborately carved cave ceiling in the world. This is one of the biggest discoveries I have ever made and I think we will have many more surprises in the next months," Dr Ripoll said.
"We were shocked, excited - almost disbelieving," added Paul Pettitt, lecturer in human origins at the University of Sheffield. "There was such a notion that cave art just would not be found in Britain. When we did the initial survey, if I was betting man, I would have had money on the fact that we wouldn't find anything."
The team, funded by English Heritage, had previously used high-powered torches and lamps to examine the caves. "But what we found this time is that natural light is the best way to see these figures," said Dr Ripoll. "It was crazy - suddenly images came out of the wall. It was incredible."
Dr Pettitt said he and his colleagues had begun work early simply because they had a lot to do. "We noticed that the low morning sun penetrated the cave and that the stark light really brought it to life. We began to wonder whether much of the art was undertaken in the morning or was deliberately of a nature that it would be visible at that time.
"Not only did it reveal to us a lot more art than was visible under artificial light, but it gave us a shadowy glimpse of perhaps the time of day when the images were made."
The pictures are not drawings, but modification of the rock. The artists saw something that looked like a bison's head and then added an eye, muzzle and ear to produce a realistic head. This year's investigations have also produced antlers to show that that an animal previously thought to be an ibex is definitely a red deer.
"These are masterpieces," said Dr Ripoll. "These people had a very good knowledge of the animals they hunted. They had looked at them for many hours and knew their shapes very well. So they could represent them exactly on the walls of caves."
But why did they produce their pictures?
"Ah, that is the big problem. Many colleagues think the purpose is shamanic. But personally I do not agree. Perhaps these images are telling us something - but we do not know what it is. We have lost the code."
The experts have their disagreements: Dr Pettitt believes the total number of images is less than the number suggested by Dr Ripoll and others and that some "are in the eye of the beholder". He is also positive that one image described as bird shows instead the buttocks and legs of a fat woman.
But there is broad agreement on their significance.
"This bring Britain into line with the continental mainland. We were not just a shadowy reflection of everything that was going on further south. The finds clearly demonstrate that the hunters operating in this country in the ice age were culturally as sophisticated as hunters on the continent [to which Britain was still joined]."
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
Rats! No photos in the original article, either.
GGG Ping!
When you go outside and everything is ice, you don't have much to do except put grafitti on the wall of your local cave.
I would like to see photos as well.
Waiting for the photos as well.
And is anyone else have the term "Piltdown Man" running through their heads?
We have lost the code."
.
I didn't realize the Los Alamos lab had been in operation that long.
Of course they had a code. It was the Ice Age.
(brrrmpum)
Maybe there was no code. Maybe they drew for....artistic pleasure.
DO NOT POST STORIES THAT DESCRIBE ELABORATE SCENES WITHOUT PHOTOS .... IT PISSES ME OFF.
bump
The world's first porn site. Lemme guess - the artist wore a bathrobe all the time.
http://www.24hourmuseum.org.uk/nwh_gfx_en/ART23100.html
How tall is the cave ceiling? Were these giants carving on the roof, or were the carvings on the wall? Did they use scaffolding?
"We thought that last year we had a big discovery with 12 figures," Sergio Ripoll, a Spanish expert on cave art. "Now we have found 96 figures - it is a very, very great discovery.
"We think this is the most elaborately carved cave ceiling in the world. This is one of the biggest discoveries I have ever made and I think we will have many more surprises in the next months," Dr Ripoll said. "
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WOW!
"Piltdown Man"? Not exactly. I am reading "Color, a Natural History of the Palette," by Victoria Stanley. It's a history of artists pigments, and so far I've read about pigments used in cave paintings and rock paintings in Australia, India, Lebanon, China, Mongolia, Germany, France, Greece, Mexico. Why not Great Britain?
England, Scotland and Wales were connected to the mainland of Europe by a land bridge at the time, so why shouldn't the cultures be similar?
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0812971426/qid=1089926146/sr=1-18/ref=sr_1_18/104-5930455-4616758?v=glance&s=books
"The experts have their disagreements: Dr Pettitt believes the total number of images is less than the number suggested by Dr Ripoll and others and that some 'are in the eye of the beholder'. He is also positive that one image described as bird shows instead the buttocks and legs of a fat woman. "
*Chuckle*
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