I saw a documentary (in 3-D!) called "Cave of Forgotten Dreams" directed by a guy with a cool voice, Werner Herzog. Some explorers were measuring the windy drafts in some French hills in search of caves -- unexplained drafts could be a sign that there is a cave structure nearby. They came across a Chauvet Cave, which contains the oldest cave paintings ever discovered, some older than 30,000 years old. 30,000 years ago, during the Paleolithic Period, there were still Neanderthals competing with early homo sapiens. Wooly mammoths and huge cave bears roamed the earth, which was in the middle of an ice age. Hunting was done with spears and spear-throwing sticks. And some early Frenchmen were painting on the walls. (What were they painting with? The documentary was unclear about this. I think charcoal, though some of the paintings were red.)
The paintings were then sealed off from the external environment by a landslide. (How did explorers sense drafts from the cave if it was sealed? The documentary was unclear about this. I guess there were very small openings.) In the closed-off environment, mineral deposits started forming stalagmites and stalagtites and thin crusts of calcite on top of things. One cave bear skull became covered in about an inch of mineral stuff over the years, affixing it to the floor. Fossilized cave bear footprints were also found.
Carbon dating showed that the paintings came from two periods about 5,000 years apart. People came across cave paintings that were already what we might consider ancient these days, and they painted right next to them. It's sort of as if you found original art from the first Egyptian dynasty and decided to doodle on it.
The painters used the natural curvature of the cave walls to guide their painting. A frequently-cited example of this technique is the panel of the horses, though you cannot see the curvature much here:
The chamber of the lions was also quite impressive:
Also in the chamber of the lions was a painting on a stalagtite of a naked woman with a bull's head:
(If that's confusing, you're looking at the lower half of a woman, with a bull's head somewhere in her stomach.)
Werner Herzog was also so kind as to bring in a man dressed in ice-age-style reindeer furs to demonstrate a replica of a flute found in the cave. Just looking at Werner and his guest, you might be able to see that this was an entertaining segment of the film:
I was trying to find some history to put 30,000 years ago in perspective, and what I found is that that's about as old as the earliest pottery, and it's about the time that people started living in Japan. I still don't think I have a good sense of how long 30,000 years is. If anyone has a better way of thinking about this, post a comment.
Until then, I'll leave you with this painting of a horse, scratched by a cave bear:
Next time, Mt. Hamilton.
These paintings on the dating are somewhere between 42,000 and 37,500 years ago. So 40,000 years ago. Grunting club swinging hairy morons? I sent the horses pic to my sister. As with many girls she spent most of her formative years with horses, looking at them, speaking to them, stroking them, sleeping in a shed to muck them out in the morning. You know that obsession. She just said "Ohh, that painter must have known these Icelandic ponies so well, they are right next to him. Who drew it, is there a poster?". Talk about a message from history. I could have known those people as well as I could know anyone today. The gentle and accurate depiction, the intention of movement, the use of the landscape to describe the landscape. The only depiction of man were his hand-prints. The morph of the bull into the female human is everywhere on the globe and in history, the Venus image of swollen middle, exaggerated vagina and spindly legs. I cannot think of these people as 'cavemen', these people were intelligent, artistic, caring, supportive, observant, interested, exploratory. Then we hear about the still present footprints of an "8 year old boy and a wolf." Excuse me? Yeah, c. 40,000 years ago, wolf next to boy. "Perhaps the wolf enticed him into the cave" - what? That was his dog. Have you ever seen a young male dog ejected who finds a group of or even a single young male? Have you watched what happens? I think this place is extraordinary because it shames our knowledge. That 'cavemen' described in a painting the kind, nature, domestication of these horses to a modern mother today. Doesn't that at least make you think? I could have known these people I just hope they could have known me. 40,000 years is twenty rise and falls of western civilization. 5,000 years between the times of paintings is the entire history the religious give us from creation. I suspect we know very little because we look with eyes blinded by 'society' and concept of humanity that barely rises to a fart in a bathtub of this time.
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