oldest piece of figurative art yet found

[remcook]

30,000 year old carvings found.

I think this Lionman that was previously the oldest piece of figurative art looks pretty amazing too. I doubt I could make something like that.

http://www.nature.com/nsu/030901/030901-6.html

[yale]

Magnificent!


What probably should not surprise us, is that was made 30,000 years ago.

I think many people may have a sense that the Cro-Magnons were a dull brutish semi-human. Not true.  They were modern humans. Physically, mentally, genetically, they were essentially identical to the current crop of people on Earth.

Wearing modern clothes they could appear in an Absolut vodka advertisement.

There is every reason to think that their level of conciousness, philosophical depth, social capabilities, language skills, math ability, artistic awareness, introspection, ad infinitum, were EXACTLY like ours.

Artists of the profound power of Michaelangelo, philosophers the equal of Plato, thinkers equal to  Einstein or Darwin in analysis, are to be expected among these ancient ancestors.

As one of my heroes, Stephen Jay Gould wrote:

====================================================

"Let us not lament any lost pleasure in abandoning the notion that we now reside on an ever rising pinnacle of continuous mental advance, looking back upon benighted beginnings. Consider instead the great satisfaction in grasping our true fellowship with the first known Paleolithic artists. There but for the grace of thirty thousand additional years go I. These paintings speak so powerfully to us today because we know the people who did them; they are us."

--  Stephen Jay Gould on the Chauvet Cave's paintings/1998/on "Science and the Arts"

[Mentor]

if you doubt the ability of our ancestors then just try to build a monolithic site with your bare hands and pack animals, especialy one like stonehenge where they imported the stone from Wales, that has to denote a high level of organisation and a command structure, I defy any modern city dwelling people to even gather enough resources and knowledge to survive in the wild, never mind start to organise and build something that size.

Mentor.

[remcook]

These things must have been passed on and improved for maybe centuries. There wasn't someone who stood up and though: hey'! let's build Stonehenge. get to work! Same with the carving. Pretty neat if you think of it. (and that without any way of storing information. It's all just in the head)

[Mentor]

ah! but Rem, could you visualise modern society engageing in a construction project that took centuries?, especialy with the added difficulty of importing your raw material (in modern terms) from central South America?, it would equate roughly to building ummm! 200 Cheops size pyramids and devoting the GDP of the UK to the project for several hundred years, you have to have a bloody good reason to engage in a project like that and convince the locals it has to be done lifetime after lifetime, somebody was sticking too it and cracking the whip...so to speak , the thing was more or less built to a plan, the outer ring was a later addition I think, but all done about the same time period and with the same general plan in mind.
and talking about memory I remember (sic) reading that they considered that early man had far better memory than modern literate man, everything you knew you had to retain in memory, you couldn`t make a shopping list and if you forgot something important then you had to most likley do without until you went to town next, all stories and lore where passed on by travelers and remembered and passed on in the community by those that heard them, so they had plenty of practise at enhancing their memory, there are accounts of people learning new songs during journeys to take home and sing for the benifit of their familys,  so they obviously made far better use of memory than we do today, I sometimes have trouble remembering where I put my notes [smiley=smilie_help.gif] never mind memoriseing a whole song at a couple of listenings.

Mentor.

[Orstio]

What do you guys think of the likelihood that any of these artefacts were created by Neandertals rather than Cro-Magnons?

My bet is on the Cro-Magnons, but that might just be rooting for the home-team.  [smiley=elkgrin.gif]

I always find this period in our prehistory fascinating.  We actually had contact with another intelligent species!  Recent finds in Europe have led some archaeologists to believe that we may have learned ceremonial burial of the dead from the Neandertals.  Wouldn't it be interesting to learn that the beginnings of religion came not from us, nor gods, nor aliens, but another species of human whose existence overlapped on our own for a few thousand years?

[Mentor]

as far as I know there has never been any artifacts found at Neandertal sites other than tools, they may have been tool makers and painted the insides of caves as some sort of religous ritual, they also seemed to collect the heads of cave bears and bury them as well as haveing ritual burial of their dead that may have been passed on to or adopted by HomoSapiens, but there is no record of any deliberate manufacture by Neandertals of artifacts, of course it may be that they did create such things towards the end of their existance when they where in close proximity to modern man and as they died out any artifacts where taken from them or the styles adopted by Humans, but they seemed to be more devoted to survival rather than any form of physical art.

Mentor.

[Orstio]

Actually, Neandertals had bone flutes before they had contact with Homo Sapiens.  Whether or not they were used as musical instruments, or perhaps just for communication over long distances (like conch shells have been used), is unknown.  They certainly were not as finely crafted as that lion-man, however.

[Mentor]

there was later work on the "bone flute" that decided it was just a gnawed bone, I don`t think it was deliberatly made, just a fluke of circumstance, a link and quote.

the results from a pair of recent studies won't be music to the ears of those who see a flute in this perforated bone. The studies concur that a carnivore simply chewed it up and spat it out. "This is a gnawed bone," said archeologist April Nowell at a recent meeting of the Paleoanthropology Society. "There's no evidence to suggest that it's a flute."

http://www.calacademy.org/calwild/sum98/horizons.htm

would seem to indicate it was nothing more than a bit of jetsam, although it may be a credible step to infer that they had domesticated "dogs" of some sort, since it would be unlikley that a occupied cave with a family living in it would have had large predators come by frequently to chew stray bones, especialy inside the cave where the females/children may have been sheltered,  this is supposition on my part, but domestic dogs did part from their wild cousins a long time ago.

Mentor.

[Orstio]

Excellent article, thanks.

Actually, there was quite a debate over this a few years ago:

http://cogweb.ucla.edu/ep/FluteDebate.html

And Bob Fink has been arguing the case for the last three years!

http://www.webster.sk.ca/GREENWICH/CHEWCHIP.HTM

Just browse through the site, it's huge, and all devoted to the argument for a flute!

[Mentor]

there was a mention in the link I listed to the existance of simular bear bones at sites that where not cave dwelling sites, it`s hard to say if that IS the case since they give no link or picture, just this comment...

the holes in the alleged flute closely resemble--in size, shape, number, and position--tooth punctures found in bones from two Spanish cave bear dens where early humans never set foot.

it seems , (reading between the lines as I do ) that neither side cares to display images of these "naturaly" perforated bones, so that may imply that the simularity is too close for comfort for one side and not close enough to cinch the arguement for the other, so I think I still lean towards the natural cause for this "flute", Occams razor says take the simple explaination, that Neandertal could make flutes but never made decoration or amulets from bone would be unusual, you would think that once they had the idea they could shape bone as they will, then they would do so as the early humans did, or could it be that is a purely human trait not shared by Neandertal, hence they probably didn`t make any flutes, since it would require a conceptual step they would seem to be incapable of making.

Mentor.  

[Orstio]

I agree, that neither side seems to have any terrific arguement over the other.  The debate is between a musicologist, and an archaeologist, and I'm not sure which would be more the expert.

I think one thing that actually hurts Fink's argument is his point that "There is a possible thumb-hole -- exactly where a thumb hole would be: Namely, the entire hole structure fits a human hand."  Neandertal hands were shaped differently than ours.  Their thumbs were farther back on the wrist, more like a gorilla's, but not to the extreme that they couldn't grip objects.   If they were to make a musical instrument, however, I'm sure it would be designed for use by a Neandertal hand, not a human hand.  More on Neandertal hands:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/03/0326_030326_neanderthalthumb.html

(Just wanted to correct your last post here, though:  We are the Cro-Magnon:  We dress a little different now, and drive automobiles, but we're the same species.   The other species, who didn't make jewellery, was the Neandertal. )

[Mentor]

DOH! I corrected it to Cromagnon from Neandertal too!, thats what getting up early does for you , never believe these pious sods who say getting up early is good for you [smiley=062802sleep_prv.gif]

Mentor.

<sneaks off to alter post before somebody else notices>

[Orstio]

That's alright, I edited my post to add a little more detail as well.