Wielding lamps and torches shed new light on Stone Age cave art(sciencenews.org)
sciencenews.org
Wielding lamps and torches shed new light on Stone Age cave art
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/stone-age-cave-art-lighting-torch-lamp
17 comments
Is there a good video or animation of what this looks like ? I've seen a bunch of text descriptions but I'm curious how this actually appears.
Try drawing a picture of a forest on a moonless night. It is very difficult to portray how we see things when our eyes are at the limits of their abilities. For instance, our peripheral vision can see better in dim light than our focused vision, causing us to see things in the corner of our eye that disappear when we look strait at them. Try simulating that effect in a photograph. Perception of color also changes over time. If you sit in a cave with a fire (mostly red/yellow) after several hours you will start seeing color differently. Something that looks yellow on a computer screen (lots of blue/green) may be perceived as white after hours bathed in the red/yellow of firelight.
These are areas where painters are better than photographers. Nobody can make a good photograph of a dark forest and all the effects that entails. But a painter with a brush can communicate through artistic trickery.
These are areas where painters are better than photographers. Nobody can make a good photograph of a dark forest and all the effects that entails. But a painter with a brush can communicate through artistic trickery.
IIRC, Werner Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010) has some scenes where the cave walls are illuminated by flickering light.
Saw that in 3d. It was really interesting to see the paintings undulating over the cave walls. Still the only film I have seen where 3d had a real impact to the viewing experience.
"That suggests the artists may have wanted to keep their work hidden, the researchers say."
Uh-oh, today's HN reader would be looking for a way to pirate that work so they could view any time they want.
More seriously, were they wanting to keep it hidden because they weren't sure it was good enough? A bit of self-conciousness on how my stick figures are a lot less realistic than Bob's paintings in his cave? Were they afraid of the poparazzi effect of everyone wanting their autograph for being the rockstar painter of their day? Or are we just congecturing too much about wanting to keep them hidden? More questions than answers.
Uh-oh, today's HN reader would be looking for a way to pirate that work so they could view any time they want.
More seriously, were they wanting to keep it hidden because they weren't sure it was good enough? A bit of self-conciousness on how my stick figures are a lot less realistic than Bob's paintings in his cave? Were they afraid of the poparazzi effect of everyone wanting their autograph for being the rockstar painter of their day? Or are we just congecturing too much about wanting to keep them hidden? More questions than answers.
> Using just a torch or a lamp from below, the paintings and engravings stay hidden. But lit fireplaces on the ledge illuminate the whole gallery so that anyone on the cave floor can see it. That suggests the artists may have wanted to keep their work hidden, the researchers say.
I dunno. To me, this suggests that the artists may have used the cave art in theatrical productions, with the audience on the gallery floor, and stage crew working lights up on the ledge. Combined with the difficult trek into the cave to build suspense, some good storytelling and potent entheogens, I can imagine this being quite an attraction outlasting the original painter(s) and benefiting their descendants for generations.
I dunno. To me, this suggests that the artists may have used the cave art in theatrical productions, with the audience on the gallery floor, and stage crew working lights up on the ledge. Combined with the difficult trek into the cave to build suspense, some good storytelling and potent entheogens, I can imagine this being quite an attraction outlasting the original painter(s) and benefiting their descendants for generations.
Imagine the power of being able to say, with certainty, the sun will rise higher than it did the previous day, that the spring is coming, that rains are ending soon, and so on.
I'm reading "The Human Cosmos" (Marchant). In it is proposed that lots of cave art / building was related to stars, and therefore seasons and therefore plants and animal patterns. It was a kind of future-telling. It appears in many, many cultures in strikingly similar forms.
The Chumash in CA kept this kind of knowledge sacred and known only to a few. They used spirit quests, hallucinogenics, and celestial-inspired art to guard, interpret, and pass on knowledge.
If these artworks are part of a teaching / fortune-telling ritual, then they would need to be hidden and preserved for generations.
I'm reading "The Human Cosmos" (Marchant). In it is proposed that lots of cave art / building was related to stars, and therefore seasons and therefore plants and animal patterns. It was a kind of future-telling. It appears in many, many cultures in strikingly similar forms.
The Chumash in CA kept this kind of knowledge sacred and known only to a few. They used spirit quests, hallucinogenics, and celestial-inspired art to guard, interpret, and pass on knowledge.
If these artworks are part of a teaching / fortune-telling ritual, then they would need to be hidden and preserved for generations.
Sounds a lot like the way Pacific navigators passed down their knowledge. Wasn't just given to anyone.
Or they wanted it to be protected and stored away for the times. Or the act of getting to those paintings was some kind of special act that was carried out under certain circumstances (and therefore it being hard to reach was part of the plan).
I have no idea the specifics but I do think about this a lot.
For all we know of all art of the time 99.9% of it was done on wood outside in the elements but all those would be destroyed by now.
We have a selection bias issue where we may be looking at a very small fragment of the total art/messaging done at the time.
For all we know of all art of the time 99.9% of it was done on wood outside in the elements but all those would be destroyed by now.
We have a selection bias issue where we may be looking at a very small fragment of the total art/messaging done at the time.
This question makes me wonder if artists at the time understood that cave paintings were pretty durable, and that they intended for these particular works to survive many generations.
> to pirate that work
I doubt that copyright existed in the Stone age, so it's public domain.
> they weren't sure it was good enough? A bit of self-conciousness on how my stick figures are a lot less realistic than Bob's paintings in his cave?
It could have been a curse, a pay to get better hunting that some other people in the tribe or even a new religion. I agree that is difficult to say, I hope that future discoveries get more light into this drawings.
I doubt that copyright existed in the Stone age, so it's public domain.
> they weren't sure it was good enough? A bit of self-conciousness on how my stick figures are a lot less realistic than Bob's paintings in his cave?
It could have been a curse, a pay to get better hunting that some other people in the tribe or even a new religion. I agree that is difficult to say, I hope that future discoveries get more light into this drawings.
>even a new religion.
I was going to suggest it being against their religion. Maybe Ra was punishing them because they realized how to use the Stargate.
I was going to suggest it being against their religion. Maybe Ra was punishing them because they realized how to use the Stargate.
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Maybe the willingness to keep them secret is caused by the meaning of the paintings shared among people
But also just survivor bias? The art that survived was hidden away in caves protected from people & elements.
Maybe every exposed rock was covered in graffiti / paintings 30k years ago and we just see the stuff in the back.
Maybe every exposed rock was covered in graffiti / paintings 30k years ago and we just see the stuff in the back.
There's a book ‘Shaman’ by Kim Stanley Robinson, who's said to do a lot of research for his writing. In one scene of the book, a man goes into a cave to paint such images. Well, when his fires go out, he then spends three days groping around for the exit in complete darkness and getting weaker from hunger, until people from the tribe come in search of him. Meanwhile I imagined real caves as mostly ’in and out’ kind of thing: out of light sure, but not three days worth of crawling.