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Rock art discovered in remote Amazon forest

theguardian.com

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Re: Rock art discovered in remote Amazon forest

#31

Post by polishdude20 »

there_the_and wrote: post #7

Rock art is really weird because there are exactly same motifs using the same materials (usually red ochre) all over the world and separated by tens of thousands of years. People act like it’s no big deal, but it sure looks like a pretty big deal that raises some interesting questions. We have a global view of information flows now, and I feel like I haven’t seen a lot of behaviors in humanity that explain how this h…

It could be that there's tonnes of people doing hand things with lots of different materials. Then, because of the composition of that red ochre material, only the drawings that were made with that stuff stick around for long enough for us to see them.

Re: Rock art discovered in remote Amazon forest

#33

Post by michaelsbradley »

there_the_and wrote: post #7

Rock art is really weird because there are exactly same motifs using the same materials (usually red ochre) all over the world and separated by tens of thousands of years. People act like it’s no big deal, but it sure looks like a pretty big deal that raises some interesting questions. We have a global view of information flows now, and I feel like I haven’t seen a lot of behaviors in humanity that explain how this h…

The mystery is already solved for more than a decade now, though more research remains to be done and understanding deepened:

Characteristics for the Occurrence of a High-Current, Z-Pinch Aurora as Recorded in Antiquity

https://plasmauniverse.info/downloadsCosmo/PerattTPSv31-2003...

Part 2:

https://plasmauniverse.info/downloadsCosmo/Peratt,et,al,TPSv...

Related publications:

https://plasmauniverse.info/NearEarth.html

Re: Rock art discovered in remote Amazon forest

#34

Post by there_the_and »

beambot wrote: post #29
there_the_and wrote: post #7

Rock art is really weird because there are exactly same motifs using the same materials (usually red ochre) all over the world and separated by tens of thousands of years. People act like it’s no big deal, but it sure looks like a pretty big deal that raises some interesting questions. We have a global view of information flows now, and I feel like I haven’t seen a lot of behaviors in humanity that explain how this h…

When our daughter was one year old, we gave her some child-safe finger paints. Finger prints and hand prints were some of the first "drawings" she made without any parental instruction. She does not have any inherent access to global information flows or other esoteric explanations that would bind her to her ancient relatives -- beyond a bunch of shared DNA and common physiology & brain development. She also prefers…

It seems like a likely explanation is that these are primarily done by children and that this is a human universal / instinctual behavior during child development. Looking at google scholar there are at least a couple studies of hand print sizes estimating that in a few regions they were almost exclusively done by young people. That would seem to suggest a biological basis for this specific behavior.

Re: Rock art discovered in remote Amazon forest

#35

Post by joubert »

nerfhammer wrote: post #28
Igelau wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lascaux has human figures. It's pretty common.

There's only one, and it's a human-animal hybrid with a bird head https://archeologie.culture.fr/lascaux/en/themes-0

I don’t know ratio if humanoid vs. non-humanoid life forms, but I recall from visiting archaeological sites in South Africa as a youngster a pretty high incidence of humanoid depiction.

You can see some of it here: https://www.google.com/search?q=south+african+cave+drawings&...

Re: Rock art discovered in remote Amazon forest

#36

Post by StanislavPetrov »

aazaa wrote: post #13

> Their date is based partly on their depictions of now-extinct ice age animals, such as the mastodon, a prehistoric relative of the elephant that hasn’t roamed South America for at least 12,000 years. There are also images of the palaeolama, an extinct camelid, as well as giant sloths and ice age horses. The article doesn't describe what other means were used, but this is important. It's also a little disappointing…

>It's also a little disappointing that there are no close-up, high-resolution images of the extinct megafauna being depicted.

I got the impression that this announcement was more or less a teaser for their upcoming show, which is due to premiere in a few days. Perhaps that's why they didn't reveal too much. They've certainly aroused my interest enough to tune in.

Re: Rock art discovered in remote Amazon forest

#37

Post by qwertox »

TrainedMonkey wrote: post #17
there_the_and wrote: post #7

Rock art is really weird because there are exactly same motifs using the same materials (usually red ochre) all over the world and separated by tens of thousands of years. People act like it’s no big deal, but it sure looks like a pretty big deal that raises some interesting questions. We have a global view of information flows now, and I feel like I haven’t seen a lot of behaviors in humanity that explain how this h…

Here is a theory - survivorship bias. Humans made all kinds of things, but only small amount of it survived. Red ochre on rock faces just happened to be something that lasts a long time. To expand on that I think there was a lot of self expression covering all possible surfaces. So the statement shifts from many human groups picked same thing to express themselves to multiple self expressive groups discovered ochre t…

For those who haven't heard about survivorship bias, the following section in the Wikipedia illustrates it interestingly:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias#In_the_milit...

Re: Rock art discovered in remote Amazon forest

#38

Post by tda »

da39a3ee wrote: post #5

This article is an embarrassment to the anglophone world. The rock art in Chiribiquete is already well-known in Colombia. Perhaps this expedition discovered some new cliffs with paintings, or perhaps not. I doubt it personally, more like they got a film crew there. But the article gives the distinct impression that Colombians (including the indigenous people of the amazon basin) themselves aren't capable of discoveri…

Yep, at least part of the site is already on google maps: https://goo.gl/maps/MYLB2SEmnoyHmvUGA

Really remote, like 500m away from a farm/main road. Maybe they discovered a few more remote sites, but the general presence of ancient rock paintings in that area must have been known for a long time

Re: Rock art discovered in remote Amazon forest

#39

Post by mathieuh »

yholio wrote: post #23
TrainedMonkey wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is a theory - survivorship bias. Humans made all kinds of things, but only small amount of it survived. Red ochre on rock faces just happened to be something that lasts a long time. To expand on that I think there was a lot of self expression covering all possible surfaces. So the statement shifts from many human groups picked same thing to express themselves to multiple self expressive groups discovered ochre t…

To elaborate on this, the white marble statues decorating the Parthenon and Acropolis are believed to have been painted very bright colors in their day. Not a single one of those dazzling pigments survived exposed to the elements after a mere 2500 years.

I think it's past belief at this point, archaeologists have found traces of pigment on the statues.

https://www.thevintagenews.com/2019/12/22/ancient-statues-in...

Know nothing about this source but I googled and couldn't find a better one, I'm sure I've read about before though.

Re: Rock art discovered in remote Amazon forest

#40

Post by acvny »

da39a3ee wrote: post #5

This article is an embarrassment to the anglophone world. The rock art in Chiribiquete is already well-known in Colombia. Perhaps this expedition discovered some new cliffs with paintings, or perhaps not. I doubt it personally, more like they got a film crew there. But the article gives the distinct impression that Colombians (including the indigenous people of the amazon basin) themselves aren't capable of discoveri…

I like this part the most: "The discovery was made last year, but has been kept secret until now as it was filmed for a major Channel 4 series to be screened in December: Jungle Mystery: Lost Kingdoms of the Amazon."
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