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Vandals destroy 30k-year-old indigenous cave drawings in Australia

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: Vandals destroy 30k-year-old indigenous cave drawings in Australia

#161

Post by Dalewyn »

Xc43 wrote: post #133
lukeholder wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I highly doubt this is true due my deep understanding of Mormon culture and their ethical inclinations. You are spreading second hand gossip and casting an entire religion into disrepute. Please share facts or reliable reporting if you have such.

Your understanding of modern Mormon culture and their modern ethical inclinations does not change history. Any religion such as hinduism with their caste-based discrimination and mormonism with their skin-color-based discrimination is in their correct place when found in disrepute. Please inform yourself before standing for such shameful and unethical/immoral belief system.

If you are going to accuse someone of certain acts, it is only proper to have evidence to support your claims. Otherwise, it is simply slander.

The Mormons could indeed be or have engaged in disagreeable acts (I wouldn't know myself, nor do I care), but claiming so while skirting your own duty to be truthful is not okay. "Apparently" and "second hand" don't fly with accusations.

Re: Vandals destroy 30k-year-old indigenous cave drawings in Australia

#162

Post by xyzwave »

kevinkeller wrote: post #123
AnotherGoodName wrote: post #12

I have a friend on a property with cave art here in the hunter valley of Australia. We really don't do enough to preserve it at all. He's responsible and ensures no harm but it's still weird to own private land with 10k+ year old art and have no one really give a damn about it. Compare it to European attitudes, eg. Lascaux where they closed off the cave completely and only allow tourists near the modern reconstructio…

I think it's because of a sense of ownership and belonging (or lack thereof). People who made the art in Lascaux are, in a distant sense, ancestors of the present-day French. Most of Australia is of British ancestry, transplanted in the past few hundred years. The majority of them, including their government, obviously don't consider the Aboriginal heritage as their own.

The US also has significant protections around the Native American rock art at California’s Lava Beds National Monument.

https://www.nps.gov/labe/learn/historyculture/rockart.htm

Re: Vandals destroy 30k-year-old indigenous cave drawings in Australia

#165

Post by incompatible »

akudha wrote: post #151
kevinkeller wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's because of a sense of ownership and belonging (or lack thereof). People who made the art in Lascaux are, in a distant sense, ancestors of the present-day French. Most of Australia is of British ancestry, transplanted in the past few hundred years. The majority of them, including their government, obviously don't consider the Aboriginal heritage as their own.

I dunno, if I had a property with art that is 10,000 years old, I will try my best to preserve it. Regardless of whether they were made by my ancestors or not, because it doesn’t matter. It was made by humans. So in a way, they are my ancestors, whether they spoke French or some other language doesn’t matter to me

Out of curiosity, what would you do, put an electric fence and surveillance cameras around it?

Re: Vandals destroy 30k-year-old indigenous cave drawings in Australia

#166

Post by dannyw »

incompatible wrote: post #165
akudha wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno, if I had a property with art that is 10,000 years old, I will try my best to preserve it. Regardless of whether they were made by my ancestors or not, because it doesn’t matter. It was made by humans. So in a way, they are my ancestors, whether they spoke French or some other language doesn’t matter to me

Out of curiosity, what would you do, put an electric fence and surveillance cameras around it?

It's a hypothetical, but a couple cameras and a sign letting people know the area is under surveillance will probably do.

Re: Vandals destroy 30k-year-old indigenous cave drawings in Australia

#167

Post by quietbritishjim »

dannyw wrote: post #166
incompatible wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, what would you do, put an electric fence and surveillance cameras around it?

It's a hypothetical, but a couple cameras and a sign letting people know the area is under surveillance will probably do.

According to the article:

> The vandals forced their way past barbed wire and dug under a steel gate

so I doubt cameras and a sign sign would've deterred then.

Re: Vandals destroy 30k-year-old indigenous cave drawings in Australia

#168

Post by Tagbert »

LeonB wrote: post #148
henriquemaia wrote: post #126

I know this is the article's title, and that this may sound as a tangent, but whoever destroyed the cave drawings were definitely not Vandals: > The Vandals were a Germanic people who first inhabited what is now southern Poland. They established Vandal kingdoms on the Iberian Peninsula, Mediterranean islands, and North Africa in the fifth century. Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vandals

A lot of German immigration to South Australia several generations ago - there’s a reasonable chance that they do have Vandal ancestors.

With the migrations of the Vandals, their descendants are more likely to be Italian or Spanish, now.

Re: Vandals destroy 30k-year-old indigenous cave drawings in Australia

#169

Post by usrusr »

BEEdwards wrote: post #141
henriquemaia wrote: post #126

I know this is the article's title, and that this may sound as a tangent, but whoever destroyed the cave drawings were definitely not Vandals: > The Vandals were a Germanic people who first inhabited what is now southern Poland. They established Vandal kingdoms on the Iberian Peninsula, Mediterranean islands, and North Africa in the fifth century. Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vandals

That's the origin of the word, but not what anyone (outside of historians) mean when they say it. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/vandal

But then on the other hand if you talk about cave drawings, historians aren't terribly far out of scope.

My reading of the headline went roughly like this: "Vandals destroy(ed) [..] cave drawings [oh, must have been a very interesting new archaeological approach if they could identify the the culture responsible for destruction] in Austra..[What?? How did they get th--oh, right]"

Re: Vandals destroy 30k-year-old indigenous cave drawings in Australia

#170

Post by fastball »

kaesar14 wrote: post #163
coliveira wrote: post #28

The drawings survived 30K years on the wilderness, but couldn't last more than a few decades on civilization!

Implying what’s existed in Australia for thousands of years doesn’t constitute ‘civilization’ :)

Depending on your definition of "civilization", indeed what existed in Australia for thousands of years probably does not qualify.
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