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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

#181

Post by yawnxyz »

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.

They get really mad at you when you tell them their acknowledgment of land / country to the Gadigal / other peoples is just a way to pay lip service and not actually do what’s required.

If they really actually cared, they would have protected these sites.

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

#182

Post by barbariangrunge »

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.

It’s fair to ask for evidence

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

#183

Post by eastAligned »

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…

Its kind of a false equality. European remains are interesting because they are from a point that the people grew past, a flash in our culture. Aboriginal artifacts are equivalent to aborigines when they were encountered (even as they are now to an extent). I can go look at an Aboriginal, they are nothing special, there is no mystery to their leavings.

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

#184

Post by postalrat »

sacrosancty wrote: post #65
remote_phone wrote: post #23

Let’s hope these fuckers are stupid enough to post on social media. The punishment should be 10 years, not 6 months.

Draconian punishments aren't a good way to protect ancient relics. It only takes one person to not even know what the site is, let alone the punishment, to ruin it forever. Also, it's cruel read-a-news-story desire for vengeance for damaging something you probably never even knew existed in the first place.

Ah the old ignorance defense.

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

#185

Post by rippercushions »

belfalas wrote: post #144
rippercushions wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're not exactly talking Michelangelo here. Here's what the art looks like, and there's thousands of square meters of the stuff: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Finger-flutings-in-Koona...

Got it. So as long as we preserve a few key specimens we can torch the Louvre guilt free?

Sure, as long as it's a strawman Louvre with no connection to what the previous poster was saying.

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

#186

Post by postalrat »

rippercushions wrote: post #128
belfalas wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone bombed the Vatican or the Kaaba would you consider that a very big deal?

We're not exactly talking Michelangelo here. Here's what the art looks like, and there's thousands of square meters of the stuff: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Finger-flutings-in-Koona...

Maybe in another 30k years people think the cave stuff beats anything Michelangelo did. And the only reason today we might feel different is because Michelangelo did his artwork only 500 years ago.

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

#187

Post by midoridensha »

MonkeyClub wrote: post #121
_-____-_ wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's important to preserve modernist and brutalist architecture Why?

> Why? Because history is as valuable to humanity as memory to the human.

You don't need to preserve everything to remember history. If we never destroy old buildings, we'd have to abandon all our cities and find new places to build new cities, because we can't just keep living like it's the middle ages (or whatever time period you feel we need to preserve).

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

#188

Post by belfalas »

rippercushions wrote: post #185
belfalas wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Got it. So as long as we preserve a few key specimens we can torch the Louvre guilt free?

Sure, as long as it's a strawman Louvre with no connection to what the previous poster was saying.

I'm not sure why you're bringing another poster into this or why you bring up a strawman Louvre. But it does seem like you are pretty committed to your belief that wiping out culture is okay as long as it is non-Western. I wish you well with this.

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

#189

Post by eastAligned »

spritefs wrote: post #64

Question for Australians here: is racism against aboriginals widespread in Australia? How does the govt work to prevent it?

The most common thing we hear about aborigines is either "project delayed because ancient dump discovered" followed closely by "Aboriginal focused government program is expensive and ineffective". The most common attitude would be indifference, followed by a general irritation if something Aboriginal related "gets in the way". Racism is hard to measure, it's fairly common, but most often taking the form of condescending paternalism, rather than actual negativity (not that this does not exist, but it's a tiny proportion).

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

#190

Post by midoridensha »

defrost wrote: post #176
FatActor wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain why thousands of years of aboriginal society doesn't qualify as a civilization?

That pretty much boils down to Euro-centric judgement, early British, Dutch, and French reporting, different ideals of what constitutes "culture", destruction of effective but hard to see artifacts (wells, river and ocean fish traps, degradable townsites), etc.

"Culture" and "civilization" are different things. Chimpanzee tribes have culture, as do orcas and dolphins, but I don't see how you can call their societies "civilizations". The group of people here on HN have a "culture", but this is not a "civilization", it's just a website (though it's part of a civilization). Humans lived in hunter-gatherer tribes for hundreds of thousands of years or more before they invented agriculture and created what we now call "civilization". I really don't see how you could properly apply the term "civilization" to any group of people that live in tribes.
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