One thing that strikes me as possibly interesting about this is that there are human figures depicted, something that strangely virtually never appears in cave art.
Lascaux has human figures. It's pretty common.
Rock art discovered in remote Amazon forest
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Re: Rock art discovered in remote Amazon forest
#22> One figure wears a mask resembling a bird with a beak.
Tinfoil time: that one's a fairly common image in petroglyphs on several continents. See also the "Squatter Man".
Re: Rock art discovered in remote Amazon forest
#23Rock 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…
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.
Re: Rock art discovered in remote Amazon forest
#24Rock 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…
Basically humans have an instinct for graffiti, a few standard interests (hands, sexual anatomy, prey animals), and there are a few material combinations that survive the ages particularly well.
It’s probably not a coincidence that two millennia ago you find the same crude jokes and drawings of dicks scrawled on the walls of Pompeii that you find in any high school bathroom.
Re: Rock art discovered in remote Amazon forest
#25Rock 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…
Do you, by chance, watch the History channel? Spend some time around kids. Rock art is completely obvious. After a few thousand nights in a cave with nothing to do, drawing on the walls with some charcoal from your fire is what every human probably did, and would do even today. Switching to red ochre is just one step away from that. Even chimps are known to scratch figures in the dirt.
What I find interesting about this explanation is that it suggests a much more limited scope of decision-making than is often attributed to humans. A practical example of why this could matter is that instead of spreading an idea through viral mechanisms where an information is transmitted between individuals, this would provide an illustration of how an idea could be spread by replicating conditions and causing the idea to essentially regenerate in a predictable manner among disconnected individuals, while from each individual’s perspective they are doing something novel.
Re: Rock art discovered in remote Amazon forest
#26Rock 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…
It is a good theory.
Even things like arrowheads which are used to mark progress or reach of Native American populations in the US are useful because they survive and are dug up all the time while digging. I'm sure there would be more interesting cultural finds if baskets or clothes from the time survived at the same rate.
Re: Rock art discovered in remote Amazon forest
#27Might consider as the first social media wall
Re: Rock art discovered in remote Amazon forest
#28One thing that strikes me as possibly interesting about this is that there are human figures depicted, something that strangely virtually never appears in cave art.
Lascaux has human figures. It's pretty common.
There's only one, and it's a human-animal hybrid with a bird head
Re: Rock art discovered in remote Amazon forest
#29Rock 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 bright colors, and red pigments are probably some of the most accessible in nature that might be more robust to the sands of time (i.e. survivorship bias).
Re: Rock art discovered in remote Amazon forest
#30This 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…
Easy there, before you start foaming. In case you blacked out after the first paragraph, they mentioned that site. > The site is in the Serranía de la Lindosa where, along with the Chiribiquete national park, other rock art had been found. The documentary’s presenter, Ella Al-Shamahi, an archaeologist and explorer, told the Observer: “The new site is so new, they haven’t even given it a name yet.”
To be honest the title is a bit sensationalist (Sistine chapel ..ya that's a journalist), its from the twitter of a TV show host not a scientist.
The whole area is famous for rock art and has been documented since the pre 1940's. Tens of thousands of district rock art has been found here for decades, this exact area has been under excavation since 2015, but was previously excavated in 1989. Some of the site names are Angosturas II, Limoncillos, and Cerro Montoya.
Oh and the very photo's published in the link are not new , there are articles from before 2018 showing the exact same image..