Does anyone have a full/clear image or a before and after? The best one I was able to find is the one in the article.
Vandals destroy 30k-year-old indigenous cave drawings in Australia
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Re: Vandals destroy 30k-year-old indigenous cave drawings in Australia
#22I 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…
Is it possible that the teenagers did not know that the "scratchings" (for lack of a better term) were actually ancient and wise and sacred and enlightened aboriginal art?
Re: Vandals destroy 30k-year-old indigenous cave drawings in Australia
#23Let’s hope these fuckers are stupid enough to post on social media. The punishment should be 10 years, not 6 months.
Re: Vandals destroy 30k-year-old indigenous cave drawings in Australia
#24I 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…
Is it possible that the teenagers did not know that the "scratchings" (for lack of a better term) were actually ancient and wise and sacred and enlightened aboriginal art?
If you mean the case in the article? Almost no chance. The drawings were deep in the tunnel system which itself is essentially in the middle of nowhere.
Re: Vandals destroy 30k-year-old indigenous cave drawings in Australia
#25Is "don't look now, but this is a death cave" a cultural dog whistle of some kind or just a random childish phrase?
I’m Australian and I’m pretty sure it’s just children trying to be “spooky”.
I doubt they were trying to vandalise Aboriginal art, since it seems they only covered finger flutes which are hard to distinguish as art.
Re: Vandals destroy 30k-year-old indigenous cave drawings in Australia
#26My suspicion is that whoever did this was emboldened when none of the climate change vandals who did similar things to paintings in museums got any real punishment. If they all got a year or two in prison instead, I don't think this would have happened.
The climate change protestors did nothing wrong. We desperately need more attention on climate change or the human race will die out. There is literally nothing else anywhere near as important. Literally everything matters less.
To equate those two things is disingenuous and offensive.
Re: Vandals destroy 30k-year-old indigenous cave drawings in Australia
#27It's a shame that this happened, but it's not unsurprising. If you put a probability of loss on every relic of antiquity, they multiply out to a substantial amount of destruction every year. Ultimately it's a matter of cost. The cost to secure all of these pieces is extremely high. We won't be able to safeguard everything, but there are probably low hanging fruit in applying basic security measures to the items most…
When identification can be difficult or costly, you can always just impose harsher penalties to increase the ex ante cost: https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2022/11/10/prison-time-vanda...
Historically this is why in the United States both nominal and actual penalties imposed in Federal criminal cases can be so swift and harsh: the Federal government doesn't want to be in the business of prosaic criminal law enforcement. (Ignoring the changes wrought by the War on Drugs.) But this doesn't work unless the population appreciates this. In the U.S. it's generally understood that Federal penalties tend be swifter and harsher even for mundane infractions; an American will definitely think longer about, for example, trespassing on Federal property than they will comparable private or state properties, even when there's less chance of being caught on the former than the latter.
Or perhaps what this really points to is granting or expanding indigenous groups' territorial and legal sovereignty over various lands and sites, so they can make these decisions themselves.
Re: Vandals destroy 30k-year-old indigenous cave drawings in Australia
#28The drawings survived 30K years on the wilderness, but couldn't last more than a few decades on civilization!
Re: Vandals destroy 30k-year-old indigenous cave drawings in Australia
#29Is "don't look now, but this is a death cave" a cultural dog whistle of some kind or just a random childish phrase?
Beyond dog whistle, what does it even mean in this context?
I suspect it’s meant to be a “don’t look behind you”, but done by foolish children so they managed to screw it up.
Re: Vandals destroy 30k-year-old indigenous cave drawings in Australia
#30Does anyone have a full/clear image or a before and after? The best one I was able to find is the one in the article.
Maybe one of us who lives nearby can drive over and take a few snapshots for the “after” pictures. It sounds like they let anyone just walk on in.