Rock art discovered in remote Amazon forest

Post by dan-robertson » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 12:20 PM UTC

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.

Post by saalweachter » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 2:05 PM UTC

colechristensen wrote: post #24

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…

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.

Post by JackFr » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 2:20 PM UTC

romseb wrote: post #43

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…

As a solution to this problem, Rupert Sheldrake proposes his hypothesis of "Morphic Resonance" [1]. While it's a far-out idea and rejected by the scientific community, I found it an interesting read nonetheless. [1] https://www.sheldrake.org/research/morphic-resonance/introdu...

Post by koheripbal » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 3:55 PM UTC

fleddr wrote: post #50

"The site is so remote that, after a two-hour drive from San José del Guaviare, a team of archaeologists and film-makers trekked on foot for around four hours." So...not remote at all? This is less remote than the typical national park over there. The snake danger is overstated as always, for extra sensationalism. Snakes don't hunt people. Unlikely attacks are defensive, when provoked, and virtually always happen dom…

Post by fakedang » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 5:20 PM UTC

fleddr wrote: post #50

"The site is so remote that, after a two-hour drive from San José del Guaviare, a team of archaeologists and film-makers trekked on foot for around four hours." So...not remote at all? This is less remote than the typical national park over there. The snake danger is overstated as always, for extra sensationalism. Snakes don't hunt people. Unlikely attacks are defensive, when provoked, and virtually always happen dom…