Controversial Evidence that People Were in the Americas 30,000 Years Ago

Ho ho ho and a gourd of rum, and some chickens, and who knows how long it took, but they got here, they got here.  This is a subject I find absolutely fascinating.  Enjoy!  Oh - ignore the classic come-on about sex -- I saw a faint depiction of what could possibly be a depiction of some sexual activity, but it's so faint one would need special equipment to make it out.  Besides, we know that humankind engaged in sexual activity else we wouldn't be here :)

Prehistoric Brazil artifacts star in exhibit, spark debate
By Yana MarullOctober 9, 2013 4:24 AM

Brasília (AFP) - It's no secret humans have been having sex for millennia -- but recently discovered cave art suggests they were doing it in the Americas much earlier than many archeologists believed.

A new exhibit in Brazil showcases artifacts dating as far back as 30,000 years ago -- throwing a wrench in the commonly held theory humans first crossed to the Americas from Asia a mere 12,000 years ago. The 100 items on display in Brasilia, including cave paintings and ceramic art, depict animals, ceremonies, hunting expeditions -- and even scenes from the sex lives of this ancient group of early Americans.

The artifacts come from the Serra da Capivara national park in Brazil's northeastern Piaui state, on the border of the Amazon and Atlantic Forests, which attracted the hunter-gatherer civilization that left behind this hoard of local art. Since the 1970s, Franco-Brazilian archaeologist Niede Guidon has headed a mission to carry out large-scale excavation of Piaui's interior. "It's difficult to think there exists a site anywhere with a higher concentration of cave art," the 80-year-old Guidon told AFP.

Many paths led to Americas

Other traces of the civilization include charcoal remains of structured fires, explained Guidon, who hails from Sao Paulo.

"To date, these are the oldest traces" of human existence in the Americas, she emphasized.
The widely held theory has suggested human beings only reached the Americas some 12,000 years ago from Asia, crossing the Bering Strait to reach Alaska.

Some archeologists contend flaked pebbles at the Brazilian sites are not evidence of a crude, human-made fire hearth made some 40 millennia ago, but are rather geofacts -- a natural stone formation, not a man-made one.

But Guidon said she believes the Serra dwellers may have come originally from Africa, and she said the cave art provides compelling evidence of early human activity.

The paintings are estimated to date back some 29,000 years, she said, noting: "When it began in Europe and Africa, it did here too."

Other sites, including Valsequillo in Mexico and Monte Verde in Chile, also indicate the presence of communities tens of thousands of years ago. These sites have led archeologists to speculate that peoples traveled various routes to reach the Americas and at different stages, archeologist Gisele Daltrini Felice told AFP.

In search of tourists

UNESCO conferred World Heritage status on the Serra da Capivara in 1991, but tourists remain thin on the ground, which frustrates Guidon.

"After putting in a great amount of effort (to promote the site) we are up to 20,000 visitors a year," the archeologist said.

But "World Heritage sites get millions, and we are prepared to receive millions," she added.
The interior of the Piaui region is marked by widespread poverty, which has much to gain from tourism, Guidon stressed.

But resources are lacking to promote the attractions in a remote corner of the giant nation, she said. The nearest city is the modest town of Sao Raimundo Nonato, which has spent years trying to have an airport built.

The EU is promoting both the new exhibit as well as a swath of conferences on the area under the auspices of UNESCO, Brazil's Institute of Parks and the country's Institute of Historic and Artistic Heritage.

"The idea is to promote cultural, historic and nature-based tourism in order to aid the development of areas adjoining Brazil's major parks -- and especially the Serra da Capivara, which has the most modern infrastructure," with 172 sites to visit, said Jerome Poussielgue, European Union cooperation and development officer for Brazil.

And the foundation behind research into the park is backing development projects -- including a ceramics factory that reproduces images of the cave art, a program aimed at giving local women work experience.

"We would like to help in the development of a region where women suffer hugely from violence," says Guidon.

Did "Neanderthal" Man Make Art After All?

From nature.com

Neanderthal culture: Old masters

The earliest known cave paintings fuel arguments about whether Neanderthals were the mental equals of modern humans.

• Tim Appenzeller¹

15 May 2013

 

Spots and stencils in El Castillo cave, Spain — one at least 40,800 years old — might be the handiwork of Neanderthals.

PEDRO SAURA

 

In a damp Spanish cave, Alistair Pike applies a small grinder to the world's oldest known paintings. Every few minutes, the dentist-drill sound stops and Pike, an archaeologist from the University of Southampton, UK, stands aside so that a party of tourists can admire the simple artwork — hazy red disks, stencilled handprints, the outlines of bison — daubed on the cave wall tens of thousands of years ago. He hopes that the visitors won't notice the small scuff marks he has left.

In fact, Pike's grinder — and the scalpel that he wields to scrape off tiny samples — is doing no harm to the actual paintings, and he is working with the full approval of the Spanish authorities. Pike is after the crust of calcite that has built up over the millennia from groundwater dripping down the wall. The white flecks that he dislodges hold a smattering of uranium atoms, whose decay acts as a radioactive clock. A clock that has been ticking ever since the calcite formed on top of the art.

The results of an earlier round of sampling in El Castillo cave, published last June¹, showed that the oldest of the paintings, a simple red spot, dates to at least 40,800 years ago, roughly when the first modern humans reached western Europe. Pike and his colleagues think that when they analyse the latest samples, the paintings may turn out to be older still, perhaps by thousands of years — too old to have been made by modern humans. If so, the artists must have been Neanderthals, the brawny, archaic people who were already living in Europe.

The answer won't be known for at least a year, but if it favours the Neanderthals, it could tip — if not resolve — a debate that has rumbled for decades: did the Neanderthals, once caricatured as brute cavemen, have minds like our own, capable of abstract thinking, symbolism and even art? It is one of the most haunting questions about the people who once shared a continent with us, then mysteriously vanished.

An early date for the paintings would also be a vindication for the slight, dark-haired man watching as Pike works: João Zilhão, who has emerged as the leading advocate for Neanderthals, relentlessly pressing the case that these ice-age Europeans were our cognitive equals. Zilhão, an archaeologist at the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies at the University of Barcelona in Spain, believes that other signs of sophisticated Neanderthal culture have already proved his point. But he is willing to debate on his opponents' terms. “To my mind, we don't need that evidence,” he says of the paintings. “But I guess for many of my colleagues this would be the smoking gun.”

The front line in the Neanderthal wars runs through another cave: Grotte du Renne, 1,000 kilometres away in central France. As early as the 1950s, excavations there unearthed a collection of puzzling artefacts. Among them were bone awls, distinctive stone blades and palaeolithic baubles — the teeth of animals such as foxes or marmots, grooved or pierced so that they could be worn on a string. They were buried beneath artefacts typical of the first modern humans in Europe, suggesting that these objects were older. A startling possibility loomed: that artefacts of this style, collectively known as the Châtelperronian industry, were made by Neanderthals.

Close cousins of modern humans, Neanderthals evolved in western Eurasia and had Europe to themselves for more than 200,000 years, enduring several ice ages. In spite of their survival skills and big brains — comparable to our own — they had never been linked to sophisticated tools of this kind, or to ornaments. Yet in 1980, archaeologists reported finding a Neanderthal skeleton among Châtelperronian tools at another site in France². And in 1996, French palaeoanthropologist Jean-Jacques Hublin and his colleagues reported that a skull fragment from the ornament layer in the Grotte du Renne was unmistakably Neanderthal³.

Ever since then, the Grotte du Renne has been exhibit A in the case that Neanderthals, like ourselves, trafficked in symbols, using ornaments as badges of identity for individuals or groups. [Oh please - from discovering these artifacts to claiming that "Neanderthal" used them as "badges of identity" -- what is the basis for this assertion?  Most people today, and I expect "back then" too, did not wear jewelry as "badges of identity" but for the pure pleasure of wearing a unique and/or beautiful and/or rare object!  Taking pleasure in a beautiful, rare, unique thing does not make it a "badge of identity."  Geez!] 

Hublin himself did not go that far. He suggested that the Neanderthals had fallen under the spell of strange new neighbours: modern humans, who were thought to have reached Europe around the time of the Châtelperronian industry. Neanderthals might have acquired the ice-age bling from modern humans, or made the pendants themselves under the influence of the new arrivals. [So, "Neanderthals" were either sophisticated enough to establish a trading network with these "newcomer humans" or were sophisticated enough to copy their designs...]

That conclusion infuriated Zilhão, turning him into the passionate advocate he is today. He questioned the evidence that modern humans were already on the scene and detected a bias against our extinct cousins. “Why was the equally if not more legitimate hypothesis — that the Neanderthals themselves had been the authors of this stuff and made it for their own use — not even considered?” asks Zilhão.

On a visit to rock-art sites in Portugal, he discussed the paper with Francesco d'Errico, an archaeologist who is now at the University of Bordeaux in France. D'Errico had the same reaction, Zilhão recalls. “And he said: 'OK, let's do something about it.'” Since then, the pair has fought a two-front war, advancing evidence for Neanderthal capabilities while challenging studies that reserve symbolism and abstract thinking for modern humans.

Unknown artists

More than 15 years later, the Grotte du Renne continues to be a battleground. Since 2010, three papers have given duelling interpretations of the artefact-bearing layers. In the first, a group led by dating expert Thomas Higham of the University of Oxford, UK, used new carbon dates to argue that the layers were scrambled, mixing older remains with younger⁴. If that was correct, said Higham's team, the relics adjacent to the telltale skull fragment might not have belonged to Neanderthals after all.

Within months, Zilhão, d'Errico and their colleagues fired back with an analysis⁵ of how artefacts of different types were distributed in the Grotte du Renne, concluding that the layers were undisturbed and that the Neanderthal link could be trusted. A group led by Hublin (now at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany) presented its own dates last year, backing Zilhão's claim⁶. But Hublin still denied the Neanderthals full credit. Neanderthals did make the objects, now dated to between 45,000 and 40,000 years ago, he said — but only after they encountered modern humans. And this time he had fresh evidence to draw on.

Carbon dates measured by Higham and others at caves in Italy, Britain and Germany suggest that modern humans began expanding into Europe as early as 45,000 years ago, several thousand years earlier than was thought (see Nature 485, 27–29; 2012). Zilhão strenuously disputes those claims, doubting whether the shells or animal bones used for dating truly reflect the age of the human fossils at the sites, or whether the human remains are modern. “The evidence to show an early presence of modern humans in Europe is worse today than it was 20 years ago,” he declares.

Hublin, however, has no doubt that our ancestors had already entered the picture when Neanderthals in France began making bone awls and animal-tooth pendants. To assume that Neanderthals invented these technologies on their own is to accept “an incredible coincidence”, he says. “Just as modern humans arrive with these things in their pocket — bingo!”

Like minds

Despite the stalemate, Zilhão says that the record of Neanderthal behaviour tens of thousands of years before modern humans arrived in Europe proves his point (see 'Minds at work'). Neanderthals are believed to have buried their dead, suggesting that they had some kind of spirituality. They made glue for securing spear points by heating birch sap while protecting it from the air, a feat that even modern experimental archaeologists have trouble replicating. Many Neanderthal sites include lumps of pigment — red ochre and black manganese — that sometimes seem to be worn down like stone-age crayons. Zilhão and others think that the Neanderthals painted themselves, creating striking patterns on their pale, northern skin that were every bit as symbolic as the art and ornaments of modern humans.

“You don't need to have shell beads, you don't need to have artefacts with graphical representation to have behaviour that can be defined archaeologically as symbolic,” he says. “Burying your dead is symbolic behaviour. Making sophisticated chemical compounds in order to haft your stone tools implies a capacity to think in abstract ways, a capacity to plan ahead, that's fundamentally similar to ours.”

Where Zilhão sees a clear pattern, sceptics see uncertainties. Harold Dibble, an anthropologist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, is re-examining supposed Neanderthal burial sites. At one, the French cave of Roc de Marsal, he says that what seemed to be a deliberately excavated grave is actually a natural pit. At another, La Ferrassie, he sees evidence that sediments swept into the cave by water — not grieving kin — could have buried Neanderthal remains.

As for the ochre crayons, Dibble is dismissive. “You see some wear on a piece of ochre and soon you've got Neanderthal body painting,” he says. “What a lot of logical leaps.” [No more a logical leap than assuming that a decorative object worn by an ancient individual was worn as a "badge of identity."] He and others say that the pigment has many possible uses: as an insect repellent, a preservative for food or animal skins, an ingredient in adhesives. Even Wil Roebroeks of the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, who found evidence for ochre use as early as 250,000 years ago at a Dutch Neanderthal site⁷, says that Zilhão “jumps too fast from the presence of ochre to body decoration”.

Ask Dibble, Hublin and other sceptics what would persuade them that Neanderthals had minds like ours, and their answer is simple: a pattern of art or other sophisticated symbolic expression from a time when no modern humans could possibly have been around. “But I don't think it exists,” says Hublin. [Maybe we're not looking at what is left behind correctly; maybe most of it was wiped out in the intervening years.  After all, 50,000 to 100,000 years ago was a fricking LONG time ago to expect something to survive.]

Zilhão, however, points to a singular finding from a Neanderthal site in southern Spain that he reported three years ago⁸: three cockle shells each with holes near one edge, as if they had been worn as ornaments. One contains a trace of red pigment, and a fourth shell is stained with a mixture of colours, as if it had been used as a paint container. The shells, says Zilhão, imply symbolic thinking fully equivalent to that of the modern humans who left troves of beads in South Africa 75,000 years ago. And at roughly 50,000 years old, he says, the Spanish shells date from a time well before modern humans reached the region.

Critics are not satisfied. The perforations are natural, as Zilhão himself noted, which suggests to Hublin and Dibble that rather than systematically fashioning ornaments, Neanderthals might have picked up a few odd shells on a whim. “When you've got isolated occurrences, one-offs, that's not going to convince most of us,” says Dibble.

The paintings in El Castillo could help to establish a pattern. The research group was conservative with the ages it reported last June¹, which put the earliest calcite at nearly 41,000 years old. Nervous about damaging the pigment, the team left several millimetres of the veneer intact at each sampled spot. Deeper, older layers might push back the paintings' minimum ages by several thousand years.

That prospect brought the team back to El Castillo last October. Grinding and scraping through a long day, the researchers concentrate on the red disks and hand stencils that had yielded the earliest dates last time around. The goal, says Zilhão, is “to date pigments in these paintings to an age that is clearly and to everyone's satisfaction beyond the range of modern humans in Europe”.

Yet an early date may not settle the long-running dispute. Hublin sets the bar high. “If Zilhão finds a date of earlier than 50,000 years ago, I'll be convinced!” he says. Any younger, and modern human influence would remain a possibility, he says, noting recent hints that our ancestors had advanced into Turkey or even central Europe by 50,000 years ago. And one example of crude painting — what Dibble calls “Neanderthal doodling” — might not be enough to win over the doubters. Zilhão's knockout blow may simply lead to more fighting.

Yet signs of a middle ground are emerging. Chris Stringer, a palaeoanthropologist at the Natural History Museum in London, says that 20 years ago, he believed that if the Neanderthals made the Châtelperronian ornaments, they were blindly imitating modern humans. “Our interpretation was that they were copying but that they didn't have the brainpower to give full value” to the objects. He wouldn't say so now. Two decades of discoveries of sophisticated Neanderthal tools and weapons have made him think that “the gulf was not as great”: that the difference between Neanderthals and ourselves was a matter more of culture than of ability.

“You can see the Neanderthals were held back by various factors that were not down to their brains,” he adds. The climate of ice-age Europe kept their population size “frighteningly small”, he says — at times just a few thousand people across a whole continent, most of them dead by the age of 30. How could such a sparse, beleaguered people develop and sustain a sophisticated culture?

That's not so different from what d'Errico, Zilhão's comrade-in-arms for almost 20 years, now says. He still thinks that the Neanderthals probably invented the Châtelperronian artefacts before modern humans were on the scene. But he is open to the idea that aspects of modern human culture preceded their wholesale arrival in Europe. “It's possible that some influence did spread,” says d'Errico. “I'm less militant than João.” That takes nothing away from the Neanderthals, he adds. “The fact that Neanderthals can absorb influences, can re-elaborate them, can make them part of their own culture, is very modern behaviour.”

But there is a final stretch of ground that neither side will concede. Were the Neanderthals truly the same as us, cognitively? No, says Stringer. The Neanderthal genome, decoded⁹ in 2010, differs from that of modern humans in some regions linked to brain function, he notes. And this year, he suggested that, compared with modern humans, larger volumes of Neanderthals' brains were devoted to vision and to controlling their heavier bodies¹⁰ (see ‘Two kinds of human’). That might have left them with less capacity for social awareness and interaction. “If you imagine a Neanderthal in modern society, there would still be differences,” says Stringer.

Zilhão rejects any distinctions. Emerging from the cave into a rainy evening, he muses that if he pushes back the age of the El Castillo paintings, his critics may argue that he has simply proved an earlier presence of modern humans in Europe. “To which I will say, 'Of course. Neanderthals were modern humans too.'”

Nature

Volume:

497,

Pages:

302–304

Date published:

(16 May 2013)

DOI:

doi:10.1038/497302a

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Is Some Cave Art 'Neanderthal?'

I hesitated to write anything about the recent flurry of articles, most rather sensationalized, in the news about some re-dating of existing cave art/drawings using a new dating technique, because the writers generally talk about Neanderthal as if she were some ape-woman throw-back instead of a human being capable of interbreeding successful with so-called "homo sapiens sapiens."  In fact, the interbreeding was so successful that even today, perhaps 32,000 to 27,000 years after the last of anatomical 'Neanderthal' disappeared (but we really do not know for sure when the last of them "died off"), their genes are some of our genes.  So who, indeed, is "homo sapiens sapiens?"

I think people, including the experts, keep forgetting that we are still very much in the infancy of discovering a more complete picture about the past herstory of Earth and her people.  It seems that absolute-ism still exists in abundance in certain circles, and there is still a clinging to 19th century "theories" (more correctly, hypotheses) that modern scientifically vetted evidence has discredited with respect to "evolution" (that so took us down the wrong tracks!)  My hope is that as we develop more and better techniques for analyzing the age of objects and things that are not carbon-based, and more and better techniques for analyzing and interpreting the meaning of DNA sequences, we will finally kiss goodbye to the 19th century once and for all.  At least, in our quest for historical, archaeological and scientific knowledge of who we are and where we came from.  All bets are off when it comes to our political and "moral" (ahem) culture, which seems to be going full-tilt in a backward direction.  Sigh.

I found this resource, which presents the least sensationalized reports on the most recent study regarding dating of various examples of cave art.  And, yes, it is true that there is a time period overlap of many thousands of years between the new dates (ages) assigned to certain samples of cave art, the existence of so-called Neanderthal throughout Europe and the suspected arrival of so-called modern man in Europe.  So -- who did the art?  Are you really sure about that?

At Science Magazine (sciencemag.org)

Science 15 June 2012:
Vol. 336 no. 6087 pp. 1409-1413
DOI: 10.1126/science.1219957

• Research Article

U-Series Dating of Paleolithic Art in 11 Caves in Spain

1. A. W. G. Pike¹,*,
2. D. L. Hoffmann²,³,
3. M. García-Diez⁴,
4. P. B. Pettitt⁵,
5. J. Alcolea⁶,
6. R. De Balbín⁶,
7. C. González-Sainz⁷,
8. C. de las Heras⁸,
9. J. A. Lasheras⁸,
10. R. Montes⁸,
11. J. Zilhão⁹

+ Author Affiliations

1. ¹Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Bristol, 43 Woodland Road, Bristol BS8 1UU, UK.
2. ²Bristol Isotope Group, School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol, University Road, Bristol BS8 1SS, UK.
3. ³Centro Nacional de Investigatión sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH), Paseo Sierra de Atapuerca s/n, 09002 Burgos, Spain.
4. ⁴Department of Geography, Prehistory and Archaeology, University of Basque Country (UPV/EHU), c/ Tomás y Valiente s/n, 01006 Vitoria,Spain.
5. ⁵Department of Archaeology, University of Sheffield, Northgate House, West Street, Sheffield S1 4ET, UK.
6. ⁶Prehistory Section, University of Alcalá de Henares, c/ Colegios 2, 28801 Alcalá de Henares, Madrid, Spain.
7. ⁷Department of Historic Sciences, University of Cantabria, Avenida Los Castros s/n, 39005 Santander, Spain.
8. ⁸Museo Nacional y Centro de Investigación de Altamira. 39330 Santillana del Mar, Cantabria, Spain.
9. ⁹University of Barcelona/Institució Catalana de Reserca i Estudis Avançats (ICREA), Departament de Prehistòria, Història Antiga i Arqueologia (SERP), c/ Montalegre 6, 08001 Barcelona, Spain.

1. ↵*To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: alistair.pike@bristol.ac.uk

Abstract

Paleolithic cave art is an exceptional archive of early human symbolic behavior, but because obtaining reliable dates has been difficult, its chronology is still poorly understood after more than a century of study. We present uranium-series disequilibrium dates of calcite deposits overlying or underlying art found in 11 caves, including the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage sites of Altamira, El Castillo, and Tito Bustillo, Spain. The results demonstrate that the tradition of decorating caves extends back at least to the Early Aurignacian period, with minimum ages of 40.8 thousand years for a red disk, 37.3 thousand years for a hand stencil, and 35.6 thousand years for a claviform-like symbol. These minimum ages reveal either that cave art was a part of the cultural repertoire of the first anatomically modern humans in Europe or that perhaps Neandertals also engaged in painting caves.

• Received for publication 1 February 2012.
• Accepted for publication 25 April 2012.

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Anthropologists Discover Oldest Form of Wall Art

Well - we'll see.  At the rate things are changing these days, this "oldest" may not survive a year.  About time things speeded up!  Technology is changing rapidly and with it, so are the intepretations of what we're discovering (and what has already been discovered) by the experts.

Let's play a little game, darlings:  What is this?

Basically, I want to know why they say this is Aurignacian?  Not "Neanderthal?"  (Maybe the two were already blended by then, LOL!  Well, I shouldn't laugh.  Most of us with European ancestors have between 2 and 4% of so-called "Neanderthal" DNA, so who got the last laugh, heh heh heh?) 

By the way, after the oh-so-staid press release, check out some of the "vulgar vagina" (har!) headlines from around the world that this - press release? - generated?  Well, darlings, something generated these headlines!  Check them out...

Press Release:
Public release date: 14-May-2012Contact: James Devitt
james.devitt@nyu.edu
212-998-6808
New York University

Anthropologists discover earliest form of wall art

Anthropologists working in southern France have determined that a 1.5 metric ton block of engraved limestone constitutes the earliest evidence of wall art. Their research, reported in the most recent edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows the piece to be approximately 37,000 years old and offers rich evidence of the role art played in the daily lives of Early Aurignacian humans.

The research team, comprised of more than a dozen scientists from American and European universities and research institutions, has been excavating at the site of the discovery—Abri Castanet—for the past 15 years. Abri Castanet and its sister site Abri Blanchard have long been recognized as being among the oldest sites in Eurasia bearing artifacts of human symbolism. Hundreds of personal ornaments have been discovered, including pierced animal teeth, pierced shells, ivory and soapstone beads, engravings, and paintings on limestone slabs.

"Early Aurignacian humans functioned, more or less, like humans today," explained New York University anthropology professor Randall White, one of the study's co-authors. "They had relatively complex social identities communicated through personal ornamentation, and they practiced sculpture and graphic arts."

Aurignacian culture existed until approximately 28,000 years ago.

In 2007, the team discovered an engraved block of limestone in what had been a rock shelter occupied by a group of Aurignacian reindeer hunters. Subsequent geological analysis revealed the ceiling had been about two meters above the floor on which the Aurignacians lived—within arms' reach.

Using carbon dating, the researchers determined that both the engraved ceiling, which includes depictions of animals and geometric forms, and the other artifacts found on the living surface below were approximately 37,000 years old.

"This art appears to be slightly older than the famous paintings from the Grotte Chauvet in southeastern France," explained White, referring to the cave paintings discovered in 1994.

"But unlike the Chauvet paintings and engravings, which are deep underground and away from living areas, the engravings and paintings at Castanet are directly associated with everyday life, given their proximity to tools, fireplaces, bone and antler tool production, and ornament workshops."

He added that this discovery, combined with others of approximately the same time period in southern Germany, northern Italy, and southeastern France, raises new questions about the evolutionary and adaptive significance of art and other forms of graphic representation in the lives of modern human populations.

###

Woooo woooo!

Female genitalia features in world's oldest cave art, found at Abri Castanet
by Jean-Louis Santini (love that name!)
May 15, 2012

Is this world's earliest pornography?   
Daily Mail, May 16, 2012

Okay - enough!  I'm tired, I'm hungry, I've got 3 pounds of ground beef I bought on sale I've got to divide up and get a casserole going and wrap the other 2 pounds for the freezer.  Holy Mother!  A woman's work is never ever done. 

Horny Little Man?

CREDIT: photo collection of Laboratory for Human Evolutionary Studies - University of São Paulo.

So, I ask you:  does this look like a man to you?  It looks like a lizard to me... The GEICO gekko? A lizard with a giant phallus?  Is this actually a representation of a transformed shaman???

'Little Horny Man': Rock Carving of Giant Phallus Discovered

Charles Choi, LiveScience Contributor

Date: 22 February 2012 Time: 05:01 PM ET

A stick figure man with a giant phallus dubbed "the little horny man" by its discoverers is the oldest rock carving found yet in the Americas, researchers say.

These findings might shed new light on when the New World was first settled, scientists added.

The time frame during which humans first reached the Americas remains hotly debated. One key to settling this controversy would involve uncovering early examples of human artifacts, such as art.
Scientists discovered one ancient sample of such art in a cave named Lapa do Santo in central-eastern Brazil. The region is home to Luzia, the oldest human skeleton found to date in South America.

Lapa do Santo is one of the largest rock shelters excavated yet in the region, a limestone cave covering an area of about 14,000 square feet (1,300 square meters). Here, researchers have found buried human remains, tools made of stone and bone, ash from hearths, and leftovers from meals of fruit and small game.

In 2009, digging about 13 feet (4 meters) below the surface, the scientists found a rock carving or petroglyph of a man packed into the side of the cave. The figure, which appears to be squatting with his arms outstretched, is about 12 inches (30 centimeters) tall from head to feet and about 8 inches (20 centimeters) wide. [Photos of Phallus Petroglyph and Cave]

"We discovered this petroglyph in the final moments of excavation at the site," said researcher Walter Alves Neves, an archaeologist and biological anthropologist at the University of São Paulo in Brazil.

The engraving is also depicted with a relatively oversized phallus about 2 inches (5 cm) long, or about as long as the man's left arm.

"We named the figure 'the little horny man,'" Neves said.

"The figure is probably linked to some kind of fertility ritual," Neves told LiveScience. "There is another site in the same region where you find paintings with men with oversized phalluses, and also pregnant women, and even a parturition (childbirth) scene."

Carbon dating and other tests of the sediment covering the petroglyph suggest the engraving dates between 9,000 and 12,000 years old. This makes it the oldest reliably dated instance of such rock art found yet in the Americas.

When this carving is compared with other examples of early rock art found in South America, it would seem that abstract forms of thinking may have been very diverse back then, which suggests that humans settled the New World relatively early, giving their art time to diversify. For instance, at one site in Argentina named Cueva de las Manos, paintings of hands predominate, while at another site there, Cueva Epullan Grande, engravings have geometric motifs.

"It shows that about 11,000 years ago, there was already a very diverse manifestation of rock art in South America, so probably man arrived in the Americas much earlier than normally is accepted," Neves said.

The scientists detailed their findings online Feb. 22 in the journal PLoS ONE.

The World's Oldest (Yet) Known Paintings

Tee hee hee.  These ARE the oldest, until they discover some more...  Some day, they'll get it right. But until then, sigh.

Story from Gizmodo.com
Jeus Diaz, February 7, 2012

These Are the Earliest Human Paintings Ever

According to new dating tests, these are the first paintings ever made by humans. They are seals painted more than 42,000 years ago, located in the Cave of Nerja, in Málaga, Spain. And they may change our ideas about humanity's evolution. [Evolution?  Bwwwwaaaaahhhhaaaaaaaa!  On the other hand, how the hell did anyone identify these as "seals?"  I just thought they were fish, or maybe pigs without feet...]

Until now, archeologists thought that the oldest art was created during the Aurignacian period, by modern humans. But these are way older, way more primitive than the ones in Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc Cave, the 32,000-year-old paintings featured in Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams.

According to the latest dating of the charcoal found next to the paintings—used either to make the paintings or illuminate them—these seals may have been made more than 42,300 years ago. In fact, they may be as old as 43,500 years.

It's a mindblowing academic discovery, according to project leader José Luis Sanchidrián, professor at the University of Córdoba, one that can revolutionize our understanding of our history, culture and evolution:

Our latest discoveries show that neanderthals decorated their bodies with paint and had an aesthetic sense, and that's a scientific revolutions because, until now, [we] homo sapiens have attributed our selves every achievement, showing [the neanderthals] almost like monkeys.

We thought art history was exclusive to evolved humans [but that "evolved" in quotes, of course, har!], that our sensibility was "an intimate part of ourselves, the sapiens, because we think we are the thinkers." This discovery, if confirmed with further testing, proves this sapiens-centric idea wrong.

According to Sanchidrían, all the available scientific data shows that these pictures could only have been made by Homo Neanderthalensis instead of Homo Sapiens Sapiens, something completely unthinkable until this finding. [Surprise, surprise!] "The charcoals were next to the seals, which doesn't have any parallelism in paleolithic art" said the professor, "and we knew that neanderthals ate seals." And there is no proof of homo sapiens in this part of the Iberian Peninsula.

Researchers think that this cave was one of the last points in Europe in which neanderthals—who lived from 120,000 to 35,000 years ago—sought refuge, escaping the push of the Cro-Magnon, the first earliest homo sapiens to reach Europe. [Cueva de Nerja via Diario de Córdoba—In Spanish]

Er,  obviously these researchers have not kept up with the latest news on the subject.  Geez, they need to read this blog, darlings!

15,000 Year Old Cave "Paintings" Found in Swabia

Isn't Swabia where they found a carved bone "Venus"???  I'll check on that  -- (see below)

Stone Age paintings found in Swabia
Published: 9 Nov 11 07:25 CET

Archaeologists have found cave paintings thought to be Central Europe's oldest such artwork in Baden-Württemberg’s Swabian Alps.

They found four painted stones from the cave Hohle Fels near Schelklingen, although the meaning of the red-brown spots is still a mystery.

The stone paintings, thought to be 15,000 years old, are being displayed at a special exhibition at the University of Tübingen’s museum.

The spots don’t seem particularly artistic at first glance. But they are important because they represent the first time such old paintings have been found in Central Europe, although similar work has been seen in France and Spain.

The stones at Hohe Fels appear to have been painted with a mixture of red chalk and lime, with water from the cave, said excavation technician Maria Malina.

“These spots are anything but accidental,” said archaeologist Nicholas Conard who assisted on the find. “It is quite clear that they have relevant content.”

What it all really means remains unclear. There is speculation the spots could refer to shamanism or be a menstrual calendar of sorts.

Hohle Fels has been a magnet for archaeologists in recent years after researchers working there found a Venus figure and flutes thought to be 40,000 years old.

The Local/DPA/mdm

****************************************************************

Related Links:

35,000 Year Old "Venus" Figurine
November 3, 2009

World's Oldest Flute?
June 24, 2009

New "Venus" Figurine Discovered
May 15, 2009

Oh Them Spotted Horses, Oh, Them Spotted Horses...

aint no figure of my
Imagination!
No No No!  OH!

Are they real?  Or are they figments created in dark caves by torchlight, 25,000 years ago?

How arrogant for any modern-day person to assume that what those fantastic artists of 25,000 to 11,000 years ago were recording animals that didn't really exist - what baloney!  Now they're finally admitting that, yeah, those people were recording what they actually saw.  Holy Goddess!  Hmmm, some people just deserve a big Goddess slap up alongside the head, please...

The image of the beautifully rendered spotted horses, above, is from the website for the Peche Merle (Cave) Prehistory Center (scroll down to point 12).  The description:  The dotted horses about 25,000 BP (radiocarbon dated) (M+F). Right-hand horse : his small head is drawn in the natural cut of the rock, resembling a horse's head. On his back : a large red fish (it seems to be a pike) (M+F). Six stencilled black hands all around the horses. Black dots inside and outside. Red dots. Left-hand horse, in red : 7 hook-like signs (M).  The horses are interposed over the image of a bison, lower right, also taking advantage of the curve in the cave wall to render a three-dimensional effect!

Here's a modern spotted horse, image by Thomas Hackmann, 2011, from The New York Times article:

There were news stories before this one, but I chose this one from The New York Times:

Spotted Horses in Cave Art Weren’t Just a Figment, DNA Shows
By HILLARY ROSNER
Published: November 7, 2011

Roughly 25,000 years ago in what is now southwestern France, human beings walked deep into a cave and left their enduring marks. Using materials like sticks, charcoal and iron oxides, they painted images of animals on the cave walls and ceilings — lions and mammoths and spotted horses, walking and grazing and congregating in herds.       

Today, the art at the Pech-Merle cave, and in hundreds of others across Europe, is a striking testimony to human creativity well before modern times.

But what were these cave paintings, exactly? Were prehistoric artists simply sketching what they saw each day on the landscape? Or were the images more symbolic, diverging from reality or representing rare or even mystical creatures? Such questions have divided archaeologists for years.

Now, a group of researchers has used distinctly modern techniques to help decipher the mystery, at least in the case of Pech-Merle’s famous spotted horses. By comparing the DNA of modern horses and those that lived during the Stone Age, scientists have determined that these drawings are a realistic depiction of an animal that coexisted with the artists.

The research, published online on Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, grew out of an effort to discern the coat colors of ancient horses to help figure out when the animals were domesticated, a pivotal moment in the development of human societies. In general, domesticated species exist in a far greater variety of colors than wild ones, so understanding color variation in fossil animals can help pinpoint the timing.

Previous research on DNA from the bones and teeth of horses that lived 7,000 to 20,000 years ago showed that those animals were either black or bay (a brown coat with a black mane and tail). That work was published in the journal Science in 2009. Since then, geneticists have deciphered the underlying code for the spotted pattern, known as leopard, in modern horses. So the scientists went back to their samples, looking for the leopard sequence in horses that lived in Europe 11,000 to 15,000 years ago.

“There is a striking correspondence between the coat-color patterns of horses painted in Paleolithic caves of France with what geneticists found in the genotypes” — the specific genetic sequences — “of color genes,” said Hopi E. Hoekstra, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard who studies pigmentation. Dr. Hoekstra was not involved in the study but called it “very convincing.”

An author of the study, Michael Hofreiter, an evolutionary biologist at the University of York in England, said: “Why they took the effort making these beautiful paintings will always remain a miracle to us.

“It’s an enigma, but it’s also nice to see that if we go back 25,000 years, people didn’t have much technology and life was probably hard, but nevertheless they already endeavored in producing art. It tells us a lot about ourselves as a species.”

Extracting DNA from such old material is a complex process, and the potential for contamination is huge. Early studies of Neanderthal DNA were marred by contamination from humans, and led to skepticism about the field’s future.

Since then, researchers have adopted strict procedures to ensure they are not contaminating ancient samples with modern-day DNA. The procedures include analyzing ancient and contemporary material in physically separate facilities and replicating results multiple times.

“This is a whole different level of clean,” said Jessica L. Metcalf, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Colorado who also works with the Australian Center for Ancient DNA in Adelaide, where the labs that work on ancient and modern DNA are more than half a mile apart.

“We have sealed rooms with HEPA filter air flow, UV lights that sterilize when you come in,” she said. “We spend over half our time cleaning. We use a lot of bleach. You’re in this ridiculous-looking clean suit with a face shield on.”

In fact, Dr. Hofreiter said, researchers who work with ancient horse genes should not even go horseback riding. “Traces of DNA,” she said, “they just stick to people.”

Dr. Hofreiter, 38, began his career working with a pioneer of ancient DNA research, Svante Paabo. Though he intended to study taxonomy, he was so intrigued by the idea of extracting DNA from ancient material that he switched his focus. “You have this 30,000-year-old piece of feces in your hand,” he said, adding: “Well, you should wear gloves. And you can actually get to the genetic code from the animal. And I thought, this is so fascinating.”

He and his colleagues did not set out to study cave art. They were simply continuing their work on coat color in prehistoric horses. Only after they found the spotted horse gene in their ancient samples did they realize they could say something about archaeology.       

“What we found is that there were really only these three color patterns — spotted or dappled; blackish ones; and brown ones,” he said. “These are the three phenotypes we find in the wild populations. And then we realized these phenotypes are exactly the ones you see in cave paintings.”       

Terry O’Connor, an archaeologist at the University of York who collaborated on the study, said spotted horses in particular had been used to argue that cave art was more symbolic than realistic, and that as a result the finding could cause a stir. But now it is clear that some horses had a gene for that coat color. “People drew spotty horses,” he said, “because they saw spotty horses.”   

Last summer, exploring a cave in the Dordogne region, Dr. O’Connor said he became transfixed by a series of line drawings of mammoths. “They were absolutely superb, some using contours of the cave itself, capturing the size and shape and movement,” he said. “You look at that and say, ‘These guys know what the animals looked like, and they can draw.’ ” 

As techniques for working with ancient DNA have matured, scientists are now using it to answer an increasing variety of questions about the past — from what happened to a species’ genetic variation as its environment changed to how humans recolonized Europe after the last ice age to what type of microbes lived in the guts of people and animals thousands of years ago.       

“One of the things that most pleases me about this paper as a piece of ancient DNA science,” Dr. O’Connor said, “is it kind of begins with a question. These spotty horses, were they magical or real? And then science answers that. It’s not just, ‘Let’s rip the DNA out of ancient bones and see what it tells us.’ ”            

Children Were Taught Art in Neolithic Times

Well, duh!  Where else might those tiny little hand prints have come from?  We've all seen images of them from Lascaux?

From guardian.co.uk

Stone-age toddlers had art lessons, study says

Research on Dordogne cave art shows children learned to finger-paint in palaeolithic age, approximately 13,000 years ago

Caroline Davies

The Guardian, Thursday 29 September 2011

Stone age toddlers may have attended a form of prehistoric nursery where they were encouraged to develop their creative skills in cave art, say archaeologists.

Research indicates young children expressed themselves in an ancient form of finger-painting. And, just as in modern homes, their early efforts were given pride of place on the living room wall.

A Cambridge University conference on the archaeology of childhood on Friday reveals a tantalising glimpse into life for children in the palaeolithic age, an estimated 13,000 years ago.

Archaeologists at one of the most famous prehistoric decorated caves in France, the complex of caverns at Rouffignac in the Dordogne known as the Cave of a Hundred Mammoths, have discovered that children were actively helped to express themselves through finger fluting – running fingers over soft red clay to produce decorative crisscrossing lines, zig-zags and swirls.

The stunning drawings, including 158 depictions of mammoths, 28 bisons, 15 horses, 12 goats, 10 woolly rhinoceroses, four human figures and one bear, form just a small proportion of the art found within the five-mile cave system.

The majority of the drawings are flutings covering the walls and roofs of the many galleries and passages in the complex. One chamber is so rich in flutings by children it is believed to be an area set aside for them. The marks of four children, estimated to be aged between two and seven, have been identified there.

"It suggests it was a special place for children. Adults were there, but the vast majority of artwork is by children," said Jess Cooney, a PhD student at the university's archaeology department.

"It's speculation, but I think in this particular chamber children were encouraged to make more art than adults. It could have been a playroom where the children gathered or a room for practice where they were encouraged to make these marks in order that they could grow into artists and make the beautiful paintings and engravings we find throughout the cave, and throughout France and Spain. Or it could have been a room used for a ritual for particular children, perhaps an initiation of sorts."
The presence of children's art was first revealed in 2006 by archaeologists Leslie Van Gelder, of Walden University, in the US, and her husband Kevin Sharpe. Cooney, working alongside Van Gelder, has spent two years analysing the presence of the hunter-gatherer offspring.

Flutings thought to be by a five-year-old girl are the most prolific throughout the cave system. Work by four adults has also been identified, though it is possible there were two further adults present.

The juxtaposition of the flutings of individuals indicate the relationships between the cave dwellers, the researchers say. For example, the markings show that one seven-year-old girl was most often in the company of the smallest of the adults, probably a male and possibly an older brother.

"Some of the children's flutings are high up on walls and on the ceilings, so they must have been held up to make them or have been sitting on someone's shoulders," said Cooney.

Flutings by the two-year-old suggest the child's hand was guided by an adult. Cooney said: "The flutings and fingers are very controlled, which is highly unusual for a child of that age, and suggests it was being taught. The research shows us that children were everywhere, even in the deepest, darkest, caves, furthest from the entrance. They were so involved in the art you really begin to question how heavily they were involved in everyday life.

"To be honest, I think there were probably very few restrictions on what children were allowed to do, and where they were allowed to go, and who they were allowed to go with.

"The art shows us this is not an activity where children were running amok. It shows collaboration between children and adults, and adults encouraging children to make these marks. This was a communal activity."

The significance of finger flutings, also found in other caves in France, Spain, New Guinea and Australia, has been widely debated in archaeological circles. Some regard the marks as doodlings, prehistoric graffiti, while others suggest rituals.

"We don't know why people made them. We can make guesses like they were for initiation rituals, for training of some kind, or simply something to do on a rainy day," said Cooney.

"In addition to the simple, meandering lines, there are flutings of animals and shapes that appear to be crude outlines of faces, almost cartoon-like in appearance. There are hut shapes called tectiforms, markings thought to have a symbolic meaning which are only found in a very specific area of France.
Cooney said the object of her research was "to allow prehistoric children to have a voice", because so much archaeological study focused on men's activities.

"What I found in Rouffignac is that the children are screaming from the walls to be heard. Their presence is everywhere. And there is a five-year-old girl constantly shouting: 'I wanna paint, I wanna paint'."

Stone Age "Erotic Art" Discovered in Germany

I believe this is a new discovery after reading the article, but I'm not 100% certain.  I would appreciate it if anyone can confirm and provide more details.  No photos provided in the article.  Of course the headline is deliberately provocative!

Stone Age erotic art found in Germany
(AFP) – 2 days ago

BERLIN — Researchers in Germany have discovered Stone Age cave art in the country for the first time including carvings of nude women that may have been used in fertility rites, officials said Wednesday.

Archaeologists working for the Bavarian State Office for Historical Preservation came upon the primitive engravings in a cave near the southern city of Bamberg after decades searching, a spokeswoman for the authority said.

The spokeswoman, Beate Zarges, confirmed a report to appear in the weekly newspaper Die Zeit that the engravings were believed to be around 12,000 years old, which would make them the first Stone Age artwork ever found in Germany.

"They include schematic depictions of women's bodies and unidentifiable symbols, among other things," she said.

The ancient artists appear to have taken their inspiration for the erotic images from rock formations in the caves resembling breasts and penises and then carved the images in the walls of the cave, Zarges said.

Die Zeit quoted geologist and archaeologist Bernhard Haeck, a member of the discovery team, as saying that the five-metre-long (16-foot-long) chamber in the cave may have been used for fertility rituals.

"It is a place full of magic," he said.

Zarges said the examination of the site was still ongoing and thus closed to the public.

The world's oldest cave paintings are believed to be the Chauvet Pont d'Arc murals in southern France, the subject of German director Werner Herzog's most recent documentary, "Cave of Forgotten Dreams". The artwork is thought to be more than 30,000 years old.

Copyright © 2011 AFP.

Prehistoric "Red Horses" Cave Art Found in Basque Country

Unfortunately, this National Geogrpahic article also gives way too much detail, including a photograph of the entrance to the cave - to alert looters to its exact location. Way to go NG - let the looting begin.

Prehistoric Cave Art Discovered in Basque Country
Posted by Andrew Howley
May 13, 2011 

You can just make out the faint red outline of the horse head to the left of
 the "3M7" marker. Photo courtesy of Diego Garate and Joseba Rios-Garaizar.

In a locally well known cave near an industrial town in Spain, researchers have unexpectedly discovered faint images of horses and hand prints dating back some 25,000 years.

Concerned that activity at a nearby stone quarry had destroyed much of the cave of Askondo, Diego Garate of the Archaeological Museum of Biscay in Bilbao, and Joseba Rios-Garaizar of the Max Planck Institute set out to determine if any archaeological material was still intact. They entered the cave outside the town of Mañaria and searched for bones, stones, and other artifacts. Only on their way out of the cave did they noticed the paintings that they and many others had missed before. “Without a doubt,” says Garate, “[it was] a gift of destiny.”


A tracing helps to reveal a horse on the cave wall with a profile something

like a "duck bill,"  a common feature in European cave art.  Photo courtesy

Diego Garate and  Joseba Rios-Garaizar.

Speleologists had worked in Askondo in the 1970s, and left their mark in the form of a bright red “3M7″ used to catalogue the cave, but they too missed the art just inches away. “They didn’t see the red horse!” says Garate. “Better for us. We will restore the figure.”

I spoke with Diego Garate over email to get more of the story.

How often do people find new paintings in this part of Spain?

The north of Spain is the first European region where caves with paleolithic art were located [in 1879 at Altamira], and for more than a century the findings have followed one another, every time with less frequency. In fact, in the province of Biscay, only four other decorated cavities have been found since 1904, so every new finding is very important.

Do you have any theories about why horses are shown so often in European cave art?

One thing we know is that the Palaeolithic artists did not strictly paint the same animals that they hunted and ate but, for some reason that we can’t understand, they chose other ones. In the north of Spain at the time the horses of Askondo were painted, hind [red deer] was the most represented animal. There are some caves that escape this tendency, perhaps due to regional artistic differences.

How do these compare to the paintings at Altamira or other caves in the area?

The paintings located in the cave of Askondo could be contemporary to the first stage of decoration of Altamira. In Altamira’s “ceiling of the polychromes,” below the famous bison, [older] red figures of horses are detected, very similar to the ones found in [Askondo]. There are other caves in the north of Spain–La Pasiega, La Haza, El Salitre, etc.–with red painted animals near the entrance of the cave, in zones of semi-darkness where still the sunlight arrives. [This contrasts with many of the more famous images from Europe, which are found in the darkest regions of caves. --A.H.]

Are there any ways in which the cave art of Spain as a whole is different from the cave art of France?

For the first periods of artistic activity, [yes]. The advantage of the cave of Askondo is that it is halfway between both territories. This geo-strategic position is reflected in the iconography, with some rather Pyrenean (French) elements like bones fitted into the walls, and some Cantabrian (Spanish) elements like twin outlines, and with others more general elements that appear on a large scale throughout Western Europe like the horses with “duck bills” or the hand stamps.

Do people living in the area now have any special beliefs about the caves?

There is a very ancient mythology in Basque culture related to caves. In fact, there is an old legend for Askondo cave which says that a young boy from the farmhouse near the cave passed close to the cave every day to go to spin wool in another farmhouse. One day the “lamiak” (half women-half duck mythological figure) who lived in the cave told him not to come back near the cave. He didn’t take care and one day he was [attacked] and disappeared in the cave. It is also said that Askondo cave was a witches’ meeting place.

The Basque language is the oldest spoken language in Europe… This ancient heritage makes us proud and aware of the necessity to preserve it in this globalized world.

What will happen next with your work in the cave?

At the moment, we have only done a preliminary study of the paintings. It is necessary to perform a detailed inspection of all the walls in the 300 meters of cave and also to perform some digging tests to know if there is an occupation site contemporary to the paintings. Also a restoration program is planned for the worst-conserved paintings. All these studies will be the object of a monographic publication where all the results of the project will be detailed.

New 25,000 Year Old Cave Paintings Discovered in Spain

Report from Reuters.com
25,000-year-old cave paintings discovered in Spain
BILBAO | Wed May 4, 2011 2:57pm EDT

BILBAO (Reuters) - Paintings depicting horses and human hands made by prehistoric humans around 25,000 years ago have been discovered in a cave in northern Spain, regional officials said on Wednesday.

The red paintings, found by chance by archaeologists looking for signs of ancient settlements, were made around the same time as the Altamira Cave paintings -- some of the world's best prehistoric paintings discovered in northern Spain in 1879.

"It was a chance finding," archaeologist Diego Garate told Reuters.

"Although they were difficult to spot because they are badly deteriorated, our experienced eye helped us to identify them."

Experts will further explore the caves for evidence of prehistoric utensils or tools, officials said.

The first homo sapiens [loaded terminology] arrived in small groups in northern Spain around 35,000 years ago.

They cohabited for a time with the last of the Neanderthals and then developed a significant culture known as the Upper Palaeolithic, producing stone blade tools and decorating cave walls.

(Reporting by Arantza Goyoaga, Writing by Sonya Dowsett; Editing by Michael Roddy)