HOW ABOUT CAVE ARTT CHANGING THE WAY WE SEE HISTORY ?

• A banana peel in the middle of the room some old shoes sprayed with neon paint a huge tree trunk chopped in seven Parts Modern Art can be tricky to interpret well we can at least ask the artist what message they were trying to send scientists working with cave paintings don't have that luxury but they still do their best trying to find out more about early humans through that art the oldest example of prehistoric abstract art modern humans have found so far is around 73 000 years old and it looks like a hashtag it was found in the blombo's cave in South Africa in 2011. the scientists studied it well to prove it was deliberately painted by our ancestors and not just some ocher which can produce natural pigment imprinted on the Run but when they try to recreate the ancient hashtag they realized it was most likely created with ocher crayons plus the painting is on the smoothest side of the rock so all signs point to prehistoric art we still don't know what that hashtag means but it would be super cool if it had been part of some prehistoric version of Instagram many of the later cave images explored so far are easier to understand they are of animals of all kinds the 20th century was super successful when it came to finding those especially in Western Europe in the mountains of France and Spain in 1940 four guys tried to rescue their dog that fell in a foxhole and stumbled across one of the biggest prehistoric art galleries Belasco cave it has 600 paintings mostly of animals deer bison horses bears and even Lions there are also some human figures scientists dated that are to around 15 000 years before the current ERA naming the exact date is tricky when it comes to cave paintings because they usually don't have organic material that scientists can use for carbon dating the meaning of the paintings is still a topic for discussion but they were obviously created by some really skilled hands the same hands probably made Sandstone lamps that used animal fat as fuel and fireplaces to light the workshop they use bright colors like red yellow and black all provided by natural pigments they also did some grinding mixing and heating and then applied the paints using different techniques fingers or charcoal brushes made of hair or moss and even hollow bones to spray the pigment onto the wall those artists were more advanced than you can possibly imagine more recent discoveries in other parts of the world give us a whole new understanding of art history a huge painting showing six animals native wild pigs and dwarf buffaloes chased by humans in a cave in Indonesia is a sound proof that cave art doesn't only come from Europe unlike what scientists used to believe the Indonesian heart was dated around 44 000 years ago way older than those French paintings this ancient storytelling is believed to be a landmark of human development so this discovery might even change our views on Evolution plus some of the human figures have animal features like beads and Tails it means that our ancestors were starting to develop their own mythology back then already Australia is the record holder when it comes to prehistoric cave paintings most of them are in arnam Land If you ever take a stroll around this art gallery of the past you'll see some images of koalas dingers and other Australian Staples but wait who are those guys one Theory says they could be mythical creatures formed from parts of various animals a plot of the rich imagination of aboriginal artists another theory is more scientific they could be animals that had long gone extinct researchers tried to recreate the looks of ancient animals using incomplete skeletons they had found but those guesses could be wrong because a skeleton doesn't let us see the fur fat and other features and the portraits could be wrong and while technology is pushing science forward we might actually look for answers in the past crayon sketches or answers one of the animals that often pops up in the Australian cave Chronicles is medium-sized and looks somewhat like a dog it seems to resemble a Tasmanian tiger that was wiped off the Earth in the 20th century closer studies prove that it could be a way more ancient animal though the marsupial lion which went extinct around thirty thousand years ago it had broader and shorter Jaws than the most delicately built Tasmanian tiger and large heavy floor limbs with long claws one of the paintings is missing Stripes which are a distinctive feature of any tiger archaeologists suppose that those ancient artists could have just painted over the stripes after the tiger had gone extinct that's one prehistoric way of deleting a photo with your ex from your social media another prehistoric animal that probably got painted over and out of history is the giant kangaroo at the Uber Rock complex this guy was not much like the kangaroos we know and love today it had a thick body with a long neck and it preferred hunching over to standing upright his tail was thick from beginning to end and it had a short muzzle scientists analyzed all the species of short-faced kangaroos that have lived down under along with the humans they then chose the one that matched the moves it was twice as large as present-day ruse and was too heavy to hop there's also a smaller image Atop The Kangaroo portrait it's a bird with feathers but no wings it could be an extinct emu or some other flightless bird of the past Australian caves aren't the only visual Encyclopedia of extinct megafauna the Amazon is hiding an eight mile long Stone canvas with images of animals that were here at the end of the most recent Ice Age one of these animals is the Mastodon the great grandparent of modern elephants a member of the mammoth family they were shorter than their descendants and their skull was lower and of simpler construction their legs looked too short for their long bodies what were they doing in the Amazon it looks like they came here when the climate in the region was changing and so did the vegetation of the forest Madagascar no to anyone who has seen the animated movie with the same name as the land of King Julian and his supporters has its own cave paintings and yes you can see the giant lemur there those guys grew as tall as gorillas and shared the island with now extinct elephant birds and other creatures you'll probably be happy you won't meet you still don't know why and how the giant lemurs had gone extinct but since rock art often shows humans chasing the more contemporary lemur version that could be the answer if later cave art serves as an encyclopedia of extinct megafauna the earlier more abstract version could be proof that neanderthals had their own language scientists see a direct link between the ability for symbolic thinking and the ability to have a language a professor of linguistics and Japanese language and culture at MIT says that it's tricky to study language history because it doesn't fossilize linguists have to look for other artifacts that could answer their questions cave art could be one of those another thing that could help scientists is analyzing the Acoustics in cave art areas their placement might not be random it could have to do with sounds people heard in this or that spot another question we still have to answer is why early humans made art that they do it for the sake of the process or maybe they saw it as totems to protect their Clans in the second case depicted animals would have to be way more diverse as different groups would have different protectors there are still more questions than answers and hopefully Humanity will solve the mystery at some point laughs