Saturday, October 11, 2014
INDONESIAN CAVE ART DATED TO SAME AGE AS THE OLDEST ART IN EUROPE:
Indonesian cave painting. Photograph from
http://www.npr.org/2014/10/08/354166930/indonesian
-cave-paintings-as-old-as-europes-ancient-art, attributed
to Kinza Riza/ Courtesy of Nature.com.
“For
decades, Indonesian researchers have known about rock art in limestone caves
and rock shelters on an island called Sulawesi. The hand stencils and images of
local animals, such as the "pig-deer," or babirusa were assumed to be less than
10,000 years old, because scientists thought that the humid tropical
environment would have destroyed anything older.”
"The
truth of it was, no one had really tried to date it," says Matt Tochiri of
the Human Origins Program of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural
History. "It's not easy to date rock art."
“Now,
though, in the journal Nature, a group
of researchers from Indonesia and Australia, led by Maxime Aubert and Adam
Brumm, have analyzed mineral deposits that formed on top of these paintings in
seven caves. Their analysis shows that one hand stencil is at least 39,900
years old and a painting of a babirusa is at least 35,400 years old.”
On September 20, 2014 I posted URANIUM
ISOTOPE DATING REVEALS PERHAPS THE OLDEST CAVE ART IN EUROPE which shows red
ochre negative hand prints, strikingly like the Indonesian example, which dated
to 40,800 years PB. Now we have dates literally in the same ball park that come
from virtually identical images from opposite sides of the world. To me this
implies that not only might there be a common source, but that source must be
considerably older to have allowed for the separation of populations to such geographic
extremes at that early date.
What is still waiting to be found out there?
REFERENCE:
http://www.npr.org/2014/10/08/354166930/indonesian-cave-paintings-as-old-as-europes-ancient-art.
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