Graham Hancock has been on one of the great journeys of all time and has discovered the most important moment in history: the moment when the human mind began.
The human body and brain were exactly as they are now as long as 130,
000 years ago. Then, about 30,000 years ago, there was an explosion of cave art of unforgettable mastery. Then
Linda Moulton Howe interviews the scientist who has been researching some VERY strange signals from the center of the galaxy!
Cave paintings are paintings found on cave walls and ceilings, and especially refer to those of prehistoric origin. The earliest such art in
Europe dates back to the Aurignacian period, approximately 40,000 years ago, and is found in the
El Castillo cave in
Cantabria, Spain. The exact purpose of the paleolithic cave paintings is not known.
Evidence suggests that they were not merely decorations of living areas, since the caves in which they have been found do not have signs of ongoing habitation. They are also often located in areas of caves that are not easily accessible. Some theories hold that cave paintings may have been a way of communicating with others, while other theories ascribe a religious or ceremonial purpose to them.
Nearly 340 caves have now been discovered in
France and
Spain that contain art from prehistoric times. Initially, the age of the paintings had been a contentious issue, since methods like radiocarbon dating can produce misleading results if contaminated by samples of older or newer material, and caves and rocky overhangs (where parietal art is found) are typically littered with debris from many time periods. But subsequent technology has made it possible to date the paintings by sampling the pigment itself and the torch marks on the walls. The choice of subject matter can also indicate chronology. For instance, the reindeer depicted in the
Spanish cave of Cueva de las Monedas places the drawings in the last
Ice Age.
The oldest known cave art comes from the
Cave of El Castillo in northern Spain.
Hand stencils and disks made by blowing paint onto the wall in El Castillo cave were found to date back to at least 40,800 years, making them the oldest known cave art in Europe, 5--10,000 years older than previous examples from France. This date coincides with the earliest known evidence for
Homo sapiens in Europe. Because of their age, some scientists have conjectured that the paintings may have been made by Neanderthals.
The second-oldest known cave art is that of
Chauvet Cave in France, the paintings of which date to earlier than
30,000 BCE (
Upper Paleolithic) according to radiocarbon dating. Some researchers believe the drawings are too advanced for this era and question this age. However, more than 80 radiocarbon dates had been taken by
2011, with samples taken from torch marks and from the paintings themselves, as well as from animal bones and charcoal found on the cave floor. The radiocarbon dates from these samples show that there were two periods of creation in Chauvet: 35,000 years ago and 30,000 years ago. One of the surprises was that many of the paintings were modified repeatedly over thousands of years, possibly explaining the confusion about finer paintings that seemed to date earlier than cruder ones. In 2009, spelunkers discovered drawings in
Coliboaia Cave in
Romania, stylistically comparable to those at Chauvet. An initial dating puts the age of an image in the same range as Chauvet: about 32,000 years old.
In
Australia, cave paintings have been found on the
Arnhem Land plateau showing megafauna which are thought to have been extinct for over 40,000 years, making this site another candidate for oldest known painting; however, the proposed age is dependent on the estimate of the extinction of the species seemingly depicted. Another
Australian site, Nawarla Gabarnmang, has charcoal drawings that have been radiocarbon-dated to 28,000 years, making it the oldest site in Australia and among the oldest in the world for which reliable date evidence has been obtained.
Other examples may date as late as the
Early Bronze Age, but the well-known Magdalenian style seen at
Lascaux in France (c. 15,000
BCE) and
Altamira in Spain died out about
10,000 BCE, coinciding with the advent of the
Neolithic period. Some caves probably continued to be painted over a period of several thousands of years.
- published: 23 Nov 2013
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