Mythical Beings May Be Earliest Imaginative Cave Art by Humans

Mythical Beings May Be Earliest Imaginative Cave Art by Humans

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/11/science/cave-art-indonesia.html?te=1&nl=morning-briefing&emc=edit_NN_p_20191212§ion=whatElse?campaign_id=9&instance_id=14478&segment_id=19530&user_id=6d02106d74d1b777cf2232e46da82a4a®i_id=103169113ion=whatElse

Excerpt: “This scene may not be a depiction of an actual hunting scene but could be about animistic beliefs and the relationship between people and animals, or even a shamanic ritual,” said Sue O’Connor, an archaeologist at Australian National University who was not involved in the study. These interpretations are speculative, however, and the original inspiration for the painting, as well as its significance to the humans who created it, is likely to remain a mystery. The rock art predates the next oldest representation of a character with a mix of human and animal figures, found in a cave in Germany, by about 4,000 years. It is also more than 20,000 years older than a hunting scene on the walls of France’s Lascaux Cave. [After all this time, look at the crispness of the animal’s outline and form. One has to wonder how much effort it took the artist(s?) To make the paints, the applicator(s?), design and execute this work. Was it hours, months, or years in the making? How sophisticated at finding pigments did they have to be? Was it merely an entertainment, or was it something religious in nature? Was their technological level carved wood, chipped stone, or refined base metals? Lots of questions without any answers. Ron P.]