https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1806-y

Earliest hunting scene in prehistoric art

Here we describe an elaborate rock art panel from the limestone cave of Leang Bulu’ Sipong 4 (Sulawesi, Indonesia) that portrays several figures that appear to represent therianthropes hunting wild pigs and dwarf bovids; this painting has been dated to at least 43.9 ka on the basis of uranium-series analysis of overlying speleothems. This hunting scene is—to our knowledge—currently the oldest pictorial record of storytelling and the earliest figurative artwork in the world.

A speleothem is a secondary calcite deposit left behind from water seepage. Uranium in the calcium carbonate decays into thorium at a steady rate, so by comparing the relative levels of the isotopes of these elements in the deposit a very accurate age can be surmised, specifically 43.9kya for the oldest deposit.

Therianthropes?

Fenrir wrote:Therianthropes?

I'm never really into the suppositious elements of these discussions - it could be invoking the great deer spirit for help in the hunt - it could be a transmutation ritual to embody the hunters with the powers of nature - it could be... just as it could be something the artist just thought was fucking cool, or perhaps they were just shit at drawing.


Edit: Oh wait... I might have misread your post. Was that a wtf does that word mean? It's like 'lycanthropy' - the ability to shapeshift into a kind of half-human half-animal or metamorphize into an animal shape from the Greek 'therion' meaning beast.

Spearthrower wrote:

Fenrir wrote:Therianthropes?

I'm never really into the suppositious elements of these discussions - it could be invoking the great deer spirit for help in the hunt - it could be a transmutation ritual to embody the hunters with the powers of nature - it could be... just as it could be something the artist just thought was fucking cool, or perhaps they were just shit at drawing.


Edit: Oh wait... I might have misread your post. Was that a wtf does that word mean? It's like 'lycanthropy' - the ability to shapeshift into a kind of half-human half-animal or metamorphize into an animal shape from the Greek 'therion' meaning beast.

There are classifications that use(d) terms like "titanothere" or "Uintatherium". Uinta is a reference to the American West, if you inta that.

A horse is a horse, of course of course.

If you get a chance to visit the caves where earlier humans have played Picasso it's a very interesting "link" ( was for me )...as it brings distant ancestors into perspective seeing their work and in particular their hand prints.


https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/ ... 180954582/

It felt as if was done yesterday. I can't recall which cave in France but the entrance was buried thousands of years ago so the 25k old details were preserved until re-discovered last century by some lost kid. Got the same odd shiver of history I had when realizing that triumphal arch had Roman soldiers parading through 2k years ago.

Have not had the same reaction to aboriginal paintings in Australia for some reason