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Thus Spake Zarathustra
Jul. 19th, 2014 11:46 amJust read an interesting news item which is making me marvel at something.
The earliest versions of several major developments in human culture are all known to a high degree of certainty to have been created between about thirty thousand and thirty-five thousand years ago. This is an astonishingly short period of time.
These actual, physical items include oldest known loom. The Lion Man carving. The oldest known flute. While the oldest known cave paintings - in Cantabria Spain - go back to about 40k Years Before Present, the next oldest - in Chauvet Cave, France - were made during two distinct periods, and are so advanced over the Cantabria art that for years there was dispute about their age.
The two periods were about thirty-five thousand and thirty thousand years ago. While some long considered the art "too advanced" to be that old, in recent years, extensive work using multiple methods has confirmed the dates.
Some of these "firsts" come from recent discoveries, others from modern methods applied to old ones. The item which prompted this writing was news that redating human footprints found in a Romanian cave in the Sixties has moved their age from 15k YBP to over 35k YBP.
Since far more was lost than preserved, given how much we're finding from that period the artistic and technological developments must have been around for a while before these items were created. This points to something going on with humans around 35k to 40k Years Before Present. Most likely due to changing environment through time.
Or maybe something _very interesting_ happened about thirty-five thousand years ago. :-)
The earliest versions of several major developments in human culture are all known to a high degree of certainty to have been created between about thirty thousand and thirty-five thousand years ago. This is an astonishingly short period of time.
These actual, physical items include oldest known loom. The Lion Man carving. The oldest known flute. While the oldest known cave paintings - in Cantabria Spain - go back to about 40k Years Before Present, the next oldest - in Chauvet Cave, France - were made during two distinct periods, and are so advanced over the Cantabria art that for years there was dispute about their age.
The two periods were about thirty-five thousand and thirty thousand years ago. While some long considered the art "too advanced" to be that old, in recent years, extensive work using multiple methods has confirmed the dates.
Some of these "firsts" come from recent discoveries, others from modern methods applied to old ones. The item which prompted this writing was news that redating human footprints found in a Romanian cave in the Sixties has moved their age from 15k YBP to over 35k YBP.
Since far more was lost than preserved, given how much we're finding from that period the artistic and technological developments must have been around for a while before these items were created. This points to something going on with humans around 35k to 40k Years Before Present. Most likely due to changing environment through time.
Or maybe something _very interesting_ happened about thirty-five thousand years ago. :-)
