Peopling of the Earth

[Jeroen Pelgrom]

I'm a total novice when it comes to rock art

THE place in europe for rock art is the Dordogne. Really fascinating! (i know a good camping there!)
The dates of some rock art there also about 20000 years apart!

The tourguides said that in the Dordogne these caves were not occupied all the time but at some periodes. When people "rediscovered" some caves with art they were probaby as mystified as we are. Also, they claimed that some paintings of Mammouths were made in a period when the creates were not there, leading to a speculation that some artist were copying older art.

[tlclark]

Thanks William,

I am not a chemist of a physcist. I know some of the methods but clearly not all! and many are being created all the time.

Basically I hand it off to the labs and say "tell me how old this is" or at least I will when I ever have an example.

What's amazing about these sites is their longevity. Some appear to be in continuous, or near continuous use with some breaks, from about 20,000 BCE right down to the neolithic era.

That makes them by far, the oldest continuous religious shrines in the world!

[Restitvtvs]

So, it's possible to date the material used for making the cave art?

Depends on the materials that were used as pigments. First, I'll mention a few other methods used to estimate ancient artwork age.

Many years ago, I researched and wrote a hefty term paper about "desert varnish" (mostly iron and magnesium oxides) for possible environmental geology applications. This also has applications for dating rock art, including much the former southern Roman Empire. Various researchers have tried to estimate desert varnish deposition rate and use this to date rock art in the Western US, Australia, Africa, etc. Results are mixed. Desert varnish deposition rates vary, depending on many environmental factors (e.g., precipitation, temperature, solar radiation, wind abrasion [natural sand blasting], etc.), which makes desert varnish dating somewhat less reliable than using cave calcium carbonate dating, but it's better than nothing.

Patina dating is another method. Patinas result from chemical reactions with the artwork materials, rather than deposition of new materials on the artwork materials. Patina formation rates are also affected by many environmental factors. However, with suitable "calibration" (e.g., using other objects of known age, that are made of same material, were in or near the same area, and were always under the same environmental [soil, moisture, temperature, light, vegetation, exposure, etc)] conditions, then patina dating can be useful.

Travis discussed "hydration". Silicate hydration rates are also affected by many environmental factors. Silicate hydration dating (e.g., using quartzs [chert, flint, jasper, agate, onyx, sard, carnelian, chalcedony, etc.], feldspars, micas, obsidians, etc.), when calibrated using the same principles as for patina dating calibration, can also be useful.

Back to your question.

Most ancient pigment materials were seriously aged and often partly to very weathered long before they were prepared and used. That would give very erroneous artwork ages. Estimating additional weathering of the material since they were used is possible, but you would need a protected sample of the materials to chemically compare with the materials on the artwork (from the same batch as the sample), and since variable environmental factors over long periods can be major "confounding factors", that would make the results somewhat to seriously questionable.

Charcoal carbon is one material dating exception. As Travis discussed, it usually doesn't stick around so long. Furthermore, the carbon can be "contaminated" with younger carbon from other sources.

Despite these (and many other) dating methods' limitations (usually shown by including a "+/-" margin of error with the age/date, etc.), when using age/date estimates with caveats/cautions, I think they are more useful than not.

[tlclark]

Here's a conversation I had just today with a friend of mine in the anthropology dept.

Presumably we are all utlimately of African origin and most of the world has a phenotype that favors darker skin, hair and eyes.

So why the heck are the Europeans so diverse in phenotypes, particularly when none of our closest indo-european relatives, Persians, Indians, Austrailian Aborigones are?

It can't be evolution, since many non-indoeuropean northern dwelling peoples, such as the Inuit and others, have not developed the same phenotype.

Presumably we were once dark in complexion and coloring.

What happened? What cultural/biological practice could account for such a bizarre set of recessive genes?

[Robert Vermaat]

What happened? What cultural/biological practice could account for such a bizarre set of recessive genes?

Don't you remember? We're the Supperrace from Outer Space! :twisted:

[GALLA PLACIDIA]

Are you sure Robert????? :roll: We are the Supperrrace?????, :lol: :lol:

:wink:

[tlclark]

So super we have to invent our own tanning machines to make us look like everyone else and give ourselves skin cancer to boot? :roll:

More evidence of our "superrace"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Force

BTW - if anyone bothers to take the topic seriously, let me know.

[TITVS SABATINVS AQVILIVS]

Precisely: we were the superrace: the Hyperboreans!! Do you remember the Saturn's reign and the Golden Age, the Solar Age, the Heroes Age? According to the traditional myths of the ancient Greeks and Romans, to the caldaic myths, to the Vedas and to many others, Men and Gods were the same in the sunlight home Hyperborea/Thule... Aurum=Sol

[quote]Writers such as Jean-Sylvain Bailly (1736-1793), the Rev. Dr. William Warren (1800s), Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1856-1929) and H.S. Spencer (1900s), developed out theories, often borrowing from earlier sources, attempting to prove man’s origins in the Polar region.

Tilak’s book Arctic Home (published 1903) begins by stating the well known fact that warm weather remains in the Arctic regions, which shows the climate was far different during the interglacial period. According to Tilak, scientists do concede the existence, in the past, of a warm circumpolar continent, and the circumstances there would not have been nearly unfavourable as imagined.

Tilak was convinced the ancient Indian Vedic texts point unmistakably to a “realm of the godsâ€

[Robert Vermaat]

Are you sure Robert????? :roll: We are the Supperrrace?????, :lol: :lol:
:wink:

Only in joking.

[GALLA PLACIDIA]

Are you sure Robert????? :roll: We are the Supperrrace?????, :lol: :lol:
:wink:

Only in joking.

Yes I know!!!! Robert this web is beautiful!! :wink:

[Arthes]

I've always had a fascination with Aborigines as I believe they were as close as we could get to men and women of the late Stone Age...
Their beliefs, art, music and whole culture is a survival of the past...to study them and to learn from them, is to know what our earlier ancestors were like...
Not everybody sees it like that though....some people treat them as pains in the butt, in their own country....
regards
Arthes

[GALLA PLACIDIA]

Yes, we would have to have a conception more opened of society!
Our forbears had to survive but taking place for the intersocial relations, that coming to to practices like the music or the painting; small societies that thanks to them we are today here, but today many of these values already have got lost, it is a shame that the human being is a so individualistic!!!!! :x

:wink: