Oldest painting discovered, and it's neanderthal

[Jeff]

And it looks like a double helix?



These Are the Earliest Human Paintings Ever

Feb 7 2012

According to new dating tests, these are the first paintings ever made by humans. They are seals painted more than 42,000 years ago, located in the Cave of Nerja, in Málaga, Spain. And they may change our ideas about humanity's evolution.

Until now, paleontologists thought that the oldest art was created during the Aurignacian period, by modern humans. But these are way older, way more primitive than the ones in Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc Cave, the 32,000-year-old paintings featured in Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams.

...

According to Sanchidrían, all the available scientific data shows that these pictures could only have been made by Homo Neanderthalensis instead of Homo Sapiens Sapiens, something completely unthinkable until this finding. "The charcoals were next to the seals, which doesn't have any parallelism in paleolithic art" said the professor, "and we knew that neanderthals ate seals." And there is no proof of homo sapiens in this part of the Iberian Peninsula.

Researchers think that this cave was one of the last points in Europe in which neanderthals—who lived from 120,000 to 35,000 years ago—sought refuge, escaping the push of the Cro-Magnon, the first earliest homo sapiens to reach Europe.

http://gizmodo.com/5883082/this-is-the- ... -ever-made


Comment posted to original story: Does this look like DNA to anybody else?

[Simulist]

Yes. It looks like the Double Helix.

That was my first thought, at my first glimpse of this page.

(Enki? Are you still out there?)

[Freitag]

Looks like seals to me. (Of course, I also see the double helix resemblance.)

Or maybe it was... Ancient Aliens?

[Perelandra]

My first thought, sustenance, ergo animals.

[annie aronburg]

looks like a cookbook to me

[DoYouEverWonder]

Each one has twelve stripes.

Wish we could see the rest of them to see any other patterns.

[Harvey]

Each one has twelve stripes.

Wish we could see the rest of them to see any other patterns.

Plenty of questions.

They appear to be face to face. Why? Perhaps the third which appears as an outline is likewise conjoined out of view. What is the single barb at the aft end of each object? What do the stripes represent?

To begin, I would argue fish rather than seals. That it also recalls a DNA strand is of interest. And to reiterate DYEW I'd love to see everything. There will likely be other patterns.

[barracuda]

This might be the oldest known painting, but it is pretty obviously not the first painting. There are a number of aspects to this representation that indicate it to be the product of a well established school or tradition of such work.

• - The artist demostrates a technique for preparing his chalk tool and keeping it at a predetermined thickness throughout the drawing.
  
  - The technique of drawing on a surface which describes or mimics the contours of the image portrayed (used at Chauvet, Lascaux, and many other sites) is already here highly advanced, as the artist has chosen a perfectly rounded object to add the proper dimensionality to the plumpness of the seal bodies.
  
  - The drawing shows at least two different line weights, each with it's own distinctive purpose: the heavier line completely surrounds and defines the shape of the form as the lighter, thinner line adds the internal details.
  
  - There is a degree of stylisation in the figures of the seals which might indicate an established, formalised shorthand rather than an invention originating in this particular painting.
  
  - There appears to be the knowledge of the foreground/background relationship, as the lowest seal's face partially obscures the face of the next seal up, and so is visualised as "in front of". This is also probably telling of the use of an established formalised style of representation.

Far from being primitive, this picture looks almost classical in its adherence to a series of representational rules which are aready highly codified into a vocabulary. In my opinion, some beetlebrowed folks had been at this for a long, long time before this painting was made.

[Freitag]

Or the world's earliest keyword hijack. The Neanderthals were conducting unpopular Navy SEAL raids against the Cro Magnon invaders. Most Neanderthals were against the war. These paintings are subliminal inoculation against the anti-war editorials that were appearing in the newsrocks. There was probably an Occupy Wall Cave event, at which protestors hurled rocks at the police (which, after all, was the most advanced military technology at the time).

Or, you know, aliens.

[Harvey]

Or the world's earliest keyword hijack. The Neanderthals were conducting unpopular Navy SEAL raids against the Cro Magnon invaders. Most Neanderthals were against the war. These paintings are subliminal inoculation against the anti-war editorials that were appearing in the newsrocks. There was probably an Occupy Wall Cave event, at which protestors hurled rocks at the police (which, after all, was the most advanced military technology at the time).

Or, you know, aliens.

Walkin down LOL street...

[Nordic]

Or the world's earliest keyword hijack. The Neanderthals were conducting unpopular Navy SEAL raids against the Cro Magnon invaders. Most Neanderthals were against the war. These paintings are subliminal inoculation against the anti-war editorials that were appearing in the newsrocks. There was probably an Occupy Wall Cave event, at which protestors hurled rocks at the police (which, after all, was the most advanced military technology at the time).

Or, you know, aliens.

Hm, yeah, maybe it's just religious propaganda.

[Harvey]

Hm, yeah, maybe it's just religious propaganda.

The original Ichthys with the greek letters superimposed is the star, the mandala, the medicine wheel, whatever you like, or in the version you showed it's also the greek character 'alpha' :

[barracuda]

The Neanderthals were conducting unpopular Navy SEAL raids against the Cro Magnon invaders. Most Neanderthals were against the war.

C'mon, man. All that neanderthal vs. cro-magnon bullshit is just more (s)election year divide and conquer tactics. WAKE UP HOMO

[TheDuke]

This might be the oldest known painting, but it is pretty obviously not the first painting.

This. Symptomatic of 'science journalism'.

[Nordic]

The Neanderthals were conducting unpopular Navy SEAL raids against the Cro Magnon invaders. Most Neanderthals were against the war.

C'mon, man. All that neanderthal vs. cro-magnon bullshit is just more (s)election year divide and conquer tactics. WAKE UP HOMO