I previously blogged about the deteriorating conditions of the famous cave paintings at Lascaux. On a more upbeat note, there is another extensive cave system - the Chauvet Cave - that also has spectacular Paleolithic art. Especially when you consider that the images embedded above were drawn 30,000 years ago - it's truly impressive artwork.
All of the source links from this 2008 post have undergone linkrot over the years, but I'm reposting it for 2025 to add some interesting observations from the most recent issue of The Atlantic:
All of the source links from this 2008 post have undergone linkrot over the years, but I'm reposting it for 2025 to add some interesting observations from the most recent issue of The Atlantic:
When the American republic was founded, the Earth was no more than 75,000 years old. No contemporary thinker imagined it could possibly be older. Thus Thomas Jefferson was confident that woolly mammoths must still live in “the northern and western parts of America,” places that “still remain in their aboriginal state, unexplored and undisturbed by us.”The idea that mammoths or any other kind of creature might have ceased to exist was, to him, inconceivable. “Such is the œconomy of nature,” he wrote in Notes on the State of Virginia, “that no instance can be produced of her having permitted any one race of her animals to become extinct; of her having formed any link in her great work so weak as to be broken.”
Those illusory behemoths roaming out there somewhere beyond the Rockies remind us that the world of the Founding Fathers is in some ways as alien to us as ours would be to them... The originalist fallacy that dominates the current Supreme Court—the pretense that it is possible to read the minds of the Founders and discern what they “really” meant—in fact turns the Founders into ventriloquists’ dummies. We express our own prejudices by moving their lips.
It is fascinating to me that Thomas Jefferson, arguably one of the best educated and progressive thinkers of colonial America, would not have any concept of the age of the earth (or the cosmos, of course).
"This 'Art' or historic record is most essential in the determining ancient ancestral occupations. I, for one, find these ancient illustrations invaluable to ascertain Humans in a time when all of our environment was a different world. I would only insist that these stories be compiled and told to our species. What a wonderful link and forensic research potential.
ReplyDeleteSeems a bit oxymoronic of Thomas to deny the fact of extinction, while using the actual word in the sentence.
ReplyDeleteMaybe the word extinction had another meaning before things ceased to be around.
It does seem odd, but the word does date back to MIddle English, and was applied to non-biologic items and customs.
DeleteI had the same thought. The Latin root for extinct means "no longer burning", but now it seems to singularly applied to death of species. We use extinguished for fires now.
DeleteThe first cave paintings were discovered in about 1940. Until then, Neanderthals were considered brutish and ape-like. Since then, our concept of the Neanderthals has evolved and it is said today that Neanderthals would blend into the crowd on a subway if suitably dressed. Further, we have discovered many more examples of cave art around the world, including some across Europe that seem to share a dictionary of symbols (though we have no idea what the symbols might mean, if anything). The concept of a static biological world that included an unchanged humanity lasted for millennia, but was overturned in a century.
ReplyDeleteThe legal theory of the originalists has another underlying flaw. Why would we even want to apply today the views of slave-owning misogynists using primitive technology to a world they would not understand? They anticipated this situation by including an amendment process that they immediately used themselves. Furthermore, they were propagating a non-monarchist world order upending “the natural order” and the “divine right of kings.” Of course they expected changes in the law and anticipated new interpretations thereof. Originalist judges are the very activist judge they decry.
ReplyDeleteHistory should begin with #MeToo. All else is tainted and irrelevant.
DeleteIn the 18th century, they simply didn't know the age of the earth.
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Earth#Early_calculations
https://www.teachastronomy.com/textbook/The-Earth-Moon-System/Early-Estimates-of-Earths-Age/#
There were people that had reasonable estimations, but just as many that were horribly wrong, and the values weren't converging so confusion ruled.
In fact, one of the reasons why Newton published so little during his lifetime, was that he was trying to figure out the age of the earth. He even got an estimate of a few billion years. But surely that had to be wrong since everybody knew the correct answer was about 6000 years as referenced by the bible. The confusion about these experiments made him doubt all his other work. Only at his deathbed, when Keppler had started publishing his work on planetary motion did Newton's students convince him to publish his Principia. Note that Newton's stepfather was a reverend so religion was close.
Many other Renaissance scientists also struggled with the giant gap between their estimates and the "known" bible answer. Also note that Galileo was thrown in prison not long before Newton's life for his crazy idea that the sun was in the center of the solar system. People were deeply religious and it was a good idea to not stray too far from the religious facts.
Question for other readers: How did scientists outside of Europe do with estimations of the age of the earth? I know some Greeks and Egyptians has estimations of a few billion years, but again that was within a pool of many other wildly different numbers. Was there anyone who had a good idea backed by some reasonable data?
The Mayan creation date was about 3000 yrs BCE, but they had units for up to a billion (?for future, or for previous cycles?)
DeleteIt has been years since I've seen any of these cave art drawings. So beautiful, thanks for reposting.
ReplyDeleteThe Abenaki name for mammoth is "Adebaskedon"; giant creatures, including mammoths, are called "Gici Awas".
ReplyDeleteMore about that and the 'ages' here: https://www.uvm.edu/place/towns/greensborobend/abenaki.php
Excellent link, which I have forwarded to interested members of my family. Perhaps I can work some of the material into a future blog post. Thank you.
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