Bonus Post - Follow-up to my rant about scientists

Regular daily post is below this one.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/22/17041426/neanderthals-cave-painting-spain-uranium-dating

On Jan 19 of this year, I had a rant about how scientists were very slow to figure out that Neanderthals were not some separate, unrelated branch. It offended my inner Neanderthal because I thought, even as a teenager, that it was obvious we were related. So, I am delighted to share this update about some cave art.

Using a new and improved radioactive dating technique, researchers discovered that paintings in three different caves were created more than 64,800 years ago. That means the paintings were created 20,000 years before modern humans, or Homo sapiens, arrived in Spain, according to a study published today in the journal Science. The discovery makes these the oldest examples of cave paintings in the world and the first to be attributed to Neanderthals.

One of the points I try to make in all of my classes is that the urge to make art is primal. If you take a yard stick and put 2018 at one end and 64,000 years ago at the other end - all of recorded history is in the first two inches on the yard stick. That makes 2-inches where we have some recorded information and then 34-inches where life was fairly primitive. So, think about life in the caves. No supermarkets, no fridge, no Monopoly, no LLBean. But they did manage to decorate the walls. I'm guessing they had some singing and dancing and skits, but they forgot to charge their phones and post any recordings on YouTube - so the only records we have are on the walls. I guess they find a few beads. I just checked and it seems that the oldest beads are 100,000 years old. So, it's safe to assume that the urge to decorate goes back at least 2 yard sticks. [Shout out to MBT: make-up artists probably predate the bead makers and interior designers.]

If you haven't seen it, Cave of Forgotten Dreams is a wonderful film about France's Chauvet Cave.

The point is this - if you are drawn to making art - and we need to include all the arts - embrace it as a primal urge and don't let anyone tell you that it is *just* a hobby or a simple pastime. Enjoy that time you spend puttering and acknowledge that it is an essential part of daily life.

Old beads.