But this is no ordinary response. On the 15th of August 2012, hundreds of Twitter messages from people around the world that were compiled into one big ‘hello!’, and beamed out into the cosmos. The reason why this message is special is because the average Joe has had the chance to say their hello and have it beamed out across space, with the chances of contacting alien life. Celebrities and some politicians have contributed too.

How the signal got its name

But why reply to a message received from space? Well on the 15th of August 1977, A radio signal, 30 times more powerful than the average radiation from deep space, was detected by the ‘Big Ear’ radio observatory, located at Ohio State University. The 72 second transmission was picked up coming from the Sagittarius constellation. Where did the signal get the name ‘WOW!’? The astronomer who detected the signal had highlighted the interesting set of digits and scrawled at the side of the page the litters ‘WOW!’. However, this signal was never detected again. The signal was expected to appear three minutes apart in each of the horns, but this did not happen.

As you would think this would be an exciting moment for humanity in general, responding to the signal has been met with a lot of criticism, and it’s not hard to see why. Broadcasting our existence into the vast and infinite universe could be a very dangerous move. Modern Science knows very little about the universe. We don’t know how many civilisations are out there which are capable of interstellar travel. And if they are capable of interstellar travel, then we can only logically assume that their technology and stage in evolution is greatly ahead of our own. If they find out we are here, could we be a food source for them? Funny to think of that really. But we could also be seen to be primitive by some, and therefore seen as slave material if they arrive looking resources. Would they come to us in peace or would they come to conquer?

The general location in which the signal was detected. Determining a precise location in the sky was complicated by the fact that the Big Ear telescope used two feed horns to search for signals, each pointing to a slightly different direction in the sky following Earth’s rotation; the Wow! signal was detected in one of the horns but not in the other, although the data was processed in such a way that it is impossible to determine in which of the two horns the signal entered.

But realistically, what are the chances that alien life don’t know we are here? Personally, I’d say very slim. With historical evidence and accounts of extraterrestrial encounters and visitation, it is hard to deny that even some of the more hostile alien life know of our existence. People to this day have their ancestry linked to alien life that have visited the planet before. Ancient depictions and writings have shown us where some of these ETs came from. Other ancient writings and indeed ancient oral account which have been passed down through generations among remote tribes have indicated to us that we have been in contact since ancient times. Many ancient civilizations have told and shown us that they got their amazing mathematical and astronomical knowledge from the ‘star people’ or Annunaki.

Statues of these ‘gods’ were created and to the exact specifications of these beings. The average Annunaki being is said to be around 8ft tall. To this day, these statues are in museums and at temples. The only problem is that modern scientists cannot get round the idea that these statues were built to depict actual beings, rather, their thoughts are that the statues were made taller than humans to symbolise the importance of the ‘god’ status. They can’t understand that the ancients told us of things as they were. They gave accurate historical accounts of how they came to be, how they received their advanced knowledge and where their ‘gods’ came from. They told us of things about the universe, even our own solar system, that we never knew up until the 30 years ago in some cases. So why dismiss their claims if what they have told us is accurate?

One of many cave art depictions that can be found all over the world. They seem to follow a similar theme. The heads in this are either surrounded by a halo or perhaps an interpretation of a helmet.
These depictions look like the ‘grays’ and are found in Kimberly, Australia and have been dated around 3000BC

While there are folklore and mythological stores that originate from these people, we must also understand and recognise their advanced knowledge. Who’s to say that they are lying or making up stories of where they got their supreme knowledge of physics, mathematics and astronomy?

But while it is wise to be cautious about sending signals out into the infinite cosmos, I do think that most of these claims of hypocrisy are indeed unfounded and uncalled for. I am confident, based on the historical accounts and in some cases modern-day accounts, that extraterrestrials already know we are here. They have visited and interacted with us. That is enough reason for me to believe we are not alone. And personally, I thinking sending this message is a great thing as it can show them how well we have come along in technological development. If only we could translate that development into spiritual development. Things would be very different and I believe for the best.

Namaste

Ryan and Doug Kirk, geared up and ready to head to Scotland for the next leg of their trip

In the morning, we took Doug and Ryan off to the train station for their big day in London and we headed up to Nottinghamshire for my official birthday day out. First, we headed to Creswell Crags but made such good time that we stopped off at the Sherwood Forest Craft Centre on the way. It’s housed in a converted stables and coach house so that all the different artists (stonework, wood carving, stained glass, painting, etc) have shops and workshops around the edges, where stalls would’ve been I think, and then the open center hall is used for an open market display with a glass roof. In keeping with my insane love of pretty rocks, I found a fossil/mineral store and bought a polished green stone to remind me of Sherwood.

Heading on to Creswell Crags, we signed up for the Rock Art Cave Tour and killed a little time in the excellent tea shop there.

Not pictured: a really tasty scone

I also noticed they had some homemade cheese and chorizo scones and I remarked that it was an interesting combination which sounded really tasty. The cafe guy running the till perked up and went on about the recipe, how good the chorizo was and how you got a bit of paprika on the aftertaste and how it was his idea, so I complimented him on it again. (Compliments are free and cost nothing to give but they can mean so much to someone. I find people who don’t compliment to usually be stingy in all areas of their lives.)

We met up with Emma our tour guide by the giant stuffed prehistoric hyena and she got us fitted out with white hard hats and off on the walk to the caves. She immediately said for us to let her know if her accent was hard to understand and she’d repeat anything. I did have the heart to tell her that I understood her perfectly because she sounded exactly like Jane Horrocks who plays Bubble on Absolutely Fabulous (and also was the voice of Babs in Chicken Run). It was eerie–see below and then just imagine the same woman using terms like “archaeological significance” and “prehistoric reconstruction”.

Hike along the crag rift to reach the caves

Because we were on the official tour, we got to go in past the locked iron bar gate and up onto the platform into the cave. The platform was added at some point to bring you back up to where the floor of the cave was in prehistoric times, before explorers in the Victorian era used dynamite to blow out the floor of the cave several yards down in a search for what they considered to be “the interesting stuff”. I’m not sure I can forgive them for this one.

Our guide Emma did a great job of giving us the whole history of the cave and how in 2003 a team of scientists had come to study the caves in Creswell Crags for any signs of cave art and did eventually find a couple of pieces in the caves on the right side of the rift. They knew from other evidence that only the caves on the right had been inhabited so didn’t think it worthwhile to examine the caves on the left, but the director encouraged them to check it out so they went into the Church Hole cave and didn’t see anything (all the carvings are on the ceiling and since the Victorians had kindly lowered the floor by about 10 feet, it was nigh on impossible to see anything). But one of them crawled up on a ledge and was contorting around which apparently made a very funny sight so his friends took a picture of him to laugh at later, but when they developed the film they saw the famous deer carving on the cave wall beside their friend. (They canceled their plans to go on to Wales and started studying these caves instead and now Creswell has been verified as the sight of the only cave art in Britain and also the northernmost cave art in the world.)

Detail of the head of the deer/ibex/goat carving

Lines drawn to help show the carving lines (we got the benefit of this with Emma’s green pointy pen)

Emma took us around the cave and we studied about six or seven individual carvings. With each one she helped highlight the lines of the carvings with her “pointy pen” (a green laser pointer) and discussed the different interpretations of the carvings.

The full carving of the deer/ibex/goat/something (black lines highlight the carving lines)

Some carvings are much more open to interpretations than others, so we worked up from the clearest to the most speculative, a carving in the very back of the cave which has been interpreted as a possible connection to Venus of Brassempouy. There were also some lines which might or might not have been carvings and one little girl had pointed out that since they were done in the very back of the cave, perhaps that was the practice area and it was all a mistake, but if you got better you could make carvings up at the front. (I don’t think they’d ever allow me to hold a chisel if they knew how badly I draw.)

Ibis/crane (if you look at it that way up) with the narrow curved bill at the left of the screen, then the dome of the head with an eye and a long neck

Full depth of the cave (other carvings are in the back)

On the way out, Emma showed us a newly discovered cave opening at ground level just to the right of Church Hole cave, but it’s not being excavated at the moment due to the potential instability of the area and they don’t want to risk damage to the existing cave structure.

The cave opening is back filled currently

As we walked back up along the waterway to the main exhibit area, it was clear why this was such an attractive area for prehistoric man because the rift would be sheltered from winds and there’s an extensive water supply which also attracted game and waterfowl. Emma also showed us some of the swans, including a mother with two mostly grown cygnets who had stayed around from the previous season. They were as big as their mother but without the fully orange-ish beak coloring and they seemed very content to stay with Mom.

They were also having an Ice Age Olympics day for the kids out on the open field, including a spear toss at the model of a mammoth and a ring toss game to try to hook a ring on some antlers as well as something called hyena hurdling that unfortunately no one was doing at the moment because I think that would’ve been really funny to watch.

Some kind of combination of East Anglian Quoits and a reindeer ring toss

We went through the proper exhibit which had some very interesting artifacts, including a hyena skull found in one of the caves as well as a cave bear skull and a lot of stone tools and bone artifacts.

One of the earliest known carvings of a human form, on bone.

The gift shop had a lot of very interesting fossils and carvings and Bear showed an interest in a white marbley carving of a polar bear (I wanted the small one, he wanted the larger more expensive one. This is the story of my life.) I settled for a book about walks and hikes in Nottinghamshire with a lot of historical notes about Robin Hood legends which was ironic as I had been on the verge of a somewhat unfortunate discussion with Bear in the tea shop earlier which touched on some Robin Hood related things but fortunately Jesus somehow managed to shut my mouth before I said aloud what was in my head and heart. It took a few hours for me to remember something that I had learned years ago — it’s insanity to do the same things over and over yet expect different results, whether you’re dealing with work, family or spouses. I was in the restroom of  a gas station on the side of A1 by the time it came back to me which was just as well for the amount of cursing that ensued. The up shot is that I’m formulating a new plan, something less insane and less doomed to repeat the past. It may take a while, I can be a little slow sometimes.  [Note from the future: in the week since I wrote that, the plan seems to be having a good outcome and I need to give God the majority of the credit for that because a lot of it seems to be coming from Bear himself without anything on my part.]

We went to grab lunch at Nando’s up above Sheffield (I had researched and found one with a car park) and then went on to Bolsover Castle. I’d read that the town was like a step back in time and it seemed that way, although when we arrived they were about to hold a wedding in the castle and the place was looking fairly modern.

View of the countryside from Bolsover

Beautiful picnic tree with a little family of hobbits under it

The indoor riding school decked out for the wedding

Wedding guest looking out at the countryside

We went past the indoor riding school (apparently William Cavendish, a major family figure, was mad about horses) where the wedding was and went on to the area known as the Little Castle which was remarkably well-preserved. They’ve spent a lot on the restoration, even down to studying and re-creating the original color tones in the ceiling paint.

The Little Castle flying the English Heritage flag.

Fantastically detailed stone fireplaces with the black stone taken from local quarries

The original structure dates back to medieval times, but a lot of restoration and work went into it leading up to the 1600s and at that point the family had built up quite a plush little weekend retreat of sorts.

And equally detailed woodwork, all re-finished to period standard.

William Cavendish was an important royalist figure, being friends with James I and Charles I, then fighting as a general during the English Civil War on the side of the monarchy.

Sorry for the tilt, but I was stupidly trying to listen to the audio guide (pinched between my shoulder and ear) while trying to take pictures at the same time.

He went into exile abroad and missed getting beheaded, but linked up again with Charles II (who was also wisely in exile and who had been Cavendish’s pupil), so when the Restoration came, Cavendish got nearly all his land and property back. Not a bad deal!

Interior of the cupola

The bread ovens (fire below in the two holes, then bake in the three ovens above)

By then the wedding was over and we inadvertently blundered through the reception area, complete with tuxedoed string quartet playing Pachabel Canon in D, so somewhere out there we’re in some wedding photos, as they’re in my photos. I have a feeling that this won’t be the last time this happens. [Note from the future: ohhhh, how prophetic...]

The wedding party, from the vantage of one of the garden rooms embedded in the very thick, formidable wall running around the Little Castle enclave

I routed us to go back through Newark on Trent to see Castle Newark which we had stopped at once before but it was too early that day to get into the castle garden. Most of the castle was knocked down in the course of the English Civil War, which is second only to Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries for destroying nice historical buildings. Without them and the Victorian Cave Destroyers, this would’ve been an even more interesting island, if that’s possible.

Portion of Newark Castle from the castle gardens

Exterior of the curtain wall from the riverbank

My interest in the castle was personal as I’d set some scenes from a book there, although it was in the structure prior to the curtain wall that’s still intact now, so on the one hand it did me no good to go and see it because all my descriptions would then be utterly inaccurate, but on the other hand it cheered me up and it’s always fun to see the river.

A drawing of Newark Castle that I kept on my bulletin board above my computer for nearly a year while I wrote a novel reinterpreting the Robin Hood legend. I found it in some obscure book buried in the Strozier Library at FSU.

All in all, it was a terrific birthday weekend and I have a feeling that the day is going to lead to a really good and much improved year.

A cider, a fizzy apple, I want to remember your name but I just can’t see to do so.

roboute guilliman

magnus the red

lorgar

Fast tanks, soft cars, nice muscular definition.

konrad curze

jaghatai khan

rogal dorn

Here are some lovely examples of cave art, look at the skill and eye for detail they had, considering the lack of advancement in tools, equipment and the rough surface they were produced on, no rubbers back then we can tell ya!

If that wasn’t enough check out the following vids!

So what is the oldest ever cave art painting? 

Well it so happens to be the Red dots, hand stencils and animal figures that represent the oldest examples yet found of cave art in Europe. The symbols on the walls at 11 Spanish locations, including the World Heritage sites of Altamira, El Castillo and Tito Bustillo have long been recognised for their antiquity… Now bet you didn’t know that this morning!

In any event, this is an extremely interesting article. I thought it would be great to share the information with others.

Uranium-series dating reveals Iberian paintings are Europe’s oldest cave art.

Anger is a piano, played with one hand then said to be a spoken word.

angron

lion el’jonson

perturabo

think: extracts from the anarchistic dream journal of a soldier undergoing LSD experimentation in a chemical warfare laboratory convinced of being a medieval monastic scribe with visions of the 41st millennium AD spat out by a palaeolithic cave painter

sanguinus

ferrus manus

mortarion

This week started off on a boring note; I spent Monday and Tuesday at the Fabretto center in Cusmapa doing computer-based stuff, getting ready for the film. Tuesday, however, I managed to put together a reunion for a half-full photo club, our first reunion since March, with a full “official” meeting set for this Friday morning. Either way, I taught three of the kids a bit about photo editing and got them all hooked up with flickr.com accounts to share their photos, so in all we had a great 3 hours or so of radness.

Wednesday I hopped on the bus to go help on a Fabretto project with a big volunteer group from Chicago, the same people we’ve been mooching dinner off of at the Casona every night this week. It’s cool though, because they’re cool though, even though they’re mostly old people and they’re one of those “church groups.” Jokes aside, they are actually not that old and they’re really cool and they like to buy lots of rum and stay up all night talking about cool stuff.

All I really had to do all day was film some of their work, since they’re going to be honored at a Fabretto banquet in Chicago sometime later this year, and to help out with some of the labor whenever I wanted to. This week, they’re helping build a kitchen at a small school 30 minutes outside of Las Sabanas, in all about an hour away from Cusmapa. It felt really good to get away from a computer and get back to my industrious roots by helping dig up a nice big hole for some future kitchen plumbing, even if I didn’t complete a whole lot that day. Also I learned from Magic Mike a bit of female anatomy; that the female body is ergonomically designed to be able to pee while squatting, a supposed fact that he informed the women on our trip of when they were complaining about not being able to pee in the woods like the male contingent. I haven’t had a chance to research it yet, but since Magic Mike said it, I’ll assume it to be true. Here’s some video screenshots of them working at the school:

Also, here’s some shots of a cave where the indigenous Chorotega people made a whole bunch or drawings on the cave wall way back in the day. No one has the slightest idea what it means and judging by the size and remoteness of the community and the fact that they all told us that no one else really knows about the cave, I’d probably guess that I’m one of a small group of foreigners who’s ever seen these drawings:

Earlier that day, I had the opportunity to watch a couple of the women on the trip meet their sponsored children. Fabretto offers the ability for people in the US and abroad to sponsor a child in their school programs and pay for the child’s schooling, food, necessities, etc, as a “godparent.” It was a really special moment, and I’m glad I got to see that kind of an interaction in person. It’s one thing to send money to a poor kid in a foreign country and forget about them; it’s another to meet the kid in person. A lot of the sponsored kids have asked me in the past whether I “knew” their godparent in the States (“They live in Missouri, do you know them?”) so you can tell it really does mean a lot to them to know where the money is coming from.

And that brings me to a point: despite what you may think, poor people are not “happy” to simply take your money. I’ve always wondered what it must feel like for a family to receive such donations. It’s somewhat bittersweet, I’d imagine. On one hand, you’re receiving vital funds to help your child with BASIC necessities; on the other, there’s the draining reality in the parents mind that they are unable to take care of their kids on their own, despite how hard they work. We live in a world where asking for help is seen as “undignified.” Just look at homeless people in the US and how people treat them; you can demand that they “get a job” all you want, but no one seems to realize the amount of courage it takes to simply put a hand out and ask for money. You’re putting yourself on a pedestal for everyone to see and judge you; most people aren’t going to do that unless it’s a last resort for them. Human dignity is huge in our lives, but most of us take it for granted because we’ve never been put in a situation where it’s been taken away from us and there’s very little we can do to get it back.

So in all, I couldn’t imagine what it would be like for these mothers. One of the mothers had just kicked her husband out of the house the week before for trying to hit her, and the kids had apparently been crying all week. In a situation like that, a single mother is put in a place where she has to both rear her children alone and provide for them financially, and when you’re dealt those kinds of cards, there isn’t much you can do about it. To meet someone who is willing to help you out, and to hug them and realize that they do actually care about you and want to help you and your kids… I honestly don’t know what to think about it, but it’s got to feel good having someone like that in your life who isn’t judging you or forgetting about you down the road.

In E. O. Wilson’s new book, The Social Conquest of the Earth, the eminent sociobiologist seeks to answer the questions that have led philosophers, sages, and theologians to put their pens to paper since time immemorial: Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? Now it’s time for the biologist to have his say.

Wilson’s book, which outlines the biological origins of our advanced culture, is breathtaking in its scope. We are the way we are, Wilson argues, because we are one of a few species on earth that developed advanced social life. Advanced social life requires altruism–putting aside your personal interests for the interests of the group. Bees and ants are pros at this. Humans are not bad at it either.

That our ancestors developed the social instinct is practically a miracle. As Wilson writes, “Our ancestors were one of only two dozen or so animal lines ever to evolve eusociality, the next major level of biological organization above the organismic. There, group members across two or more generations stay together, cooperate, care for the young, and divide labor in a way favoring reproduction of some individuals over that of others.” As groups competed with each other for scarce resources, those that worked together best, that communicated most effectively, and that exhibited the most altruism thrived, winning more battles in the Darwinian war of life.

For human beings, who are 90 percent chimp and 10 percent bee (in psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s famous formulation), the cultural consequences of eusociality–of the hive-like mentality that is part of our nature–have been enormous. In fact, without it, there would be no culture to speak of.

So how did culture first emerge? Was its emergence a Darwinian process? Wilson thinks so.

Wilson explains that the creative arts needed language (i.e. abstract thought) in order to initially develop:

The creative arts became possible as an evolutionary advance when humans developed the capacity for abstract thought. The human mind could then form a template of a shape, or a kind of object, or an action, and pass a concrete representation of the conception to another mind. Thus was born true, productive language, constructed from arbitrary words and symbols. Language was followed by visual art, music, dance, and the ceremonies and rituals of religion.

Next came pierced snail shells thought to be used as necklaces, along with still more sophisticated tools, including well-designed bone points. Most intriguing are engraved pieces of ocher. One design, 77,000 years old, consists of three scratched lines that connect a row of nine X-shaped marks. The meaning, is any, is unknown, but the abstract nature of the pattern seems clear.

And on death:

Burials began at least 95,000 years ago, as evidenced by thirty individuals excavated at Qafzeh Cave in Israel. One of the dead, a nine-year-old child, was positioned with its legs bent and a deer antler in its arms. That arrangement alone suggests not just an abstract awareness of death but also some form of existential anxiety. Among today’s hunter-gatherers, death is an event managed by ceremony and art.

These rituals must have arisen, as Wilson speculates, when the living asked “Where do all these dead people go?”

The answer would have been immediately obvious to them. The departed still lived, and regularly rejoined the living–in dreams. It was in the spirit world of dreams, and even more vividly in drug-induced hallucinations, that their deceased relatives dwelled, along with allies, enemies, gods, angels, demons, and monsters. Similar visions, as later societies found, could also be induced by fasting, exhaustion, and self-torture. Today, as then, the conscious mind of every living person leaves his body in sleep and enters the spirit world created by neuronal surges of his brain.

As the ceremonies surrounding death led to various religious rituals, yet another form of creative culture was coming on the scene: cave art.

The beginnings of the creative arts as they are practiced today may forever hidden. Yet they were sufficiently established by genetic and cultural evolution for the “creative explosion” that began approximately 35,000 years ago in Europe. From this time on until the Late Paleolithic period of over 20,000 years later, cave art flourished. Thousands of figures, mostly of large game animals, have been found in more than two hundred caves distributed through southwestern France and northeastern Spain, on both sides of the Pyrenees. Along with cliffside drawings in other parts of the world, they present a stunning snapshot of life just before the dawn of civilization.

Cave art was not only of big game, however. There was also an early form of what we’d today call finger painting:

There were also more figures of humans or at least parts of the human anatomy than are usually not mentioned in accounts of cave art. These tend to be pedestrian. The inhabitants often made prints by holding their hands on teh wall and spewing ocher powder from their mouths, leaving an outline of spread thumb and fingers behind. The size of the hands indicates that it was mostly children who engaged in this activity. A good many graffiti are present as well, with meaningless squiggles and crude representations of male and female genitalia common among them.

Did the hand art represent an early version of arts and crafts class? Was the graffiti the first form of pornography and “street art,” as it’s called today?

One question that arises when reading Wilson’s book is why–why would the creative arts have arisen? What evolutionary purpose could they have served?

At the beginning of his book, Wilson notes that the creation myth–and, hence, organized religion–is “a Darwinian device for survival.” Could the same be said of the creative arts? Were they survival mechanisms that arose from our ability to think into the future, our need to cope with the past, and our desire to make sense of the world, as our brains got bigger and our thoughts increasingly abstract?

When he is writing about another form of creative art–of music–Wilson considers this question:

The utilitarian theory of cave art, that the paintings and scratchings depict ordinary life, is almost certainly partly correct, but not entirely so. Few experts have taken into account that there also occured, in another wholly different domain, the origin and use of music. This event provides independent evidence that at least some of the paintings and sculptures did have a magical content in the lives of the cave dwellers. A few writers have argued that music had no Darwinian significance, that it sprang from language as a pleasant “auditory cheesecake,” as one author once put it.

So the question is: “Was music Darwinian? Did it have survival value for the Paleolithic tribes that practiced it?”

Examining the customs of contemporary hunter-gatherer cultures from around the world, one can hardly come to any other conclusion. Songs, usually accompanied by dances, are all but universal.

Citing evidence from existing hunter-gatherer societies, Wilson explains that the songs are often about myths and ordinary aspects of life, most notably hunting (i.e. survival).

Interestingly, music is the most universal of the creative arts–a human instinct–even though it is also the most complex. Hunter-gatherer societies that are limited in their use of language, have no creation stories, and no proficiency with the visual arts still have music. Music, then, is the evolutionary lingua franca, “powerful in its impact on human feeling and on the interpretation of events,” as Wilson writes. “It is extraordinarily complex in the neural circuits it employs, appearing to elicit emotion in at least six different brain mechanisms.”

Like the other creative arts, music reinforces the social instinct that makes us what we are: “They draw the tribal members together, creating a common knowledge and purpose.” In that sense, music–and creative culture, which includes religious ritual–draws a person out of himself and into something larger and better, the community.

clockwise from upper left: Lascaux. Altamira, Cosquer, Chauvet

Paintings on cave or open rock walls rendered in charcoal, ochre, hematite and similar substances can be found on every continent except Antarctica. The subject matter is almost always animals but can also be geometric designs, human figures, male and female genitals or hands (in the form of handprints or stencils).

The European paintings are all from the Paleolithic period (ca 40,000 – 8000 BC). Paintings on other continents either have not been dated or vary greatly in age. The open rock paintings in Baja California date to as recent as 7000 BC while the cave paintings in India range from the Paleolithic period to the Middle ages.

The paintings can be dated in a variety of ways including mineral deposits, carbon dating, potassium-argon dating and newer methods such as themoluminescene and electron spin resonance. Dating methods are generally used to date any accompanying artifacts such as pottery, tools, animal bones and torch marks on the cave walls

In 1879 the first cave paintings were discovered in Altamira in northern Spain. Originally the paintings were dated to 32,000 to 23,000 BCE but recently they have been dated more narrowly to 12,000 BCE. The cave contains paintings Bison, horses, doe, wild boar, goats and handprints. The caves were closed in 1977 and a replica created for tourists in 2001.

The paintings in Lascaux in southern France are more widely known and were discovered in 1940. The paintings are dated to 15,000 to 13,000 BC. There are almost 2000 figures spanning seven separate “rooms” with horses being the animal represented most. Other animals represented include stags, cattle, bison, felines, a bird, a bear and a rhinoceros. Although stags are represented none seem to portray reindeer. One of the most interesting of the paintings is a man with what appears to be a bird head, and a staff and a bird shaped atal-atal (spear thrower) lying next to him. In front of the figure is a Bison with its entrails hanging out. The site became a popular tourist destination which led to problems with lichens and crystal formations late in the fifties and led to the first closure of the caves to the public. In 1998 a white mold infected the cave and then in 2007 black and gray blemishes appeared on the paintings and the caves are now permanently closed to the public. “Lascaux II”, a replica of two of the major halls in the cave, opened in 2001 so that tourists could continue to see the magnificent pieces.

Until the end of the 20th century the paintings of Altamira and Lascaux were the most famous and appear in most Art History books. The paintings at Cosquer and Chauvet both discovered in the late 20th century are significant because they are believed to predate Altamira and Lascaux. (if we use the newer dates for Altamira) The entrance to the mouth of the Cosquer cave is underwater and was discovered in 1985 but not publicized until 1991. There are about 177 animal figures representing 11 separate species including never before seen seals and auks. There are also what have tentatively been identified as jellyfish. While the animal paintings date to 16,000 BCE there are also hand prints and stencils that date to 25,000 BC. The paintings at Chauvet were discovered in 1994 and have paintings that date to 32,000 to 30,000 BC and others that date to 27,000 to 26,000. There are at least 14 identifiable species represented in the cave in addition to male and female genitals, handprints and stencils. One drawing that is referred to as a “sorcerer” or a “chimera” actually consists of a woman’s legs and genitals in a frontal position and a profile view of a bison’s head on the right and a lion or bear head on the left. The three are more likely three separate drawings that are not related.

There are many theories of the significance of the paintings. The concept of creating something simply for the sake of beauty was popular in the nineteenth century. Other theories include magic to increase the number of animals to hunt or some type of sympathetic magic for a successful hunt. However, the animals represented on the walls do not usually match the animal remains found in the caves or the known diets of prehistoric humans in certain areas. Another theory is that they serve some social function such as rituals or ceremonies of initiation or education. Regardless of their purpose the paintings indicate that early humans were both capable artists and went beyond mere symbols to represent the world around them.

El Batequi, Baja California

medium and message

it wears the rock
three dimensions
two profiles
abstract before abstract
high-hidden arroyo…
Great Mural
by great Painters
on palm stake ladders
drawing giant images
maroon and black
pink and white
outline…infill
shadow…sketch
artist over artist
paint over paint
time over time
centuries between…
great universal themes
illusion…power…magic
stampede across the rock
medium and message

Bonnie Marshall

Evolution determined why (and how) living creatures perceive colour. One factor was the need to recognize different sources of food. In herbivorous primates, colour perception is essential to finding edible leaves. In hummingbirds, particular flower types are often recognized by colour. And it seems that trichromatic vision in primates (usually red, green, blue) developed as the ancestors of modern monkeys, apes, and humans switched to daytime rather than night-time activities and began consuming the fruits and leaves of flowering plants.

None of which really explains the fascination human beings have with primary and secondary colours, nor the intrinsic role they play in society and culture. Outside mind games, it is inconceivable that people could, or would want to, live without colour.

Russian-American painter Mark Rothko (1903-70) is well known for the large swathes of colour that dominate his canvasses. His paintings dominate the rooms in which they hang and exert a profound influence on people who see them. Rothko once wrote, “The fact that people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I can communicate those basic human emotions… the people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when painting them. And if you say you are moved only by their color relationships then you miss the point.”

Rothko and other abstract expressionist artists were responding to a basic need of the human psyche. In France and Spain in more than 350 caves prehistoric art long been known that attests to this craving. The most common images – in what must once have been vibrant colours – are large wild animals, such as bison, horses, aurochs, and deer. But there are also tracings of human hands as well as abstract patterns, called finger flutings. The paintings have been interpreted as hunting magic, intended to increase the number of animals captured, and as shamanistic visions. Shamans would retreat into the darkness of the caves, enter into a trance and paint what they saw. Of course, the caves might just as easily have been a rudimentary gallery of modern art whose entrance fee was a spare rib or a pair of woolly mammoth mittens. We shall never know.

However, the most ancient examples of cave art turn out to be red dots and hand stencils. Researchers have been using modern dating techniques to get an accurate determination of their age. Now, one faint red dot in a cave in Cantabria, Spain, has been found to be more than 40,800 years old. Nearby, on the “Panel of Hands” in El Castillo Cave near the village of Puente Viesgo, where there are stencils formed by blowing paint onto a hand pressed against the wall, one dates back 37,300 years. Apparently, the older date coincides with the first known immigration into Europe of modern human beings (Homo sapiens). Before about 41,000 years ago, it was their evolutionary cousins, the Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis), who dominated the continent. Now scholars are perplexed as to whether it was the supposedly less sophisticated Neanderthals or the anatomically modern humans that replaced them who were responsible for the artwork.

In The Stones of Venice (1853) the English art critic John Ruskin wrote, “The purest and most thoughtful minds are those which love colour the most.” Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

The time estimates vary depending on what article you read but give or take a couple of thousand years, this is correct. The Magdalenian period was a bit on the cold side with ice sheets covering all of northern Europe and the Alps and Pyrenees also being quite knee-deep in ice and snow. So the people were sort of sandwiched between two very inhospitable habitats. Due to the cold Reindeer were common and the people were hunters and captured the Reindeer for food and rather similar to people from Lapland today they used all the parts for various things, clothing, spear heads, needles, fat for lamps etc. This period is also known as the Reindeer period.

These caves were first investigated by Andre Brouillet and it was in 1834 that two reindeer bones were discovered with drawings scratched onto them. These are thought to be examples of some of the earliest forms of art produced by man. Certainly the representations are quite crude and not up to the standard of other cave paintings from this period. One bone shows a head of what could be a bear. This bone also has a hole through it suggesting that the bone was hung up as a sort of art display or maybe something to worship. The other bone has two animals on it and these could be reindeer. These bones are now in the museum in Civray and there is a book which contains drawings of them.

Chauvet horses 31,000 BC

I am not sure how these claims stack up because there are examples of more sophisticated paintings which are estimated to have come from a much earlier period. Such as the paintings in the Chauvet Cave in the Ardeche which is estimated at 31,000 BC. If you are an expert on this subject please let me know what you think. If you are not then just marvel at the fact that it was a very very long time ago.

You can visit the caves, they have metal grills across the front now to prevent access but you can still look in an imagine what life was like. There are several information boards (which could do with a clean) to tell you about the life of these early Homo sapiens.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

The other famous caves with paintings is Lascaux Caves

This week:

– Chinese rockets,

- Neanderthal painters,

- The crime of atheism,

- Reproductive music,

- The poor and working poor (Part 2 of 2 interview with Iglika Ivanova)

Download the episode here!

Topics: China’s rockets

China launched a manned mission Shenzhou 9 to their orbiting space station Tiangong 1. We talk about the future of China’s space program.Find out more:

• China’s Space program
• Historic Chinese space mission docks successfully

Neanderthal painters

Resent research pushed back the date of the earliest cave art to about 41,000 years old. The new twist is homo-sapiens were thought to be the only species to create cave art but humans were not suppose to have arrived in the region until 35,000 years ago. Some people are now speculating that Neanderthals may have been the artist.Find out more:

• Uranium Dating Reveals Europe’s Oldest Cave Art
• U-Series Dating of Paleolithic Art
• World’s Oldest Cave Art Found—Made by Neanderthals?

The crime of being an atheist

An atheist in Indonesia has been sentence to 10 years on jail for professing his atheism. A Kuwaiti man faces 10 years of hard labour in prison and feel lucky he avoided a potential death sentence for blasphemy. We discuss the criminalization of atheist around the world, the need to be vigilant and globally supportive. Find out more:

• Autism study strengthens idea that we read God’s mind
• Is there room for atheists in Indonesia?
• Assassinated Pakistan Official Supported Religious Tolerance
• M F Husain loses home over nude ‘Mother India’
• Pune cops book Orkut user
• Death Penalty Amendment for Blasphemy Cases
• Kuwaiti jailed for 10 years for Twitter ‘blasphemy

Reproductive music Research has shown the obvious that sex sells but how it manifest itself in different genre of music and the dubious link to evolutionary advantage make it an interesting topic for the show. Find out more:

• Songs as reproductive messages
• Whip it good, hold me closer, and other reproductive music messages
• If Cole Porter Were An Evolutionary Psychologist

The poor and working poor

Don’s sits down with Iglika Ivanova in the Radio Free Thinker virtual studio and discusses poverty and Living wage. Iglika Ivanova is a research economist at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives for BC. Find out more:

• Canadian Centre for Policy Alternative
• The changing face of poverty in Canada
• Living Wage Canada
• Poverty in Canada has ‘child’s face’
• Working for a Living Wage 2011
• A guaranteed annual income? From Mincome to the millennium
• Dauphin’s great experiment

Skeptical Highlights:

Walk for Peace

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the Walk for Peace march. In 1982, 35,000 people marched from Kitsilano to the West End calling for world peace. By 1984, the march had grown to 100,000 people. Keeping with the Humanist commitment to global peace, BC Humanist Association invites you to join them in the walk to help raise their banner and the humanist commitment to peace, respect and a civil society

When: Saturday, June 30 at Noon Where: Sunset Beach or meet up at the Sunset Grill around 11:50 am Cost: Free

Humanist Brunch for Peace?

The BC Humanist Association doesn’t want to you walk on empty stomachs, so before the march, they are planning to meet at the Sunset Grill for brunch at 10:00 am. Afterward, they will join the march which departs at noon and wraps up at 2pm at Sunset Beach for entertainment, music, and celebration.

Please RSVP if you plan to join them for brunch (so they can confirm our reservation) RSVPs close on Wednesday, June 27th.

When: Saturday, June 30 at 10:00 am Where: Sunset Grill (Yew and York Street) Cost: Whatever you order off the menu

Aan’s Legal Defence Fund

Atheist Alliance International has launched an appeal for donations to help pay for Aan’s legal costs and to support the Aan family’s living expenses while he is in jail.

CFI Transnational wants to make the voices of those who support Alexander loud and clear to the Indonesian government. The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) is organizing a letter-writing campaign on Alexander’s behalf, and CFI urges you to take part. They have created a custom letter which you can sign or add to and add your voice to those fighting for Aan’s freedom.

Please support Atheist around the world in their struggle against persecution by donating here.