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More on Lascaux & Geometric signs in cave art

Bill — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 03:02:23 +0000

The ancient world and it’s part in the evolution of our current kind of mind seems to be a theme for me these days. So here’s a bit more, inspired by a recent post on metafilter about the Bradshaws, rock paintings in Australia. From the excellent cave and rock art site named after those paintings, the Bradshaw Foundation, come a batch of great pages on the great painted caves of France including Lascaux, on cro-magnon art mobilier (the hand held art carvings such as venuses and animal art), and this interesting page on geometric signs in the ancient painted caves.

Geometric signs from cave art at Niaux

Ive always thought the geometric signs in the caves, typically dots, dashes, lines, and simple shapes, were some of the most interesting and mysterious things left behind by our big-brained ancestors in those natural time capsules. I have long thought that they were evidence of the beginning of evidence of the human power of abstraction, which is the origin of writing, numbers, mathematics, and geometry, money, calendars, and so many of the things which made modern civilization and the modern kind of humans possible. Now, as the “Indiana Jones” days of painted cave study is thankfully (but sadly) over, we can start to see a new type of research be carried out, as we apply the best modern techniques and the new types of imaging to studying ancient art and technology.

Geometric signs in cave art

Previously unpublished photos of the Lascaux cave paintings online from LIFE magazine

Bill — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 21:17:33 +0000

One of my favorite things in the world is Lascaux. This cro-magnon painted cave temple is one of the most fascinating creations of prehistory, and arguably one of the most significant discoveries in the history of religion, art, AND writing and communcations and the human brain.

So it’s always a thrill to see new Lascaux material being released.

http://www.life.com/image/first/in-gallery/48231/inside-lascaux-rare-unpublished

A previously unpublished photo of the wooly rhinocerous from the Pit of the Wounded Man in Lascaux

Many of the unpublished shots are black and white photos of the original explorers of the cave, which are interesting but not exciting – but supposedly this is a previously unpublished shot of the rhino with mysterious dots from the famous Pit of the Wounded Man, the most secret and hard to reach chamber of the painted cave.

Totally worth a click to check it out – I just wish the photos were bigger.

Click the link or the pic – the first image you will see is one of the aurochs and wild horses in the “parade of the animals and the shaman hunter” from the Hall of the Bulls.

Something to look for – a new 3d movie about cave art from the Chauvet cave

Bill — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 02:36:37 +0000

This could be a very rare oppurtunity to get a look at the Chauvet cave art images in a way that would be almost like being there – Werner Herzog (He made the documentary Grizzly Man) has talked his way into the cave with good cameras, and this could be really revolutionary for we students of cave art and the origin of art, symbolism, human made imagery, and the distant origins of writing.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2010/apr/13/werner-herzog-cave-art-documentary-3d

Herzog has apparently been given permission to film inside the Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc cave, a site in the Ardèche department of southern France that contains the earliest known cave paintings, dating back at least 30,000 years. Even more intriguingly, Herzog is planning to shoot much of the film in 3D.

The Chauvet cave, discovered in 1994, cannot be accessed by tourists, as the French authorities have deemed the risk of degradation to be too high, so Herzog’s film might be the only opportunity for the rest of humanity to view the site. The paintings depict lions, panthers, bears, owls, rhinos and hyenas, suggesting a vastly different fauna at the time of the paintings to that of modern France.

One of the panels from Chauvet – photo from the wiki.

Chauvet is the great painted cave discovery of our time, and I am really looking forward to seeing it in video form.

The Hall of the Bulls from Lascaux – photo from the wiki

One of my dreams, something I hope very much happens before I die, is that the cave at Lascaux can be videoed in extreme hi-resolution and detail, and that we will be able to see the art of the most important painted cave once again. Yes, I understand the risks, and I too worry about the damage that we have done, but still, I hope…

http://www.lascaux.culture.fr/?lng=en#/en/00.xml

Can you imagine looking at the wounded man? It sends a shiver up my spine.

The Catal Hoyuk “map”

Bill — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 02:56:24 +0000

As some may know, the archaeological site once called Catal Huyuk, now usually called Catalhoyuk (usually said to mean “forked mound” or a double mound) is an interest of mine, kind of a hobby. The most well known manifestation of that hobby is my old article “Catal Huyuk: The Temple City of Prehistoric Anatolia“.

That old article starts with an image that is often described as the oldest map in the world, the “catalhoyuk map” – altho I describe it differently, I call it one of the oldest known examples of a “landscape painting”. Here’s a bad example of the image:

All along there has been a lot of disagreement about this image. Mellart’s book ‘cleaned up’ a lot of the badly damaged murals and wall paintings uncovered during his rushed old-style excavations, and frankly, it’s very hard to tell exactly what the wall paintings actually show. The common interpretation, that the shape on the wall represents the volcano now called Hasan Dag in an eruption (thus making the painting a landscape, and implying that the squarish cells painted in black underneath are an image of the town), has been questioned before.

And now from a cartographer an article that makes a good simple presentation of the arguments for the idea that the catalhoyuk wall painting isn’t a map NOR a landscape.

Why the World’s Oldest Map Isn’t a Map

It’s short, has some good illustrations, worth your time if you have an interest in ancient cultures.

Giordano Bruno – highly readable review of a new biography

Bill — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 00:44:35 +0000

I always think a good review can be as useful to read and absorb as a book, in this modern age of information compression, sorting, and filtering. If you are interested in the history and character of Giordanao Bruno, this page is worth visiting.

I find the emphasis on Bruno’s involvement with the renaissance re-creation of the Art of Memory particularly interesting – I’ve written a bit about how important I think the art of memory is within the traditions of western consciousness exploration.

Giordano Bruno has been called a martyr to science and an occultist, but a new book argues that the brilliant philosopher’s unconventional behavior did him in.

the hooded and manacled effigy of Bruno, with its haunted stare, immediately catches the eye, and the gruesome story attached to it — Bruno was burned at the stake in that very spot, for the crime of heresy — cements him in memory. Practically every tourist who comes to Rome tromps through the Campo and hears that story, even if they’ve never heard of Bruno before. The students who commissioned the statue in the 1880s, as an emblem for freedom of thought and the division of church from state, really got their money’s worth.

But who was Giordano Bruno, and why was he executed in the Campo de’ Fiori in 1600? A common misperception mixes him up with Galileo, who ran into trouble with the church 16 years later for embracing the Copernican model of the solar system instead of endorsing the Aristotelian belief that the sun revolves around the Earth. (In fact, the two men shared an Inquisitor, the implacable Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, canonized by the Catholic Church in 1930.) Bruno, too, thought that the Earth circled the sun, and subscribed to many other than heterodox ideas as well: that the universe is infinite and that everything in it is made up of tiny particles (i.e., atoms), and that it is immeasurably old. But as Ingrid Rowland demonstrates in her new biography of the renegade thinker, “Giordano Bruno: Philosopher/Heretic,” Bruno was no martyr for science. What got him killed was a murky mixture of spiritual transgression and personal foibles, combined with a large dose of bad luck.

The Kalighat Pictures of Indian Gods – Kali

Bill — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 00:28:32 +0000

Visit bibliodyssey to see larger versions of this image and others… Bibliodyssey page on the Kalighat Pictures of Indian Gods