There is also a new report of the oldest cave painting which dates some
35,000 years ago. While this painting is ascribed to the abilities of
modern man, in fact it is at least 9,000 years prior to the first European
skeleton of an anatomically modern human. Clearly, one can only ascribe this
cave art to anatomically modern men based upon philosophical
presupppositions, not upon actual data. Campbell and Loy write:
A date of about 34,000 years B. P. has been published for a frontal bone of
modern form found at the European site of Velika Pecina. After that, the
oldest securely dated modern skeletal material from Europe comes from a site
near the town of Pavlov in the Czech Republic at about 26,000 years B. P." ~
Bernard G. Campbell and James D. Loy, Humankind Emerging, (New York:
HarperCollins, 1996), p. 463
Last year the Velika Pecina human was shown to be only 5,000 years old
removing him from consideration as the oldest anatomically modern human.
Anyway, here is the article.
http://www.ngnews.com/news/2000/10/10192000/cave_3178.asp
Oldest Cave Paintings Ever Found Light Up Human History
By The Guardian Unlimited
October 19, 2000
Italians were distinguishing themselves as artists long before the
Renaissance and medieval times, it seems.
Researchers have found images painted some 35,000 years ago - almost
certainly the world's oldest cave paintings and possibly man's first
artistic creations - in a hill near the north-eastern Italian city of
Verona.
The images, presented at a press conference in the city yesterday, were
painted in red ochre on rock and represent an animal with an elongated neck
(possibly a weasel), a mysterious five-legged animal and a man - thought to
be a wizard - wearing a mask with horns. They were found last year on
fragments of rock from the walls of the Fumane Cave in the Lessini Hills,
north of Verona.
"They are probably the oldest cave paintings, although we cannot affirm that
with scientific certainty," said Professor Alberto Broglio, who teaches
palaeontology at the university of Ferrara and coordinated the excavation.
The paintings, which could at first have been mistaken for smudges of dirt,
may not have the visual impact of the bull daubed on a cave wall at Lascaux
in southern France or the deer of the Altamira Cave in Spain, but they are
at least 10,000 years older.
Dr Alessandra Astes, director of the Natural History Museum in Verona, said
scientists were able to date the paintings, which measure between one and
two feet long, through carbon dating and archaeological stratographic
techniques, because the rocks had become detached from the cave wall and
were buried under later generations of debris.
The figure of the man in the horned mask and with his arms outstretched was
extremely rare in early cave paintings, said Dr Astes.
"The find is of enormous scientific significance, which goes far beyond its
artistic or stylistic value," she said.
"The find is of exceptional value. I have been working as an archaeologist
for 30 years and I have no hesitation in saying that."
Dr Astes believes the images are almost certainly the oldest in Europe and,
therefore, in the world.
"No art forms of similar antiquity have been found in Africa, which is,
after all, the cradle of humanity," Dr Astes said.
For researchers, who are still excavating the Fumane Cave, the discovery is
a crucial link in the history of human life on Earth as well as a first
glimpse of the creative instinct that inspired Leonardo da Vinci and
Michelangelo in a later age.
The cave contains traces of Neanderthal man and evidence of habitation by
modern Homo sapiens, including sharpened flints, bones and decorations made
from sea shells. There are also the remains of a prehistoric hut.
The fragments were originally covered with stalagmites which, Prof Broglio
said, helped preserve the images.
"This find completes our picture of the first representatives of modern man
and throws light on the debate as to whether he descended from Neanderthal
man or was an immigrant from the Middle East," he said.
The find supports recent DNA evidence that modern Homo sapiens were not
related to Neanderthal man, the professor said.
He added: "The traces we have found show a clean break between Neanderthal
and modern man both in terms of culture and lifestyle. There is an abrupt
change in the techniques of decoration and the use of flint and bone tools.
Everything changes, in a radical, brutal fashion."
(c) 2000 Guardian Unlimited
glenn
see http://www.flash.net/~mortongr/dmd.htm
for lots of creation/evolution information
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