Posted on 01/21/2011 2:53:23 AM PST by Renfield
There's a cave in France where no humans have been in 26,000 years. The walls are full of fantastic, perfectly-preserved paintings of animals, ending in a chamber full of monsters 1312-feet underground, where CO2 and radon gas concentrations provoke hallucinations.
It's called the the Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc Cave, a really weird and mysterious place. The walls contain hundreds of animals—like the typical Paleolithic horses and bisons—but some of them are not supposed to be there, like lions, panthers, rhinos and hyenas.
A few are not even supposed to exist, like weird butterflyish animals or chimerical figures half bison half woman. These may be linked to the hallucinations. The trip is such that some archeologists think that it had a ritual nature, with people transcending into a new state as they descended into the final room.
In fact, the paintings themselves are of such sophistication—some even have three-dimensional relief—that is hard to believe they were made back then. However, radiocarbon dating shows that these paintings are indeed prehistoric: A group was made around 27,000-26,000 years ago and the other at 32,000-30,000 years ago.
The cave first discovered in 1994 by three French speleologists: Eliette Brunel-Deschamps, Christian Hillaire, and Jean-Marie Chauvet. And now you can visit it too. Not in person, but in the next best thing: The great German film director Werner Herzog has made a 3D film of it, which is the only 3D film I want to watch this year (actually, amazing documentaries are probably the only movie genre that is perfect for 3D, like this or the Hubble 3D movie).
“Radon causes hallucinations?”
Explains the democrats!
...or as we now call it, Helen Thomas' mommy parts.
Yeah, I saw something like that too, only it was a boar (English Large Black Pig).
Looked really odd until this diminutive young black gilt (young female pig) walked out from behind the big old grunt!
I recently visited the big new exhibit at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC. on the development of man. There was one wall with several dozen skulls dating from about 5 million years ogo to modern homo sapiens. A great exhibit, see it if you have any interest in this topic.
The last skull in the bottom right corner said “homo Sapien”. I said, “wait a minute, this does not look like a modern human even if they did age it as 10,000 years old. I looked at a bunch of other skulls including, homo erectus, homo heidelbergensis, and homo neanderthalis, and concluded it looks most like heidelberg man which lived from 700,000 to 300,000 years ago in Europe. Then I checked out Google for “Kow Swamp, Australia archaeology controversy”;
I read several articles about the argument over whether these skulls were homo erectus or homo sapiens. I think both views are wrong. Go see them yourself and tell me what you think.
What I think is that it is above my pay grade; I’m a dilettante, (and sometimes a diddler) but certainly not an expert. ;-)
I would love to see that Smithsonian exhibit, though...if I didn’t have to subject myself to DC to do so.
Ah, if I could afford to go.
But I see your point, Applegate.
Lived close to D.C., for a short while, when I was a kid.
My dad quit his job and moved us back to Idaho.
I remember him telling mom, “I’m not raising my kids in this sh!+”. And that was in ‘68-’69.
Toro always seemed like a weird name for a snowblower.
It was a fine name for a red lawn tractor. Brand extensions into related products led to any oddity there might be.
More pictures please?
A caveman’s man cave. Why not? Though if it were, wouldn’t there be more pics of nekkid wymin?
I am still making charcoal drawings today, talk about old technology!
I wonder how they would look on the walls of my hallway? hummmmm........
I think that some guys favor huntin’ more than nekkid wymen.
There is nothing interesting about these liberal lies! Anyone who thinks the earth is as old as this article claims needs to get their head checked!
What? No fur bikini clad girls sporting the latest hunting rocks and spears. Or shilling for the great tasting less filling new grog?
Their line must have died out.
Maybe those cave men didn’t get enough red meat to eat and that’s the reason their line died out!
Thanks! Will check it out.
Maybe near your ancestors home? ;)
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