Carbon dating shifted my view on cave paintings

I thought they were just art. Links to ancient climate events suggest they tracked changes.

3 comments

3 Comments

Yeah, that's a good point. I had the same feeling looking at some old petroglyphs after reading a study on local rainfall patterns. Totally changes the vibe, like @jake157 said.

wilson.diana29d ago

Chauvet Cave in France got dated way older than expected, around 36,000 years. That totally changed how people saw the animal drawings there. When you look at the new timeline, you start seeing patterns that might match up with big weather shifts. My advice is to always check if the art layers line up with known climate data from the same period. It turns a cool painting into a possible survival record, which is way more intense lol. Once you see that link, you can't really look at any of them as just decoration anymore.

jake15729d ago

That cave dating stuff is wild. It reminds me of a trip to see some rock art in Arizona, where the guide pointed out how the symbols changed when the area dried up. They had pictures of animals that vanished after a big drought. Seeing that in person makes you feel how close those people were to their environment, almost like a diary in stone.