This would be an excellent film about which to write an extra credit report!
If you don't have an LAPL library card, go get one! http://www.lapl.org/about-lapl/borrower-services#apply
Friday, August 30, 2019
If you have an LAPL library card...
Sign up for this awesome free movie thing: https://www.lapl.org/kanopy
then watch this https://lapl.kanopy.com/video/finding-altamira
This would be an excellent film about which to write an extra credit report!
If you don't have an LAPL library card, go get one! http://www.lapl.org/about-lapl/borrower-services#apply
This would be an excellent film about which to write an extra credit report!
If you don't have an LAPL library card, go get one! http://www.lapl.org/about-lapl/borrower-services#apply
In the News: SO NEANDERTHALS MADE ABSTRACT ART?
SO NEANDERTHALS MADE ABSTRACT ART? ASTOUNDING DISCOVERY HUMBLES EVERY HUMAN by Jonathan Jones
Up to now we called it the human presence. “The print of the hand says, ‘This is my mark. This is man’,” declared the scientist Jacob Bronowski when he visited caves in northern Spain in his classic TV series The Ascent of Man. Simon Schama visits those same caves in the BBC’s new epic series Civilisations and raves about those same handprints. For what could communicate the curiosity, self-assertion, intelligence, and above all self-consciousness of our unique species Homo sapiens, more clearly that this desire to literally leave our mark?
Except it is not unique to Homo sapiens at all. The potentially epoch-making announcement in the journal Science this week of a new dating for art in some of Spain’s painted caves includes the astounding discovery that a stencilled hand in Maltravieso cave is at least 66,700 years old – a date reached by testing the calcite deposits that have encrusted it over the millennia.
That is long before modern humans are known to have reached Europe on their migration out of Africa. It is also more than 25,000 years before the first paintings made by Homo sapiens in Europe were created at Chauvet in France. The Maltravieso hand is not human, at least not Homo sapiens. It has to be that of a Neanderthal, the early species that hunted the big beasts of ice age Europe before our lot came along, only to mysteriously vanish about 40,000 years ago, soon after our arrival.
“Up to now there have been claims of Neanderthals doing cave art,” says Professor Chris Stringer, Britain’s foremost authority on human evolution. “But it could well have been modern humans. This is clearly before the time when humans were in Europe.” Stringer, one of the researchers who established the now extremely well-proven theory that Homo sapiens evolved in Africa, was not involved in the new dating work but accepts the findings are “a huge breakthrough”.
READ THE REST AT THE GUARDIAN OR ATJ
Also, if you want to go to the horse's mouth, here's the SCIENCE journal article.
Leaving a mark … a color-enhanced hand stencil from La Pasiega in
northern Spain, now dated back 66,700 years. Photograph: Reuters
If you go to the painted caves of Spain and France, crawl through narrow passages and keep your balance on slippery rock floors, you reach the hidden places where ice age hunters made their marks tens of thousands of years ago. Nothing seems more startling than the way they placed hands against the cold rock and blew red ochre out of their mouths to leave fiery images. Of what though?Up to now we called it the human presence. “The print of the hand says, ‘This is my mark. This is man’,” declared the scientist Jacob Bronowski when he visited caves in northern Spain in his classic TV series The Ascent of Man. Simon Schama visits those same caves in the BBC’s new epic series Civilisations and raves about those same handprints. For what could communicate the curiosity, self-assertion, intelligence, and above all self-consciousness of our unique species Homo sapiens, more clearly that this desire to literally leave our mark?
Drawing of Panel 78 in La Pasiega by Breuil et al (1913). The red scalariform (ladder) symbol has a
minimum age of 64,000 years but it is unclear if the animals and other symbols were painted later
Except it is not unique to Homo sapiens at all. The potentially epoch-making announcement in the journal Science this week of a new dating for art in some of Spain’s painted caves includes the astounding discovery that a stencilled hand in Maltravieso cave is at least 66,700 years old – a date reached by testing the calcite deposits that have encrusted it over the millennia.
That is long before modern humans are known to have reached Europe on their migration out of Africa. It is also more than 25,000 years before the first paintings made by Homo sapiens in Europe were created at Chauvet in France. The Maltravieso hand is not human, at least not Homo sapiens. It has to be that of a Neanderthal, the early species that hunted the big beasts of ice age Europe before our lot came along, only to mysteriously vanish about 40,000 years ago, soon after our arrival.
“Up to now there have been claims of Neanderthals doing cave art,” says Professor Chris Stringer, Britain’s foremost authority on human evolution. “But it could well have been modern humans. This is clearly before the time when humans were in Europe.” Stringer, one of the researchers who established the now extremely well-proven theory that Homo sapiens evolved in Africa, was not involved in the new dating work but accepts the findings are “a huge breakthrough”.
READ THE REST AT THE GUARDIAN OR ATJ
Also, if you want to go to the horse's mouth, here's the SCIENCE journal article.
Recent Discovery of Mayan Ruins Rewriting History!
'Game Changer': Maya Cities Unearthed In Guatemala Forest Using Lasers
By raining down laser pulses on some 770 square miles of dense forest in northern Guatemala, archaeologists have discovered 60,000 Maya structures that make up full sprawling cities.
And the new technology provides them with an unprecedented view into how the ancient civilization worked, revealing almost industrial agricultural infrastructure and new insights into Maya warfare.
"This is a game changer," says Thomas Garrison, an archaeologist at Ithaca College who is one of the leaders of the project. It changes "the base level at which we do Maya archaeology."
The data reveals that the area was three or four times more densely populated than originally thought. "I mean, we're talking about millions of people, conservatively," says Garrison. "Probably more than 10 million people."
Paleolithic Art
If you missed last week's class, or want to review or expand on what we looked at, the Khan Academy has an excellent overview of Prehistoric art (in fact they are a reliable go-to site for all the Art History periods we'll be covering).
Read at least Paleolithic art, an introduction and I strongly recommend reading through the following short and clear essays on the Origins of rock art in Africa, Apollo 11 Stones, Venus of Willendorf, and Lascaux caves. You can even take the quiz if you like. Here is their video on the Venus of Willendorf:
And here's Werner Herzog's feature documentary about the Chauvet Caves:
How Art Made The World 2 - The Day Pictures Were Born
This is an even worse version of the video than the one we looked at, but if you missed it, this'll have to do!
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