There was big news from Indonesian earlier this month. A multinational team has identified the oldest known figurative paintings in the world on the island of Sulawesi. The new dates 44,000 years BP are in line -yet older- than other dates from Sulawesi and Borneo. In their paper in Nature Maxime Aubert has identified not just animals but therianthropes “abstract beings that combine the qualities of both people and animals.” (there is an excellent discussion of the article in Smithsonian) Six humanoid figures with animal features surround an anoa, a small type of buffalo, in a 44,000-year-old Indonesian cave mural. (Ratno Sardi) Therianthropes are incredibly rare in paleolithic cave art. The most famous example is the transforming bison from Chauvet made famous by Cave of Forgotten Dreams and there is a lesser-known anthropomorphic figure from Tito Bustillo in Spain. A therianthrope figure in Tito Bustillo cave, Spain. Aubert’s find further confirms...
The Lion Panel of Chauvet, Franceby Ancient Art Archiveon Sketchfab The Ancient Art Archive all grows out of a National Geographic Magazine story about paleolithic art. I wrote about that experience for the NG Proof blog and I've reproduced that text below. What I couldn't envision at the time is how images can be repurposed. The model above is constructed entirely of images I shot for a panorama of the lion panel. At the time I had not even heard of photogrammetry or even dreamed of building 3 dimensional models. From the January 5, 2015 NG Proof Blog At our core, people are visual communicators. Nothing has ever confirmed my faith in that like seeing the ancient art in the cave of Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc in Ardèche, France. (more…)
