Human evolution; new human cave art found (Introduction)

by David Turell , Friday, April 17, 2020, 22:50 (1470 days ago) @ David Turell

In an Indonesian cave:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/signs-of-modern-human-cognition-were-found-i...

"Imagining things that do not exist in nature and weaving them into narratives are unique signatures of the human psyche. These abilities are abundantly evident in the earliest example of narrative art, which was recently discovered in a cave on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. In these newly reported images, one or more Pleistocene-epoch humans on this Southeast Asian island depicted a scene containing several figures that seem to be people. But mysteriously, some of these “humans” have snouts, another has a tail and still another has a bird’s beak. The human-animal hybrids must have lived only in the imagination of their creators. Far from a literal copy of the natural world, they offer a window into the creative minds of the prehistoric artists. The images’ inventive mixing of forms reveals a surprisingly modern reasoning and a sophisticated narrative imagination. At 44,000 years of age, they are the oldest known cave paintings made by modern humans

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"The arrangement of the figures and the presence of strange humanlike forms suggests that the artists were conveying a story. But if these paintings represent a narrative, what does it mean? The individuals who resemble people carry what appear to be weapons or, in some cases, ropes. They surround a group of animals, which includes pigs and a species of dwarf buffalo, suggesting that they are hunting those creatures. Could this scene be a literal depiction of a hunt, with humans wearing animal skins or masks for camouflage? Alternatively, could it be a record of a hunting strategy?

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"Sulawesi lies east of Borneo and northwest of Australia, and it is a particularly rich site for ancient art. More than 240 caves with wall paintings have been identified on the island. The researchers who announced the recent discovery previously described a 35,000-year-old cave painting of a babirusa, or pig deer, there. They also reported some examples of portable art in Sulawesi dating back 20,000 years, including engravings of an anoa (a wild ox sometimes called a midget buffalo) and of a sunburst pattern on plaquettes about the size of large coins.

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"These evocative images, hidden until now in an Indonesian cave, are a combinatorial exploration of an imaginary world, mixing a human form with the head of a bird or the tail of a beast. The Sulawesi artists who composed the images left us the earliest example of the innovative combination of features and their symbolic meanings that became the heart of human culture. The painting show modern thought at work in a prehistoric cave."

Comment: H. sapiens traveled all over the world, getting to the Western Hemisphere very late. Note my bold. Sapiens arrived 315,000 years ago according to current knowledge. Look how long it took to learn how to use their new-sized brain. Dhw's theory of forced enlargement can be easily interpreted as meaning the new brain did not need a learning period like this.