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Children Helped Decorate Prehistoric Caves of France
sciencehabit writes "Among the prolific paintings and other art in the 8 kilometer-long Rouffignac cave system in southwestern France are a number of unusual markings known as finger flutings, which are made by people dragging their hands through the soft silt that lines the cave's walls. By analyzing the finger flutings of modern humans, researchers discovered that the ratio of the distance between the three middle fingers indicate that many of the cave artists were very young children, one as young as 2 or 3 years old. The researchers were also able to tell the children's genders from the shape of the fingers."
How do they not know it it wasn't 'Barney the prehistoric dinosaur'? :) :) Or perhaps some prey they captured and about to kill for food as it's clawing away?
So this sounds just like my oldest (3 years) he is always dragging his fingers across the walls. I guess kids never really change.
Time to offend someone
"Most preschoolers get scolded for writing on walls, but kids living 13,000 years ago were encouraged to scribble, at least in caves. Among the prolific paintings and other art in the 8 kilometer-long Rouffignac cave system in southwestern France are a number of unusual markings known as finger flutings, which are made by people dragging their hands through the soft silt that lines the cave's walls. By analyzing the finger flutings of modern humans, researchers discovered that the ratio of the distance between the three middle fingers indicate that many of the cave artists were very young children, one as young as 2 or 3 years old. The researchers were also able to tell the children's genders from the shape of the fingers. Some of these flutings were too steady for a toddler, suggesting that an adult guided the child's hand while teaching him or her, the researchers will report this weekend at the archaeology of childhood conference in Cambridge, U.K. Since the children's drawings seemed to be concentrated in one chamber, the researchers believe that the alcove may have been a sort of art school. And some of the drawings were high on the walls and on the ceiling, suggesting that the children were lifted."
Very cool. I love how we can open windows onto our ancestors' lives through a bunch of boring measurements of finger tracks on a dusty cave wall.
MAD (the cartoon on Cartoon Network) may have joked about this already. Although I don't know if it was made before or after this knowledge.
with those kids back then. 'STAND STILL LADDIE!!'.
How are we sure it's not just people dragging their fingers along the wall to navigate in the dark?
Unfortunately, the presentation in question doesn't seem to be online. There was a presentation on this subject at a conference at Cambridge http://www.sscip.org.uk/files/SSCIP%20Annual%20Conference%202011/Programme%20Autumn%202011a.pdf which apparently includes a lot of other examples of artifacts made by children in cultures throughout human history. Can someone find the relevant papers online? The author of the work is Jess Cooney from Cambridge. There's a page http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/features/prehistoric-pre-school/ with more details but I can't find actual preprints or the like.
But there's one thing that this sort of thing really shows: science rocks. We can use clever tests and careful measurements to figure out details about the age of children painting on caves. This is exactly why science is awesome. And we're always learning more and more, developing more clever techniques, and finding out more about the universe and ourselves. We are on a long, slow, possibly never-ending journey. But that journey leads closer and closer to truth. And those children and adults long ago who struggled to survive and experimented with different ways to paint are part of that same journey that we are.
(Sorry, something about this story just gets me a bit emotional.)
I wonder if the rest of the cave paintings were done by children as well? Perhaps that is why they look so "primitive".
I always wondered why those cave drawings looked like a bunch of kids drew it. I assumed it was because primitive man had primitive painting tools. But it seems the explanation is even simpler.
I recall some article about some kids getting in trouble for putting graffitti into a cave like this (searches fail me at the moment...) with pre-historic grafitti...
I found it somewhat ironic.
Or, the caveman was a paedophile serial killer with a side interest in modern representational art...
News Flash: Kids draw on walls. Gee. Who'd a thunk it?
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have backups to corrupt.
When I tried to use children to decorate my house the taxidermist called the cops. Stupid modern laws.
Monstar L
I understand how we could determine biological sex of the kids that go with the finger markings but I'm not really sure how we determined gender... http://www.who.int/gender/whatisgender/en/
there's probably pre-historic boogers mixed in.
rewriting history since 2109
My mom still has one of those plaster castings of a handprint one of us did in kindergarten sitting in one of her cabinets. I'm not sure we know who, unless the teacher wrote our name on the back :-)
Meanwhile, if you ever get another chance to see the movie Cave of Forgotten Dreams in 3D, absolutely go see it. Werner Herzog took a camera crew into the oldest known painted cave in France for a couple of days, and it really did need to be filmed in 3D.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
The researchers were also able to tell the children's genders from the shape of the fingers.
What, vertical lines are girls' and horizontal ones are boys'?
So they are actually drawings of Big Bird and Miss Piggy and not wild boar and such?
"Most preschoolers get scolded for writing on walls, but kids living 13,000 years ago were encouraged to scribble, at least in caves."
Uhm... How do they know that those children didn't get scolded for it too?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
"This why we not have nice things"
Happy?
At least as we are? With infant mortality so high and life expectancy so low, one must have needed a stoic heart to face it all. I wonder whether they enjoyed their little lives..
Suddenly it dawns on me that the future sentient dwellers of this universe will ask the same question about us. At least they have our Twitter and Facebook to browse through.
When I were a lad during the ice age we had to walk all the way to southwest France to go to school
And it was uphill both ways
Concludes that children produced this archaeology.
The first rule of science is to question the obvious, appealing hypothesis.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Hmmm ... star wars ... or prehistoric humans ?
When will slashdot start supporting the philosoraptor in replies?
You call that art? My great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother could do that!
I remember a story about the famous pediatrician Dr. Benjamin Spock. When told that a child's gender could be determined by the shape of the skull at birth, he replied "I prefer the traditional methods..."
Yeah. My two year old girl "helps" me decorate my house once in a while, too.
"If I have been able to see so far, It is because I went out and bought a damn binoculars" - Ze da Esquina
...we have tricorders we can reconstruct the actual children as well.
"Most preschoolers get scolded for writing on walls, but kids living 13,000 years ago were encouraged to scribble, at least in caves."
Uhm... How do they know that those children didn't get scolded for it too?
Last line of the linked article reads, " And some of the drawings were high on the walls and on the ceiling, suggesting that the children were lifted." I'm reasonably sure that's how they know. I suppose an argument could be made that it was their teenage siblings holding them up but back then by that age the teens would have been the parents of other 2 or 3 year olds.
You know the thing about UDP jokes? I don't care if you get it or not.
Which re-raises the prospect of "There you are you little tyke! I told you not to come in here! SLAP!", followed by a leathering for daubing on grandpappy Ug's magic drawing,
"And it's no reindeer steak for you you troublesome little git, straight to bed with a baculum to suck on and think yourself lucky you're not getting thrown out tonight to take your chances with the wolves!"
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"