How about Xi 'an Mammoth Photography?

About 65,438+000 years ago, archaeologists worked hard on two archaeological sites in Dordogne. These amateur explorers sometimes use explosives to assist their work. They will search in areas full of caves and find many prints made by our earliest ancestors when they settled in modern Europe. These two sites were soon called the treasures of early human settlements, and they believed that cave murals were thoroughly excavated like Lascaux's.

The excavation of related content is as follows: The researchers found a 38-year-old French print with a thousand years' history, so when Randall White and a research team visited Abri blanchard in 20 12 and Abri Celie in 20 14, they had little hope of finding undisturbed works. For example, when they found a large pile of limestone in Abri Cheryl, it seemed to be just another pile of unremarkable materials, which was destroyed by early archaeologists without thorough inspection and recording. Then they realized that the rocks were covered with stripes. One of the stones was chiseled with a row of dots, forming an eye-catching pattern: a furry mammoth.

"You saw people's hands thirty-eight thousand years ago. Who won't be moved by it? Randall White, a professor of anthropology at new york University, is one of the authors of a study published in the International Quaternary last Friday. He said:

White's team recently found an image made by similar technology in Abri blanchard, so they suspected that the hand they saw was made by human beings. But what is certain is that they use microscopic analysis to observe the wear of the surface to confirm that the pattern matches the traces created by human beings, not the traces left by nature. From there, we can easily say that by connecting these points, we can know that this mammoth is the product of an unknown member of the Orinak people, named after the French village of Orinak.

About 40,000 years ago, when Europe was still covered with ice and snow under the action of Villm Glacier, Origna became the first modern man to arrive in Western Europe, where Neanderthals had settled. For thousands of years, Orignacci people have been living in rock shelters in France, Germany, Spain and other places, benefiting from the mild microclimate in these areas. They hunt prey and are likely to see many cows migrating along nearby valleys: mammoths, horses, auroras (large bison) and other animals.

It is most obvious for white people who study ancient human civilization. Aurora people draw inspiration from the world around them to create art. Decorative beads, like Willendorf's Venus clay sculpture, and hundreds of paintings and etchings in rock bunkers.

"What makes this art so cool is that the Oregon people are already a graphic society. It tells us that, in a general sense, they have very modern ideas, "said archaeologist Genevieve von Persinger, the author of The First Sign: Unveiling the Mystery of the World's Oldest Symbol. "

White said that intimate relationships with modern people can also be misleading. He said, "You feel close and distant at the same time." They have their own culture, so do we. There is always a gap … I'm not sure I can understand what this photo means to their lives.

This is an illustration of Abri blanchard's The Aurora. (R.Bourrillon's photos and paintings) A sharp-horned rhinoceros painted by grotte Jowett. (photographed by C.Fritz) The newly discovered Abri Celie limestone and a pointed mammoth. (R.Bourrillon Photography and Drawing) 20 14 Excavation in Abricelli What we know is that the technology of prehistoric scientists must be a tense process, just as White said. Artists will use hard stones, such as quartzite, to polish the slate surface until it is smooth. Then they made a small cup with another tool, a cup mark that looked like a hollow point on a domino. As far as mammoths are concerned, the sculptor made more than 60 separate punctuation marks, and then rubbed off the edge of the rock, leaving a gap in the neck. White said: "They basically made the mammoth into a suitable corner." . He estimated that the whole process would take about 2 hours.

This style is particularly striking because it was found not only in Abri Celie and Abri blanchard, but also on the wall of Jowett Cave, nearly 250 miles away. Emily Sharmin Aljanabi, a French archaeologist and chemist, said that a rhinoceros, for example, was painted on the palm of its hand, and then a circular stain was repeatedly pressed into the wall until a figure appeared. According to the pigments they created, these early humans must be "excellent mineralogists", she added.

However, art experts warned not to be too fascinated by this prehistoric stippling painting. Gloria groom said that using the word "pointillism" to describe sculpture and painting may expand the definition of French post-impressionist artistic skills. art institute of chicago is the head of the Department of Painting and Sculpture in Europe.

"I don't think you can say that they are pursuing abstraction," the groom said of the point painters georges seurat and Paul Signack who invented this technology in 1886. "It's about how colors are represented on the canvas to maximize the feeling of light. Behind stippling is uniqueness, a new scientific theory about light, color and visual perception. " Point color is also very accurate, said the groom; Many of Seurat's paintings are sketches at first, and then drawn on the grid before the final composition. Seurat achieved this technical accuracy as a draftsman.

However, Abri blanchard's new artistic discovery is undoubtedly of great significance for us to understand how art developed and played its role in prehistoric times. With Abri blanchard's new discovery, the number of artistic building blocks has jumped from 88 to 147 in nine rock bunker sites of Oreganosi people.

"Some of these sites were excavated very early, and people think they have been completed," said von Poesinger, who admitted that he was very excited about the "rows of dots". "I think it's really exciting for Randy and his team to revisit these websites. We hardly know what is under our noses.

She added that these findings can help archaeologists to ask more acute questions about the social and cultural spread of the Paleolithic age.

"For 30,000 years, we have only about 400 sites," said von Poesinger. "It was found that these same technologies were quite common in use, which made us wonder if there was a common culture at that time. Do they keep in touch? Were these technologies developed in Europe or earlier? This is the exciting part of the Orignacci period. The more we realize how mature the existing artistic traditions are, the more we can ask how long ago they started.