by Grania
Welcome to the middle of the week and the penultimate Wednesday of 2017. The New York Times has a photo essay called Year In Pictures up today.
Eclipse
On the Twitters this morning: a remarkable ancient sculpture from the Le Tuc d’Audoubert cave (part of the Trois-Frères cave complex in France). It was discovered by three teens in 1912.
Matthew sent in this tweet, which is basically The Little Mermaid, felid edition.
Over in Poland, Hili and Cyrus are engaged in Deep Thought again.
Cyrus: Why does logic not regulate herd thinking?
Hili: Because then the herd would disperse.
In Polish:
Cyrus: Dlaczego logika nie reguluje myślenia stadnego?
Hili: Bo gdyby to robiła, to by się stado rozlazło.
20 Comments
Interesting! cannot do the doggy shake though, just shakes a leg!
I will speak ill of the dead. Bernard Law died. An almost worthless piece of s**t. I say almost because he was good on civil rights when he was a priest in Mississippi in the 1960s. As opposed to Jerry Falwell who was a total worthless piece of s**t.
Law should have gone to jail but instead lived in exile in Rome. Where he continued to be an evil presence in the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. Informing policy on sex abuse – i.e. ignore it. And making sure all American bishops were right wingers.
Good riddance to bad garbage. Kind of makes you wish there was a hell for him to go to. I regret that he lived to 86 spreading his vileness on the Earth.
When will Pat Robertson meet his way overdue end?
Is this another of those matchbox burials. A good example of what you get when you self investigate. The Catholics are real pros at it.
In the picture he looks more like he’s scheming than praying.
Don’t they have an entire semenary system for sorting out the good ol’boys from the troublesome priests? Not just one layer of control.
Mind you, considering why Thomas Becket got a severe tonsure censure, that’s maybe not the most appropriate of similes.
Lots of good info, with cave maps, drawings & photographs of Tuc d’Audoubert at Don’s Maps
Thanks for that!
Great!
Fascinating information at that website! I was interested to read about cave lions too – I suspect that Paleo-PCC(E) might have reconsidered his dream of holding a lion cub!
That sculpture can’t be 14k old because the earth is only 6,500 years old! lol
I was astounded by the cave art in Herzog’s “Cave of Forgotten Dreams,” but those bison really blow me away. I don’t think I’ve ever seen ice-age sculpture before, or at least not of a realistic sort.
Same here. I’ve never seen these sculptures before. Had no idea. Imagining standing in front of them is quite literally awe-inspiring.
The realism is astonishing.
There is a rock shelter decorated with full size animals(horses) in relief known as Cap Blanc. We visited the site in October. The realism isn’t as good as these bison, but they’re not bad.
http://www.lascaux-dordogne.com/fr/patrimoine-culturel/site-monument-site-archeologique/abri-de-cap-blanc
There are also quite a few small scale sculptures in stone and bone found all over Europe.
https://www.slideshare.net/bruceblack/prehistoric-sculpture
Thanks very much. The Venus of Brassempouy is startling.
Great stuff Grania. BTW I’m no longer on Twitter and I dont have your Cork skeptic handle. If you are about then drop me a line r.king@ucc.ie
I’m blasted too, how come we know about Lascaux, Chauvet, Altamira, and many more, but I never heard of Le Tuc d’Audoubert, containing actual big clay sculptures? Did anybody knew about this? And known since 1912! My first reaction was ‘must be a hoax’, but it appears they are genuine. Fantastic!
My wife and I toured southern France in October with a major goal of seeing cave art in the Les Eyzies area East of Bordeaux. This tour had been at the top of my bucket list since I was just a kid. Of course we saw Lascaux, but there are numerous less well know sites to see. We stopped at Font-de-Gaume, Rouffignac, Pech Merle. Each one is a mind blowing experience. Each has unique aspects while preserving common elements representing the widespread Cro-Magnon culture. While Lascaux is seen as an accurate replica, the others are actual encounters with the real thing. We would have visited the Chauvet site which was featured in the Herzog documentary, but we were unaware that it has a public display component called Pont d’Arc cave. There are dozens of sites from Germany through France and into northern Spain. Probably the most stunning realization that came to me after seeing these sites was the remarkable consistency in style, symbolism, and intent across hundreds of miles and across 20 thousand years. It leads me to suppose that there must have been a remarkably stable culture through space and time.
Cave art fans may be interested in Kim Stanley Robinson’s novel Shaman, a fictionalized account of the lives of Ice Age tribes in western Europe.
KSR is an astounding writer; one of those rare breeds who is as comfortable in the science fiction genre as in historical fiction and fantasy. Shaman is a great example of his formidable abilities.