this incredible art that mostly dates
between 10 and 40,000 years ago what we
often think of of course is the animals
but there’s this other enormous group
called the geometric signs that number
the animals in the humans at most sites
by a ratio of 2 to 1 or more so June
2014 myself and my husband and project
photographer Dylan we were at northern
Spain we were at a site called Kuya Vera
cave and we were so excited to finally
be there Kuya Vera the entrance is 30
meters up it’s a hundred feet it’s a
cathedral entrance in a wooded hillside
in the foothills of the Pyrenees there’s
like a whole wreath of dangling green
vines coming down it’s inviting it wants
you to come in and so I can understand
why people might have decided to go in
there 14,000 years ago what’s a little
more difficult to understand is why they
decided to go so far in because the very
first art is 780 meters half a mile into
the cave you can probably just see some
faint pigment marquees on the wall that
is not modern graphene these are not
animals but they’re not writing either
these are the geometric signs they came
half a mile to the cave to make these if
we enhance it you can see a little bit
more this is a very cool color
enhancement program created by American
rock art researcher john harmon and
suddenly you can see more but still no
animals i think as far as the eye can
see this is very unusual animals are
normally found everywhere but don’t
worry we just got to keep going a little
farther so we keep going three-quarters
of a mile in and there’s another little
passageway here with two horses so the
animals are represented there just in a
completely different section of cave and
as you can see they’re very simple but
we’ve also have all this detail that
kind of lets you know that there’s
something going on there’s a hint here
that there’s some artistic ability
that’s underlying what they’re doing
here so we got two horses that’s it you
keep going a little farther and now
there’s a little crevice off to the
right this time and somebody went up
there to make these little dots let me
enhance it for you but these little dots
somebody took their finger and dipped it
in paint
and made those marks and as so often
happens when I find myself in these
places I’m like what were you doing here
why did you come three quarters of a
mile or 1.2 kilometers in a cave to make
thoughts so let me introduce you to some
of this Paleolithic or Stone Age art
that mostly dates between 10 and 40,000
years ago what we often think of of
course is the animals the animals are by
far the majority of what we call
figurative or representational art a lot
of his hunting animals who’ve already
seen a horse here’s a deer we have a
fabulous purple bison it’s the only one
of its kind because most of the art when
it’s painted is either red or black
and so this fabulous purple bison I just
love him he’s like this unique little
guy hanging out in northern Spain so
we’ve got him and then also we do have a
few other figurative images of humans
and this is engraving this is the other
way that they made the art but there’s
this other enormous group called the
geometric signs that number the animals
in the humans at most sites by a ratio
of 2 to 1 or more they can be simple
things like the circle they can be more
complex things like this incredibly
complicated sign that was located in
this panel in Spain which is a one-off
it’s the only one of its kind in the
world they can be dots they can be lines
they can be triangles you know so
they’re the full range everything that’s
abstract and that’s kind of how they’ve
been defined over the years abstract
characters that don’t represent anything
from the mundane world so let me tell
you some of my fun results there are
only 32 signs across an entire continent
and a 30,000 year time period my friends
these are not random doodles or
decorations so what was I noticed was
that this there’s actually each one of
them has its own distinct patterning –
these are not all doing the same things
they’re doing different things in
different places so there were patterns
across space and time and that’s what’s
so intriguing and exciting so let me
show you a couple of those patterns this
is a child’s hand this is 27 thousand
year old child’s hand now hands are a
fascinating one because they are at
their most popular at the very earliest
time period so between 33 between 25 and
40,000 is when we find hands
after that they start to fade out of
popularity until they vanish towards the
end of the Ice Age they just go away
people stop making them so that’s one
pattern another pattern that’s very
interesting is this is called detective
form so this is like a roof shaped and
these are only made in the Dordogne
region of France between 13,000 and
17,000 years ago that’s where they’re
all located except for one site 250
miles to the south across the Pyrenees
Mountains in Spain and it is exactly the
same of talked to the researcher at that
site we’ve looked at pictures even down
to the little dots that you can see the
technique that was used it’s the exact
same thing
how did it get there this is what’s so
fun about the signs is that we can
actually follow people and ideas at
these incredible time depths and get a
sense of how their culture was
developing how were they learning about
symbolism what was going on so we’ve got
these signs that were being used very
purposefully by people who obviously
know what they meant
the obvious question people always want
to know is is it writing and I’m sorry
I’m here today to shadow that it’s not
writing yet though this inscription as
it’s called is called the inscription
from La Paz yaga this is a one-off and
this is the thing we don’t have the
consistency yet we don’t have enough
characters to represent a spoken
language it’s we’re not there yet but
that doesn’t mean that there’s not very
interesting things going on it’s really
funny because I just spent all this time
building my nice little list of 32 and
now my next job is probably going to be
to smash it back apart because there are
some major omissions there where’s the
landscape features where’s the weaponry
where’s the daily life did nobody look
up at the sky you know and so I think
that personally and this is what we’re
starting to dig into now I think a lot
of these geometric signs might actually
be representational as well and it could
give us some fascinating insight into
thematic categories and how these people
were understanding their world quick
example the pen of form so Penta form
means feather shaped in Latin it’s being
treated as a geometric sign but there
are contexts such as this where people
have muttered it kind of looks like a
tree so my response would be maybe a
tree sometimes it’s just a tree
maybe we don’t have to overcomplicate
this and so this is the kind of thing
we’re looking at as well as questions
about clusters of dots potentially being
constellations or other things which
would make really good sense and we see
in other rock art traditions what I’ve
done so far is just the baseline this
was the start those were some really
simple questions there is so much left
to be done in Europe one big category
that we’re still missing here is that my
database does not have any of the
portable art in it yet and yet the
sixteen thousand year old necklace for
instance from a burial in France has 45
different geometric configurations on it
think about how that can help me
understand what I’m seeing on a big
panel on a wall they seem to be starting
to group them up that line the cross the
line I’ve seen that on a cave wall about
50 miles from there so this is part of
the story and there are dusty artifacts
loitering all over Europe in museums
waiting to be documented so this is very
much the start and imagine if we can
start expanding the work that I’ve been
doing in Western Europe to a global
level now those would be some very big
patterns thank you
you
between 10 and 40,000 years ago what we
often think of of course is the animals
but there’s this other enormous group
called the geometric signs that number
the animals in the humans at most sites
by a ratio of 2 to 1 or more so June
2014 myself and my husband and project
photographer Dylan we were at northern
Spain we were at a site called Kuya Vera
cave and we were so excited to finally
be there Kuya Vera the entrance is 30
meters up it’s a hundred feet it’s a
cathedral entrance in a wooded hillside
in the foothills of the Pyrenees there’s
like a whole wreath of dangling green
vines coming down it’s inviting it wants
you to come in and so I can understand
why people might have decided to go in
there 14,000 years ago what’s a little
more difficult to understand is why they
decided to go so far in because the very
first art is 780 meters half a mile into
the cave you can probably just see some
faint pigment marquees on the wall that
is not modern graphene these are not
animals but they’re not writing either
these are the geometric signs they came
half a mile to the cave to make these if
we enhance it you can see a little bit
more this is a very cool color
enhancement program created by American
rock art researcher john harmon and
suddenly you can see more but still no
animals i think as far as the eye can
see this is very unusual animals are
normally found everywhere but don’t
worry we just got to keep going a little
farther so we keep going three-quarters
of a mile in and there’s another little
passageway here with two horses so the
animals are represented there just in a
completely different section of cave and
as you can see they’re very simple but
we’ve also have all this detail that
kind of lets you know that there’s
something going on there’s a hint here
that there’s some artistic ability
that’s underlying what they’re doing
here so we got two horses that’s it you
keep going a little farther and now
there’s a little crevice off to the
right this time and somebody went up
there to make these little dots let me
enhance it for you but these little dots
somebody took their finger and dipped it
in paint
and made those marks and as so often
happens when I find myself in these
places I’m like what were you doing here
why did you come three quarters of a
mile or 1.2 kilometers in a cave to make
thoughts so let me introduce you to some
of this Paleolithic or Stone Age art
that mostly dates between 10 and 40,000
years ago what we often think of of
course is the animals the animals are by
far the majority of what we call
figurative or representational art a lot
of his hunting animals who’ve already
seen a horse here’s a deer we have a
fabulous purple bison it’s the only one
of its kind because most of the art when
it’s painted is either red or black
and so this fabulous purple bison I just
love him he’s like this unique little
guy hanging out in northern Spain so
we’ve got him and then also we do have a
few other figurative images of humans
and this is engraving this is the other
way that they made the art but there’s
this other enormous group called the
geometric signs that number the animals
in the humans at most sites by a ratio
of 2 to 1 or more they can be simple
things like the circle they can be more
complex things like this incredibly
complicated sign that was located in
this panel in Spain which is a one-off
it’s the only one of its kind in the
world they can be dots they can be lines
they can be triangles you know so
they’re the full range everything that’s
abstract and that’s kind of how they’ve
been defined over the years abstract
characters that don’t represent anything
from the mundane world so let me tell
you some of my fun results there are
only 32 signs across an entire continent
and a 30,000 year time period my friends
these are not random doodles or
decorations so what was I noticed was
that this there’s actually each one of
them has its own distinct patterning –
these are not all doing the same things
they’re doing different things in
different places so there were patterns
across space and time and that’s what’s
so intriguing and exciting so let me
show you a couple of those patterns this
is a child’s hand this is 27 thousand
year old child’s hand now hands are a
fascinating one because they are at
their most popular at the very earliest
time period so between 33 between 25 and
40,000 is when we find hands
after that they start to fade out of
popularity until they vanish towards the
end of the Ice Age they just go away
people stop making them so that’s one
pattern another pattern that’s very
interesting is this is called detective
form so this is like a roof shaped and
these are only made in the Dordogne
region of France between 13,000 and
17,000 years ago that’s where they’re
all located except for one site 250
miles to the south across the Pyrenees
Mountains in Spain and it is exactly the
same of talked to the researcher at that
site we’ve looked at pictures even down
to the little dots that you can see the
technique that was used it’s the exact
same thing
how did it get there this is what’s so
fun about the signs is that we can
actually follow people and ideas at
these incredible time depths and get a
sense of how their culture was
developing how were they learning about
symbolism what was going on so we’ve got
these signs that were being used very
purposefully by people who obviously
know what they meant
the obvious question people always want
to know is is it writing and I’m sorry
I’m here today to shadow that it’s not
writing yet though this inscription as
it’s called is called the inscription
from La Paz yaga this is a one-off and
this is the thing we don’t have the
consistency yet we don’t have enough
characters to represent a spoken
language it’s we’re not there yet but
that doesn’t mean that there’s not very
interesting things going on it’s really
funny because I just spent all this time
building my nice little list of 32 and
now my next job is probably going to be
to smash it back apart because there are
some major omissions there where’s the
landscape features where’s the weaponry
where’s the daily life did nobody look
up at the sky you know and so I think
that personally and this is what we’re
starting to dig into now I think a lot
of these geometric signs might actually
be representational as well and it could
give us some fascinating insight into
thematic categories and how these people
were understanding their world quick
example the pen of form so Penta form
means feather shaped in Latin it’s being
treated as a geometric sign but there
are contexts such as this where people
have muttered it kind of looks like a
tree so my response would be maybe a
tree sometimes it’s just a tree
maybe we don’t have to overcomplicate
this and so this is the kind of thing
we’re looking at as well as questions
about clusters of dots potentially being
constellations or other things which
would make really good sense and we see
in other rock art traditions what I’ve
done so far is just the baseline this
was the start those were some really
simple questions there is so much left
to be done in Europe one big category
that we’re still missing here is that my
database does not have any of the
portable art in it yet and yet the
sixteen thousand year old necklace for
instance from a burial in France has 45
different geometric configurations on it
think about how that can help me
understand what I’m seeing on a big
panel on a wall they seem to be starting
to group them up that line the cross the
line I’ve seen that on a cave wall about
50 miles from there so this is part of
the story and there are dusty artifacts
loitering all over Europe in museums
waiting to be documented so this is very
much the start and imagine if we can
start expanding the work that I’ve been
doing in Western Europe to a global
level now those would be some very big
patterns thank you
you
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