Cave Paintings

Back in the days when human ancestors were classified by geological/ cultural "races" (they were circularly defined as early or late by the geological time that they occupied -total bullshit).
It was an attractive enough classification sysyetm that provided some order and comfort to those who cared enough.
Th classification sequence went from Maousterian-Neanterthal-Aurignacian-Brunn(mit an umlaught)-Chancelade-Cro Magnon-Modern. (I had this in a notebook from a chapter in the Flint series of Pliocene/Pleistocene geomorphology-I must have taken a course in this stuff at one time)

It was an agreeable fancy of the systematizers and we know that Cro-Magnon was actually a Homo sapiens sapiens.

So what I learned in my anthropology classes is no longer considered valid or relevant? In other words, BS?

sorry but genetics and paleo has pretty much taken over the "paleo race" classification crap, and we know that many of these different stages were really the same species.
Now, anthropologically, you were more interested in the deveolpment of culture anyway so, in that respect, these "racial typologies" are actually societal . In that case , we use the artifacts and not the skulls.

.

Gotcha, and thanks.

Not in a cave but on a rock "wall" on the northern shores of Lake Superior. I'm amazed that it hasn't been obliterated by time and weather as the viewing platforms erected in the past have all been destroyed by winter storms and ice. The painting is in a provincial park and there is an interpreter posted there during the summer to answer questions but just as important, to lend a helping hand so you don't end up in the lake as you creep across smooth, almost vertical rock to see the painting. (I took off my sneakers to get a better grip with my bares toes on the rock!)

Glad you've got grippy toes, Tai. Thanks for the painting. It's wonderful.

Tai-On another thread , one of our members used that very pictograph to "prove " that humans and dinosaurs lived together(at Least in Lake Superior) This member said that this animal was undoubtedly a stegosaur. (He never explained the tusk)

Wait just a minute, farmerman. First you tell me that everything I learned in school was bogus. Now you're gonna tell me that's not a stegasaurus? What's next? No tooth fairy?

no I'm not Cro Magnon man was in the area of the Dordogne where I visited several times and saw the various caves with paintings - lots of museums and stuff, particularly at Les Eysies but the write ups etc said they are thought to have died out. They weren't nomadic and when conditions changed (ice age) they couldn't cope - at least that was the theory put forward.


'Discovered by workmen in 1868 at Cro-Magnon, in the village of Les Eyzies in France. The estimated age of the site is 30,000 years. The site yielded 5 skeletons (3 adult males, an adult female, and a child) which had been buried there, along with stone tools, carved reindeer antlers, ivory pendants, and shells. The Cro-Magnons lived in Europe between 35,000 and 10,000 years ago. They are virtually identical to modern man, being tall and muscular and slightly more robust on average than most modern humans. They were skilled hunters, toolmakers and artists famous for the cave art at places such as Lascaux, Chauvet, and Altamira. '

'virtually' identical but taller and more muscular

Doing a search on what you quoted, I found the rest of the entry here:

If Cro-Magnons were modern humans, does that mean that modern humans are Cro-Magnons? Not really. Logically, many modern humans should be, since most modern Europeans are probably descended from them(emphasis mine). But the term has no taxonomic significance and usually just refers to Europeans in a certain time range, even though other modern humans were living throughout much of the world at the same time. To quote the Oxford Companion to Archaeology:

Cro-magnons are, in informal usage, a group among the late Ice Age peoples of Europe. The Cro-Magnons are identified with Homo sapiens sapiens of modern form, in the time range ca. 35,000-10000 b.p. ...
The term 'Cro-Magnon' has no formal taxonomic status, since it refers neither to a species or subspecies nor to an archaeological phase or culture. The name is not commonly encountered in modern professional literature in English, since authors prefer to talk more generally of anatomically modern humans. They thus avoid a certain ambiguity in the label 'Cro-Magnon', which is sometimes used to refer to all early moderns in Europe (as opposed to the preceding Neanderthals), and sometimes to refer to a specific human group that can be distinguished from other Upper Paleolithic humans in the region. Nevertheless, the term 'Cro-Magnon' is still very commonly used in popular texts because it makes an obvious distinction with the Neanderthals, and also refers directly to people rather than to the complicated succession of archaeological phases that make up the Upper Paleolithic. This evident practical value has prevented archaeologists and human paleontologists - especially in continental Europe - from dispensing entirely with the idea of Cro-Magnons.

--------------------

The physiological differences between "modern man" and Cro-Magnon, i.e. "slightly more robust," are probably more gene pool differences that we see nowadays between peoples from different parts of the world.

The possibility that Cro-Magnon man is an ancestor of Modern Europeans belies your contention that "cro-magnon man is supposed to have died out when our ancestors moved in and proved more flexible." That supposition refers to some of the theories on the Neanderthal, and their disappearance in the face of homo sapiens sapiens'--which includes the Cro Mangon--arrival.

Really? I would have thought it might be an attempt to explain the kind of storms/dangers for which Lake Superior is famous (think "Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald"). It's next to a canoe after all. I wouldn't venture far out on Lake Superior in a canoe! Those snakes or that what-ever-it-is could easily tip a canoe.

And Tyler too!

(Sorry, i couldn't resist. History nerds will get the joke.)

You don't have to be a history nerd to get that one. How to I know. I got it. No history nerd.

Eland Cave, South Africa

Yup. That thought occurred to me just as I hit "submit".

littlek, I'm gasping. That is positively spectacular. It reminds me of the first time I saw images of cave paintings. Beautiful and ALIVE.

There was a NOVA show on last night that discussed the very thing we were mulling over, whether the Selutrians were the developers of the Clovis typology. I wsnt sure about what they actually concluded other than the fact that DNA of the Ojibwa , Pottawatamee, and several other Great LAkes tribes , bear a genetic similarity to European groups of ancients that differentiated from their rootstock as early as 15 to 25000 y bp.
Also a site called "Cactus Hill" in Va had some i bifacial points that were intermediate of the slim Selutrian points and the more hefty Clovis/Folsom points.

The conclusion by all the archeologists involved was that, while these alternatives to the "Clovis first" theory, were in themselves compelling, they represented only isolated field sites and mtDNA samples. I think were going to see more research in a frenzy to evidence or refute "Selutrians first". I was not aware of the singular mtDNA marker in the Ojibwa.That could therefore include l;ots of the A lgonquian peoples of the NE corridor . If one were to go back and look at some of the historical accounts of first contacts, the chroniclers describe the various people they encountered as handsome from their own anthropocentric viewpoint.
No conclusions , beyond my area of any credibility or interest but, Im sure, somebody is gonna carry this to a conlusion. We cant leave some pieces of stray mtDNA out there without nailing them down.

Ive always looked at the descriptions and drawings of the Powhatans Pam,licos, Mahican and Susquehannocks as being almost European. I was especially taken by the similarity of their shelters to those described as the Neolithic "lake Peoples"

One of the areas in the show that was harped on by the "Lets give the Selutrians some cred" theory. They all conjectured that some of the really great habitation sites may be in the inundated fore shore zones. To emphasize this I might add that, We did some drilling in the lower New Jersey coastal plane last year. We were looking at re-inundating a former wetlands as part of a large state wetland park. Our drilling found evidence of a Pinus virginianus forest at about 55 ft depth.This forest evidence meant that (at about 7000YBP the mature foret was at an equilibrium seastand of at least 55 ft. The forest was rapidly inundated because the stumps and trees were mostly shredded and not rotten. It was as if the ancient Delaware River was reasserting its level. HAd we drilled deeper, we would have probably found evidence of earlier beach back or barrier island forests in equilibrium with a seastand of a time when much of the worlds ocen water was locked up in continental ice.

Interesting stuff, farmer. Early accounts of European contact with Algonquins, Iraquois and other peoples of Northeastern North America claim that some Cree had blue eyes.