posted
Egypt's Oldest Known Art Identified, Is 15,000 Years Old
Dan Morrison in Cairo, Egypt for National Geographic News
July 11, 2007
Rock face drawings and etchings recently rediscovered in southern Egypt are similar in age and style to the iconic Stone Age cave paintings in Lascaux, France, and Altamira, Spain, archaeologists say.
"It is not at all an exaggeration to call it 'Lascaux on the Nile,'" said expedition leader Dirk Huyge, curator of the Egyptian Collection at the Royal Museums of Art and History in Brussels, Belgium.
"The style is riveting," added Salima Ikram of the American University in Cairo, who was part of Huyge's team.
The art is "unlike anything seen elsewhere in Egypt," he said.
The engravings—estimated to be about 15,000 years old—were chiseled into several sandstone cliff faces at the village of Qurta, about 400 miles (640 kilometers) south of Cairo (Egypt map).
Of the more than 160 figures found so far, most depict wild bulls. The biggest is nearly six feet (two meters) wide.
The drawings "push Egyptian art, religion, and culture back to a much earlier time," Ikram said.
The team's findings will be published in the September issue of the British quarterly journal Antiquity.
Before Its Time
The Qurta art has now twice been uncovered by modern researchers.
Some of the engravings were first found in 1962 by a group from the University of Toronto, Canada.
The leader of that expedition, Philip Smith, made the then novel suggestion that the figures were from the Paleolithic age—the Stone Age period from about 2.5 million years ago to about 10,000 years ago—in a 1964 article in Archaeology magazine.
But he abandoned the hypothesis in later years.
"The Paleolithic experts told them, It's absolutely crazy—Europe is the cradle of art," Huyge, the leader of the new expedition, said. "And they backed off the idea.
"They must have accepted the fact that that nobody wanted to believe them, but they were right."
Discoveries of Paleolithic art in southern Africa and Australia since then have paved the way for the scientific community to accept what Smith first diffidently suggested, Huyge said.
Neither Smith, who has retired, nor his assistant on that expedition, Morgan Tamplin, now a professor emeritus at Trent University in Canada, could be reached for comment.
Thinking Alike
Huyge's March 2007 expedition strengthened the findings that Smith had discarded. The team found several additional panels of artwork over a 1-mile-long (1.66-kilometer-long) stretch of 230-foot-tall (70-meter-tall) sandstone cliffs.
There is "little doubt" the engravings are 15,000-years-old, Huyge said. They depict a now extinct species of wild cow whose horns have been recovered from Paleolithic settlements nearby.
The drawings would be examined for lichens and organic grime called "varnish rind" that could be carbon dated or subjected to another process known as uranium series dating, Huyge added. Because the rocks are inorganic, they cannot be dated directly using these methods.
In the meantime, the finding has raised a big question: How were people in Western Europe and southern Egypt producing almost identical artwork at the same time?
While the caves at Lascaux are best known for their painted images of bulls and cows, that artwork is actually outnumbered by stone engravings. And the Lascaux engravings are virtually identical to those in Qurta, Huyge pointed out.
"I'm not suggesting that the art in the caves of Lascaux was made by Egyptians or that [European] people were in Egypt," he said.
"The art is so similar that it reflects a similar mentality, a similar stage of development," he added. "When people are confronted with similar conditions, this will automatically lead to a similar kind of thinking, a similar creativity."
Now the archaeologists are on the hunt for additional—and potentially older—artwork.
"The rock art must be part of an evolution," Huyge said. "There must be older art in Egypt, if we can find it. I think open-air sites like Qurta will be found all over North Africa."
posted
Why is a lot of this really ancient Egyptian stuff found in Upper Egypt?
quote:"The Paleolithic experts told them, It's absolutely crazy—Europe is the cradle of art," Huyge, the leader of the new expedition, said. "And they backed off the idea.
Imbeciles. Since humanity originated in Africa, ya think art, one of its distinctive traits, would originate there as well?
BTW, wasn't the Sahara Desert even more inhabitable in Ice Age times than today?
Posts: 7069 | From: Fallbrook, CA | Registered: Mar 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Tyrannosaurus: Why is a lot of this really ancient Egyptian stuff found in Upper Egypt?
That's where Egyptian culture originates, in the South, in upper Egypt and Northern Sudan (Qustul). Plus, the environment is better at preserving things in the arid south than in the swampy delta.
quote:
quote:"The Paleolithic experts told them, It's absolutely crazy—Europe is the cradle of art," Huyge, the leader of the new expedition, said. "And they backed off the idea.
Imbeciles. Since humanity originated in Africa, ya think art, one of its distinctive traits, would originate there as well?
BTW, wasn't the Sahara Desert even more inhabitable in Ice Age times than today?
Yup. Just racist Eurocentrist beliefs being debunked once again.
Posts: 1024 | Registered: Jun 2006
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"The Paleolithic experts told them, It's absolutely crazy—Europe is the cradle of art," Huyge, the leader of the new expedition, said. "And they backed off the idea.
Imbeciles. Since humanity originated in Africa, ya think art, one of its distinctive traits, would originate there as well?
Yes, another unfortunate example of Eurocentric dogma being decimated.
They accept that modern humans originated in Africa but not modern human behavior?! LOLPsuedo-science contradicts itself And of course psuedo-science is the tool of racism.
quote:BTW, wasn't the Sahara Desert even more inhabitable in Ice Age times than today?
Actually it was less inhabitable. It was only at the end of the Ice Age that the Sahara was green and fertile.
Posts: 26238 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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"The Paleolithic experts told them, It's absolutely crazy—Europe is the cradle of art," Huyge, the leader of the new expedition, said. "And they backed off the idea.
Imbeciles. Since humanity originated in Africa, ya think art, one of its distinctive traits, would originate there as well?
Yes, another unfortunate example of Eurocentric dogma being decimated.
They accept that modern humans originated in Africa but not modern human behavior?! LOLPsuedo-science contradicts itself And of course psuedo-science is the tool of racism.
quote:BTW, wasn't the Sahara Desert even more inhabitable in Ice Age times than today?
Actually it was less inhabitable. It was only at the end of the Ice Age that the Sahara was green and fertile.
Actually I meant to say more inhospitable. Sorry for the typo.
Posts: 7069 | From: Fallbrook, CA | Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
Things have been repeated here from other threads as have these web pages below. Jewelry is art and archeologists write that the diadem (the first were made of shells) was the first stage in the evolution of the king's crown. And while these diadems are found over over 25,000 years ago near Moscow,
the bead-use which preceded them has been found as far back as 75,000 years ago in Africa: over 30,000 years earlier than European finds Science wrote three years back.
Actually, reports were circulated last month in June about Morrocan finds of 95,000 years ago. And five years back, either Nature of Science spoke of purported shell beads on the coast of Ethiopia from 125,000 years ago - this was from the same scientists involved in the 45,000 year-old beads from Turkey.
and 1.7 years of age might be young compared to other reported forms of art that Richard Rugley writes of in the BBC serial some years back of his book LOST CIVILIZATIONS OF THE STONE AGE.
These 15,000 year-old finds are great but we can see they are rather young than old art finds.
Three cheers, though. It's all good news.
-------------------- The nature of homelife is the fate of the nation. Posts: 2334 | Registered: May 2006
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posted
^What is that map? Lower Nubia is not in Southern Sudan, and the first Charract is certainly not South of Khartoum!
-------------------- "Oh the sons of Ethiopia; observe with care; the country called Ethiopia is, first, your mother; second, your throne; third, your wife; fourth, your child; fifth, your grave." - Ras Alula Aba Nega. Posts: 1024 | Registered: Jun 2006
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They accept that modern humans originated in Africa but not modern human behavior?! LOL Psuedo-science contradicts itself And of course psuedo-science is the tool of racism.
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