This is actually a weird coincidence to see this on HN tonight, since I watched "The Cave of Forgotten Dreams" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_of_Forgotten_Dreams ) this evening. Having two hours to spend in Paris before a rendezvous, and seeing the great critics, I thought "Hey, I'm not usually into art / paintings / museums, but let's give this a try...".
The documentary was fascinating. The paintings look so fresh, it's as if they were done yesterday... But they are 30k - 35k years old. This really puts things into perspective...
It's hard to explain, but the effect was kind of similar to watching a Sagan video ( http://saganseries.com/ ). Instead of marveling at the size of the universe when compared to our tiny planet, I was marveling at how short the recorded history is when compared to the thousand of years of prehistory. I knew about this theoretically, but it never really hit home before...
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Only 6000 years? Well, that's nothing next to the Chauvet Cave ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chauvet_Cave ), where they found 35000 years old paintings...
This is actually a weird coincidence to see this on HN tonight, since I watched "The Cave of Forgotten Dreams" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_of_Forgotten_Dreams ) this evening. Having two hours to spend in Paris before a rendezvous, and seeing the great critics, I thought "Hey, I'm not usually into art / paintings / museums, but let's give this a try...".
The documentary was fascinating. The paintings look so fresh, it's as if they were done yesterday... But they are 30k - 35k years old. This really puts things into perspective...
It's hard to explain, but the effect was kind of similar to watching a Sagan video ( http://saganseries.com/ ). Instead of marveling at the size of the universe when compared to our tiny planet, I was marveling at how short the recorded history is when compared to the thousand of years of prehistory. I knew about this theoretically, but it never really hit home before...