Humanity’s oldest known cave art has been discovered in Sulawesi

historyanalysisThe Conversation: Arts + Culture (US)c. 67,800 years ago · Sulawesi, Indonesia

Humanity’s oldest known cave art has been discovered in Sulawesi

the gist

Hand stencils on limestone cave walls in Sulawesi, Indonesia, have been dated to at least 67,800 years ago, making them the oldest securely dated cave art anywhere. Red pigment was blown over hands pressed against the rock, and the researchers dated the paintings by measuring tiny amounts of uranium in mineral layers that formed over them. Some fingers were deliberately shaped to look like animal claws. The caves were painted repeatedly until about 20,000 years ago, and figures with bird heads found nearby date to at least 48,000 years ago.

how it works

Researchers date the art by measuring trace uranium in the mineral crusts that formed over the paintings. Uranium decays at a known rate into other elements, so the ratio tells how long the crust has been forming. Because the minerals grew on top of the paint, they give the youngest possible age for the image beneath, and in some cases a paint layer over a crust gives the oldest possible age.

so what

The find is more than 30,000 years older than the oldest cave art in France, which overturns the idea that Europe was the birthplace of symbolic art. The site lies on a proposed northern route that the first modern humans may have used to reach Sahul, the combined landmass of Australia and New Guinea. The researchers argue the people who made these images were likely ancestors of Indigenous Australians and Papuans.

D. W. Griffith’s A Corner in Wheat (1909)

the gist

In 1909 D. W. Griffith made a 14-minute film about a speculator who corners the wheat market and doubles the price of bread. A farmer sows his field while a 'Wheat King' gambles in the Chicago wheat pit; bakers raise the loaf from five cents to ten and the poor line up for bread. Griffith cut back and forth between the farm, the feast and the breadline, a technique called parallel editing, so audiences saw both ends of the economy at once. The film drew on Frank Norris's stories and on a real scheme: months earlier Chicago financier James Patten had cornered wheat, sent bread prices up and made about $5 million, roughly $185 million today.

how it works

To corner a market, a trader buys up most of the available supply and the futures contracts that promise more. Anyone who has to deliver the commodity must then buy from the cornerer at whatever price is demanded. The trader profits until the stock is released or the scheme collapses.

so what

A century on, it still shows how markets can be rigged by someone who controls supply, and how the people at either end, farmers and eaters, pay for it. It also helped establish editing as a way to argue a point, not just tell a story.

the bigger pattern

Corners have recurred whenever supply could be locked up, from the Hunt brothers' attempt on silver in 1979 to 1980 to the 'Black Friday' gold panic of 1869. Many such schemes end by collapsing, and the response is often new rules on speculation.

fun fact

In the film the Wheat King dies by falling into a grain elevator and being buried in the wheat he hoarded, an ending borrowed from Norris's novel The Octopus.

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