The Indonesian archipelago is host to some of the earliest known rock art in the world1,2,3,4,5. Previously, secure Pleistocene dates were reported for figurative cave art and stencils of human hands in two areas in Indonesia—the Maros-Pangkep karsts in the southwestern peninsula of the island of Sulawesi1,3,4,5 and the Sangkulirang-Mangkalihat region of eastern Kalimantan, Borneo2. Here we describe a series of early dated rock art motifs from the southeastern portion of Sulawesi. Among this assemblage of Pleistocene (and possibly more recent) motifs, laser-ablation U-series (LA-U-series) dating of calcite overlying a hand stencil from Liang Metanduno on Muna Island yielded a U-series date of 71.6 ± 3.8 thousand years ago (ka), providing a minimum-age constraint of 67.8 ka for the underlying motif. The Muna minimum (67.8 ± 3.8 ka) exceeds the published minimum for rock art in Maros-Pangkep by 16.6 thousand years (kyr) (ref. 5) and is 1.1 kyr greater than the published minimum for a hand stencil from Spain attributed to Neanderthals6, which until now represented the oldest demonstrated minimum-age constraint for cave art worldwide. Moreover, the presence of this extremely old art in Sulawesi suggests that the initial peopling of Sahul about 65 ka7 involved maritime journeys between Borneo and Papua, a region that remains poorly explored from an archaeological perspective.
Tag: art
ECHR to rule on religious symbols in public buildings
The European Court of Human Rights is currently considering a case seeking the removal of religious symbols from public buildings, the ruling from which could affect public institutions’ ability across the 46 Council of Europe states to display such symbols.
The ‘Union of Atheists v. Greece’ case involves two applications in which the applicants, who identify as atheists, requested the removal of Christian symbols displayed in Greek courtrooms during hearings related to religious education issues.
According to the case filing, the applicant association requested the removal of a Christian orthodox icon of Jesus Christ from the courtroom, arguing that its presence violated the prohibition of discrimination on grounds of religion under Article 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Article 14 of the Convention concerns the prohibition of discrimination, stating that enjoyment of the rights and freedoms set forth in the Convention shall be secured “without discrimination on any ground such as sex, race, colour, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, association with a national minority, property, birth or other status”.
The applicants additionally argued that the presence of religious symbolism in the courtroom hindered their right to a fair trial and brought the court’s objective impartiality into question.
The Greek courts rejected the applicants’ requests to remove the icons, with an argument advanced that in the context of “the dominant Christian Orthodox religion”, the presence of Christian symbolism was a practice which had long been followed in all courtrooms “according to custom and the orthodox tradition”.
The applicants complained that as the subject matter of the trials related to the right to freedom of religion, the rejection of their requests to have the icon removed from the courtrooms infringed their right to an impartial tribunal under Article 6 § 1 (concerning right to a fair trial) and their rights under Article 9 § 1 (concerning freedom of thought, conscience and religion) of the Convention.
They also claim that there is a consensus among the Council of Europe member states against displaying religious symbols in courtrooms, and that the display of religious imagery in Greece is not provided for by law.
Legal advocacy organisation ADF International has intervened in Union of Atheists v. Greece to argue that religious symbols, including artwork, icons and other Christian imagery, reflecting a country’s history and traditions, “cannot be forced down under a false interpretation of religious freedom”.
Art dealer who told FBI about Epstein’s child porn affinity in 1996 says he threatened to BURN her house down
An art dealer who sounded the alarm on Jeffrey Epstein‘s sickening affinity for child pornography a decade before the FBI investigated the disgraced financier said he scared her into silence by threatening to set her home ablaze.
Maria Farmer, who Epstein once hired to help him buy artwork, has long asserted that she filed a complaint against the sex offender in September 1996.
On Friday, the FBI finally released a copy of the document – solidifying what Farmer has been arguing for years.
‘I’ve waited 30 years,’ Farmer told The New York Times. ‘I can’t believe it. They can’t call me a liar anymore.’
But she said it does not negate the fact that investigators ‘harmed all of these little girls’ by not taking her concerns seriously.
In the released complaint, which has Farmer’s name redacted, authorities wrote that she had taken photos of her 12 and 16-year-old sisters for her personal portfolio that Epstein stole.
Farmer, who was 25 at the time, claimed that Epstein ‘sold the pictures to potential buyers’ and told her ‘that if she tells anyone about the photos, he will burn her house down,’ as per the document.
The now 56-year-old visual artist clarified in an interview that the photos Epstein stole included nude images, according to the NY Times.
Neanderthals created the world’s oldest cave art
Neanderthals didn’t just survive Europe’s Ice Age landscapes – they ventured into deep caves and made art. What they left isn’t figurative like the later animal scenes of Homo sapiens.
Instead, it is a repertoire of hand stencils, geometric signs, finger-drawn lines, and even built structures. This type of artmaking points to creative intent and symbolic behavior long before our species arrived.
The latest synthesis of discoveries from France and Spain shows that these nonfigurative markings and installations predate modern humans in western Europe by tens of millennia.
The research moves the long-running debate about Neanderthal cognition from speculation to evidence.
Neanderthal art decoded
All confirmed examples so far are nonfigurative – no animals or humans. Instead we see hand stencils made by blowing pigment over a hand, “finger flutings” pressed into soft cave surfaces, linear and geometric motifs, and purposeful arrangements of cave materials.
Neanderthals inhabited western Eurasia from about 400,000 to 40,000 years ago and have often been caricatured as the archetypal “cavemen.”
Questions about their cognitive and behavioral sophistication persist, and whether they produced art sits at the center of that debate.
Despite proof that Neanderthals used pigments and made jewelry, some researchers resisted the idea that they explored deep cave systems to create lasting imagery.
New dating work from researchers at Université de Bordeaux has shifted that view. In three Spanish caves – La Pasiega (Cantabria), Maltravieso (Extremadura), and Ardales (Málaga) – researchers documented linear signs, geometric shapes, hand stencils, and handprints made with pigments.
At La Roche-Cotard in France’s Loire Valley, Neanderthals left suites of lines and shapes in finger flutings (the trails left when fingers move through soft cave mud).
Testing Neanderthal creativity
Deep inside the Bruniquel Cave in southwest France, Neanderthals broke off stalactites into similarly sized sections and assembled them into a large oval structure, then lit fires on top.
It was not a shelter but something stranger – and if you saw it in a contemporary gallery, you might well call it “installation art.”
Now that well-dated examples exist in Spain and France, more finds are likely. The challenge is timekeeping: establishing reliable ages for Paleolithic cave art is technically difficult and often controversial.
Stylistic comparisons and links to excavated artifacts can help, but they only go so far.
Aging art in stone
There are three main ways to anchor ages. First, if black pigment is charcoal, radiocarbon can date when the wood burned.
But many black figures were drawn with mineral pigments (for example, manganese), which can’t be radiocarbon dated, and even genuine charcoal carries a risk. The date reflects when the wood died, not when someone used it.
Second, calcite flowstone (stalactites and stalagmites) that overgrows art is a natural time cap. Uranium–thorium dating can pin down when the calcite formed, giving a minimum age for the pigment or scoring beneath it.
Using this method, researchers dated calcite on top of red motifs in La Pasiega, Maltravieso, and Ardales to older than ~64,000 years.
Even at that youngest bound, the imagery predates the first Homo sapiens in Iberia by at least ~22,000 years, and Middle Paleolithic archaeology – the Neanderthals’ “calling card” – is abundant in all three caves.
“Art Must Always Tell The Truth”
Popular artist Banksy created a graffiti mural in London depicting the current state of the UK censorship system using the courts to trample the rights of British citizens…
As ‘sundance’ writes at TheConservativeTreeHouse.com, it did not take long for the authorities to cover the mural and eventually attempt to remove it.
I particularly like the fact the govt turned the CCTV camera, so they can monitor who might visit the scene of the criminal dissent.
Apparently, the British government doesn’t quite see the irony.
New Artwork by British Street Artist Banksy Appears on the Wall of Royal Courts of Justice, in London – Is Immediately Covered Up, as Police Weigh Charges of ‘Criminal Damage’
The Met Police is doing the work of promoting the new Banksy.
For decades, the pseudonymous street artist Banksy, whose real identity remains unconfirmed, has thrived on controversy – and with his last mural artwork, things aren’t any different.
The new Banksy shows a judge hitting a fallen protester with his gavel, and was painted on the front wall of the Royal Courts of Justice in London.
The image was rapidly covered up by British officials.
Daily Mail reported:
“Security guards were seen patrolling in front of a screen concealing the mural now confirmed as being by the guerilla graffiti artist as his latest creation.
He shared an image of it on his Instagram page, after it was stenciled on an external wall of the Queen’s Building but swiftly hidden by large sheets of black plastic and two metal barriers.”
Argentina charges daughter of World War II Nazi for concealing decades-old art theft
The daughter and son-in-law of a Nazi who stole art from European Jews during World War II were charged in an Argentine court on Sept 4 with hiding numerous works, including 22 by French painter Henri Matisse.
The pair came into the spotlight after an 18th century painting stolen from a Dutch art collector was
spotted in an Argentine property ad in August, only to vanish once again.
“Portrait of a Lady” by Italian baroque painter Giuseppe Ghislandi was missing for eight decades before being photographed in the home of a daughter of Nazi Friedrich Kadgien, who had fled to Argentina after the war and died there in 1978.
Police opened an investigation and conducted multiple raids in search of the painting, only to find 22 works from the 1940s by Matisse (1869-1954), and others whose origins have yet to be determined.
The artworks were found in the Argentine seaside resort of Mar del Plata in possession of members of the Kadgien family, officials said.
More Age Verification Fallout: Artist Blogs Blocked, Porn Data Leaked, Traffic Boosts for Noncompliant Sites
As more places around the world—including U.S. states—pass laws requiring age checks around the internet, we’re continuing to see a slew of unintended (but entirely predictable) consequences. The latest round includes some U.S. residents being blocked from a blogging platform, French folks in dangers of their porn viewing habits being leaked, and porn websites that violate the law in the U.K. being rewarded with big boosts in web traffic.
Let’s start closest to home.
Another website is blocking access to Mississippi residents in response to the state’s age verification and online harm prevention law taking effect.
We’ve already seen some fallout from this law, including the social media platform Bluesky beginning to block Mississippi residents.
Now, Dreamwidth Studios—a blogging platform meant for artists (and one of the parties represented by tech trade group NetChoice in a challenge to the Mississippi law)—is also blocking access for people in Mississippi, as well as preventing minors in Tennessee from opening new accounts.
“People whose IP addresses geolocate to Mississippi will only be able to access a page that explains the issue and lets them know that we’ll be back to offer them service as soon as the legal risk to us is less existential,” Dreamwidth says on its website.
The company announced its new Mississippi policy on August 26, saying, “Mississippi residents, we are so, so sorry. We really don’t want to do this.” But “the Mississippi law is a breathtaking state overreach: it forces us to verify the identity and age of every person who accesses Dreamwidth from the state of Mississippi and determine who’s under the age of 18 by collecting identity documents, to save that highly personal and sensitive information, and then to obtain a permission slip from those users’ parents to allow them to finish creating an account.””
Dreamwidth goes on:
[The Mississippi law] also forces us to change our moderation policies and stop anyone under 18 from accessing a wide variety of legal and beneficial speech because the state of Mississippi doesn’t like it — which, given the way Dreamwidth works, would mean blocking people from talking about those things at all. (And if you think you know exactly what kind of content the state of Mississippi doesn’t like, you’re absolutely right.)
Needless to say, we don’t want to do that, either. Even if we wanted to, though, we can’t: the resources it would take for us to build the systems that would let us do it are well beyond our capacity.”
Mississippi users of Dreamwidth aren’t the only ones with restricted access. The platform will also “prevent any new account signups from anyone under 18 in Tennessee to protect ourselves against risk,” it said. “The judge in our challenge to Tennessee’s social media age verification, parental consent, and parental surveillance law (which we are also part of the fight against!) ruled last month that we had not met the threshold for a temporary injunction preventing the state from enforcing the law while the court case proceeds,” Dreamwidth posted. “The Tennessee law is less onerous than the Mississippi law and the fines for violating it are slightly less ruinous (slightly), but it’s still a risk to us.”
Dreamwidth’s moves further highlight how age verification laws like the ones enacted by Mississippi and Tennessee will come down harder on small and niche platforms than on big tech companies.
Painting stolen by Nazis during WWII believed discovered in Argentine real estate listing
An 18th-century portrait stolen by the Nazis during WWII is believed to have resurfaced in the most unexpected place: hanging above a sofa in a coastal Argentinian home and discovered not by law enforcement or a museum, but spotted in a photo on a real estate website.
The painting, “Portrait of a Lady” by Italian baroque artist Giuseppe Vittore Ghislandi, belonged to Jacques Goudstikker, a prominent Dutch-Jewish art dealer whose collection of more than 1,100 works was seized after the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands in 1940. Senior Nazi officials, including Hermann Göring, acquired hundreds of pieces, according to the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands (RCE).
The potential discovery is the result of years of work by Dutch daily newspaper Algemeen Dagblad (AD) investigative journalists Cyril Rosman, Paul Post and Peter Schouten, who have been pursuing the case for nearly a decade.
Rosman said the team began tracing Friedrich Kadgien, Göring’s financial adviser and close confidant, several years ago.
“Kadgien escaped to South America at the end of the war,” Rosman told ABC News. “We knew from archival documents that he brought diamonds, jewelry, and two stolen paintings with him. We’ve spent years trying to piece together his life here and where those paintings ended up.”
Pro-Trump Christian: Kennedy Center Fired Me Over My Religious Beliefs
A prominent pro-Trump Christian says he was fired from his role as vice president of the Kennedy Center just because he refused to renounce his belief that marriage is between one man and one woman.
Floyd Brown, the founder of Western Journal, had been recruited about a month ago to serve as the performing arts center’s vice president.
He accused Kennedy Center president Ric Grenell, who is married to a man, of being intimidated by a CNN hit piece that highlighted what the news network called Brown’s anti-gay rhetoric.
He asked to speak to Grenell for an explanation, but his request was rejected. The Kennedy Center has not responded to inquiries about the allegations.
Brown said “the only explanation is the one given to me at the time of my firing. ‘Floyd, you must recant your belief in traditional marriage and your past statements on the topic, or you will be fired.’ Needless to say, I refused to recant and was shown the door. My beliefs are much more common to Biblical Christianity.”
CNN’s KFile published the attack on Brown Thursday titled, “Far-Right with history of anti-gay comments fired from leadership role at Kennedy Center after CNN investigation.”
Brown said the article, which is behind a paywall, rehashed “past writings and statements about traditional marriage and homosexual influence in the GOP.”
Brown released a statement CNN in response to their hit piece.
“It is an honor to work at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and with the many amazing people who are employed here. Comments rooted in my personal Christian views, which I have made in the past, have no impact upon my work here at the Kennedy Center nor do they impinge on my interactions with colleagues who do incredible work for the patrons of the Center. As a Christian I am called to work with others of different beliefs and worldviews.”
Brown said there was no intention to offend anyone with his Christian beliefs.
Hellbound and Down 
You must be logged in to post a comment.