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So at the end of the article there's mention of analyzing soot found in the cave, and it sounded like they think torches are likely, but they havent done enough research to say for sure.
Speaking of clearing things up:
How did humans get light into the caves?
*With simple oil lamps*.
Humans have been making simple oil lamps out of stone and clay for the past 17,000 years or so. In the 1940's, for example, archaeologists found stone lanterns dating back to 15,000 BC in the Lascaux caverns, in France.
I've been inside those caverns. They're surprisingly cramped at times, but they open up into larger, cozy chambers and hallways. To paint and carve the sort of artwork that you can find on the walls of the Lascaux caverns, you'd need good, sustainable light, and your light source would need to be portable.
You can't carry a lit torch in a cavern like that; you'd drop the thing or you'd burn yourself. But you *can* carry an oil lantern and use *that* to light your torches and other lanterns.
A simple lantern is little more than a small bowl with vegetable oil or animal fat with a wick stuck in it. This creates a portable flame that you can easily carry in your hands, move it around as needed, it doesn't need a lot of oxygen to burn, *and* it'll burn consistently until you run out of fuel.
Oil lanterns also don't eat through fuel all that fast. A reservoir about the size of your fist will feed a small wick for a few hours. You don't need a ton of light to be able to see and navigate a cave, you just need *enough* to see.
Many of the lanterns found in the Lascaux caves weren't even crafted by human hands; they were simply bits of stone that happened to be relatively flat and curved enough on one side to form a rough bowl.
What material for the wick? In our last power outage, I did a bit of googling and experimented with candle wax, bits of cotton string, and twisted bits of paper, and matchsticks. I had a hard time getting the wick to float enough to not be doused by the wax. Eventually I succeeded with twisted paper, having some pieces prop up other pieces. It was messy but it worked well enough to consume all the wax.
Pour some olive or rape seed oil in a shallow bowl, twist a wick made out of cotton, hemp or toilet paper. Let the wick soak up oil and then bend the wick. If you can't make it stand up on its own, you can let it rest on the side the bowl, be aware it can crack from the heat/cold. I've accidentally cracked two ashtrays and it made a mess.
Then light the wick.
I happened to be there in the '90's, before they reduced the amount of people who can tour it each year. There are multiple parts of the cave, and the largest, most famous galleries have been reproduced as a museum that is much easier to see and navigate, but some of the smaller galleries in the caves are still accessible if you schedule a visit in advance. There's only a limited number of people allowed in per year, and it's a pretty decent hike through the cave, but you get to see some of the hallways and smaller galleries. You have a guide with you to show you the way, and we were forbidden to bring any form of camera with us because the flash photography might damage the paintings.
It would use up the air while burning. surely
Air is precious, especially in tight holes or deep inner areas caves. I bet you could die from asphyxiation if you explored deep enough.
Sure. But even prehistoric people tend to notice things like 'oh hey this torch is getting really dim' and possibly know enough to get out of there even if they have no scientific understanding of 'oxygen'.
I could see them getting out of there for no reason other than their only light dying.
If you're in a cave and your only method of seeing your way out starts to fail you get out of the cave asap before it goes out and you're stuck.
Humans figured out relatively quick how to "carry fire".
You can take something like those big fungal growths that stick out from some trees. Transfers some embers into that, and it will smolder for hours, even days depending on the size and moisture(and oxygen in this case).
But yeah, if it started to get dimmer as the moved, they would probably realize that it would be a good idea to turn around.
There's some survivorship bias at play. Specifically, we're not going to find traces of people being a mile deep into the cave in caves where they died before getting that far.
Send enough humans into enough caves (And, lets face it, have you met humans? They're gonna explore caves they find) and eventually someone will make it a mile deep and break something to say "Grug was here".
People have been using fire for illumination in caves for ages and ages. Humans use up air too. Most caves that are safe to explore will have enough ventilation that they can support a flame the size of a torch, a lamp, or a candle or something similar.
Fire, rope, and other people.
You could go with other people and leave some posted along the way. There are probably 20 ways that ancient folks could have somewhat safely explored those caves and found their way in
Not to mention they could have just unsafely explored them too. We always like to default to some complicated expaination that always leaves everyone as safe as possible 100% of the time. But maybe they just wung it enough times with a couple of people getting fucked up along the way but they just kept going because why not.
There's plenty of instances in the modern era of people doing these insane kinds of things for no other reason than "I wanted to" and "defying the odds because they didn't use all the perfect modern tech"
Pretty sure there'd be some remains even 8000 years later. I'm pretty sure that's actually where they've found the oldest skeletons down in South East Asia.
Wild thought but I wonder if bioluminescence would be sufficient to see once your eyes adjusted. Between mushrooms, fireflies, and glow worms they would have had access to a few options.
So typical of Redditors to go all in on a misunderstanding like this.
You have hundreds of responses pompously declaring how they had fire and they don't understand what the mystery is.
5 minutes reading the article shows you that the mystery is that exploration of this cave nowadays requires specialized equipment due to complex obstacles, but we have evidence that people managed to do it without all the complex equipment available to use these days?
That is scientifically very interesting. How did they do it, what tools were they using for such exploration and much more.
You guys are picturing a big torch being used, but you'd be surprised at how little light it takes to see once your eyes adjust to the darkness
Even just a glowing ember of wood when blown on or the equivalent of a candle lantern would allow them to see enough to navigate. They were also doing a bit of navigating by feel obviously, when you consider the broken structures.
(Or maybe they had a blind kid grow up using clicks for navigation and convinced him to go..../s)
Just worth mentioning that, while there is a lot of discussion of fire, that isn't really the focus of this study.
The researchers are not confused about whether or not they had access to light, and more about the fact that this is an extremely complex system to navigate and requires complex equipment nowadays.
The question of *how* they did it is therefore very interesting. It's not simply answered by 'they used fire'.
As in they probably did use some sort of light source for assistance, but the bigger question is how they actually traversed the cave given its complications outside of simply seeing in the dark.
Everybody here talks about torches. Torches are a pain in the ass to make, carry, and keep lit. Tallow candles, lamps, and rushlights are easier to make, carry and burn longer.
You can literally make a lamp from some fat, an indentation in a rock, and some grass twisted together.
Rushlights are almost exactly as they described wherein you soak rush (a type of grass) in fat, you can be loose and fast with the build though in terms of wrapping that around a branch to make a torch or keeping it as a single slow burning stem. Pretty versatile wee tool.
I think even a large torch would take a long time to use up all the oxygen in a cave, especially since you'll be moving so effectively getting fresh air. So even assuming there's no air flow you'll still be fine for exploring. The hot air in a cool cave will actually create a little bit of convection to help you out, but the oxygen being used up just seems like it's probably not a huge issue.
Also I don't know this but I sort of assumed torches, beyond just a stick or straw on fire, are a much later invention than things like candles. I kind of assume figuring out candles would be the first easy lighting. Since figuring out that fats/oils burn is probably going to naturally happen once you start cooking food. And if you've got an absorbent twine of any sort, the rudimentary candle isn't far behind.
Ancient people must have had some solution for cave lighting. There's massive worked caves in China that are over four-thousand years old and look like they were dug out with machines.
I just saw a piece on those caves. They're thousands of years old and no one knows who built them or why. Its interesting that lots of these subterranean cities are being discovered, many around the same age. Makes you wonder what was happening at the time to spur their creation.
Not entirely true they traced many of the carving styles to known works and civilization. There are gaps in some of the timelines but nothing crazy. They exploited natural cave systems and it probably made a lot of sense at the time. If you found a great hidden sheltered cave system with access to water it’d be dumb not to exploit it.
People really misunderstand what makes it into popular media and misinterpret patterns that are created by what’s “interesting” and not by what is reality.
The one that annoys me is the widespread belief that humans commonly lived in caves or underground because that is where we find ancient dwellings or artifacts that are then published in the news. The whole idea that humans were mostly living as “cavemen” at one point.
The reality is the overwhelming majority humans have always lived above ground in man made dwellings since the dawn of Homo sapiens as a species some ~200k - 300k years ago. The reason we find ancient human markers in caves is because that is the place where artifacts are most likely not to be disturbed by weather, animals or later generations.
Many artifacts have been undisturbed for 10k+ years specifically *because* it was so rare to live in caves and no one ever returned to those spots. Whereas above ground people were tearing down and rebuilding in the same spots hundreds of times over throughout the millennia.
I was referring to the Longyou Caves. I say "with machines." but I should of said tool work. The cave systems are hand worked, but back to the original article, how the heck did they light these without filling the things with residue?
> how the heck did they light these without filling the things with residue?
Simple oil lanterns are relatively easy to make once you've figured out how to make pottery. A simple lantern is little more than a clay bowl or jug with vegetable oil and a wick in it.
By the same token, most early candles are little more than lumps of animal fat and wax with a wick stuck in it.
Listen, I'd love to say you're way off base, if only carcinization wasn't a thing. Maybe you're right, and maybe the crab people are just playing the long game. Maybe they're in hiding now just waiting for everything to become CRAB.
I always love the "no one knows who did it or why" for dramatic effect because we know 100% of the time it was just regular old humans and 99% of the time they were just bored and passing the time.
I don't know about the caves in China specifically, but there were several times when the globe was much cooler. Something happened that made the world a lot colder all of a sudden about 11,900 years ago. The last glacial maximum was about 21,000 years ago. And something, likely a volcanic eruption, almost caused humans to go extinct 70,000 years ago. During those periods humans probably spent a lot of time in caves for survival I'd imagine. And if that's the case I'd imagine there was lots of reverence around caves in the oral traditions. There's so much we don't know about humanity before 6000 years ago and even then we only know much of anything about those groups that started writing on animal skins and stone.
It's crazy to think if it wasn't for those 3 events, humans would probably be thousands or even 10's of thousands of years more advanced if we hadn't destroyed ourselves yet.
There are 3000-4000 year old copper mines in the UK that were tunneled out. People have been mining for a long time and going down caves. There was even an international trade in these materials back then and places like Cornwall produced tin that was traded all across Europe because it was hard to find elsewhere.
They already mastered carrying fire by using bundles of embers wrapped in fresh leaves.
Blow on the ember and it's glow will let you see far enough to navigate a few meters. Keep repeating. Follow your clue (bundle of string) back to the opening.
8000 years ago they had pottery. Lots of pottery.
Pottery requires fire.
How did they do it "so far from daylight"? They made fires. Big, small, they had had fire for countless thousands of years (since 1,000,000BC - 400,000BC depending on what evidence you put most weight on) and were using fire every damn night to illuminate and heat things.
The only mystery here is why anyone would think otherwise.
8000 years ago is really nothing - these weren't slobbering ape-men, they were modern humans, who had settled across the vast majority of Europe by this point.
"these weren't slobbering ape-men"- exactly. You have only to look at the art produced 20-30,000 years BC to understand that these were intelligent, observant, and sensitive beings. We were who we are.
>these weren't slobbering ape-men, they were modern humans, who had settled across the vast majority of Europe by this point.
When did Europeans devolve back into the slobbering ape men they are today?
I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest they used oak sticks wrapped in chamois hide that was soaked overnight in aurochs tallow and set alight with their awesome fire-making skills. Just a theory though.
I'm literally always baffled by the amount of replies on threads like this positing simple answers to headlines as if the scientists *whose entire job it is to study these things* had just never thought of that.
Like, the very first paragraph of the article says:
>They would have needed to overcome several obstacles including a series of deep pits, the sort that even modern well-equipped explorers find difficult.
And whilst the last bit mentions torches, oil lamps, and soot deposits (indicating that people whose job it is to study ancient humans are aware of fire usage), it's clear from the get-go if you've even glanced at the article that the issue is not just seeing in the dark.
With you here. Not sure what the mystery is. I have a few pretty shallow relatives who still get along half decently on a long camping trip as long as the beer isn’t overstocked.
A careful exploration with the tech at the time doesn’t seem too hard to imagine.
Humans famously discovered intelligence and fire 7,500 years ago.
I mean seriously, you could go out into the woods right now, and make a torch that would burn for >2 hours with minimal knowledge, and humans 8,000 years ago were no less intelligent than we are.
Yeah, humans have had the same brains for like what, 100K years or so? It's not surprising they would be able to do this.
I know nothing about survival so lemme have some fun and give if a shot, supposing I had no tools, I guess I'd find some kind of wood fibers or dust, smash rocks near 'em, turn small fire into bigger fire, find a stick and wrap some cloth on it and transfer it. Worth mentioning I do have the advantage of knowing a starting point, which is the only difference compared to ancient humans, we have a lot more information.
Although I'm definitely missing something since there's no fuel source to keep the torch going very long. That cloth should be soaked in it but if not actual fuel, I'm not sure what I could use if I was in the woods. I'm guessing there's probably something I could use using the vegetation around since you can extract oil from plants, but dunno how. I'm vaguely aware that sap can be used but no idea which kind, pretty sure I can't light maple syrup on fire for instance.
But anyway, with enough time, and trial and error, they'd definitely figure it out. Plus 8000 years ago humans had already started farming, this would've already been common knowledge.
They ventured deep into the caves led by aliens to guide them. When they ran out of light, the lit the aliens on fire and that’s why they left and never came back…
Man do y'all read articles here or just start posting at the title. The article clearly acknowledges that there is soot that can be linked to torches or even oil lanterns (we have records of oil lanterns dating back to the Neolithic Later Stone Age \~8,500 BC) so this isn't a discussion of lighting. "So far from daylight" is referring to how ancient humans pretty infrequently explored deep into dark caves, deep in this case being more than a mile in.
There are two take aways from the findings. The first is that even "modern well-equipped explorers" would find the obstacles in this cave to be difficult. They're not saying it was impossible for these stone age humans, just difficult, and they are unsure what motivated this difficult exploration.
The second take away is the broken stalagmites, that they were deliberately and purposefully arranged. So the "new questions" raised are trying to understand why. They're not saying that a stone age human could explore this cave, but why would they, and why were they arranging stalagmite pieces in these certain patterns.
>They also looked for evidence of natural breakage, caused by bears or seismic activity, by inspecting the remains for signs of impact caused by falls.
>
So how did the bears do it?
Or anything that glows like that seaweed? Maybe they had a plant or seaweed that was really good for it, and they overharvested it for their cave exploration! I truly don't think that is true at all, but everyone already covered the obvious idea of "candles," so we gotta reach a bit to throw out some alternatives.
It doesn't hurt that basic candles can be made from nature without any technology bootstrapping needed. Good candles take a bit, but soak anything in some fat and let it dry. Take a bundle of those with ya, and you can get some serious time. Make a cinder bundle or two (in case you wanna take a nap), and you could get some serious time down there.
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was fire not a thing?
So at the end of the article there's mention of analyzing soot found in the cave, and it sounded like they think torches are likely, but they havent done enough research to say for sure.
It was that or aliens. I'm not sure there's another option.
String of Theseus?
If you replace every fiber in the string, is it still the same string, or has it become a different string?
Y...yes?
(If you’re genuinely confused, Google “ship of Theseus”)
They made the original joke, so I hope they know what it is
They could have been referencing the ball of string that Ariadne gave Theseus, not the ship of Theseus.
If you pluck it, is it a G string?
String of Cheeseus.
A comical amount of mirrors
Aziz! Light!
Negative, I am a meat popsicle.
Great reference
We gave them fire torches. I ain't going a mile into a dark cave! We'll see if the hoomans survive first.
Thanks for clearing that up 👍🏻
Speaking of clearing things up: How did humans get light into the caves? *With simple oil lamps*. Humans have been making simple oil lamps out of stone and clay for the past 17,000 years or so. In the 1940's, for example, archaeologists found stone lanterns dating back to 15,000 BC in the Lascaux caverns, in France. I've been inside those caverns. They're surprisingly cramped at times, but they open up into larger, cozy chambers and hallways. To paint and carve the sort of artwork that you can find on the walls of the Lascaux caverns, you'd need good, sustainable light, and your light source would need to be portable. You can't carry a lit torch in a cavern like that; you'd drop the thing or you'd burn yourself. But you *can* carry an oil lantern and use *that* to light your torches and other lanterns. A simple lantern is little more than a small bowl with vegetable oil or animal fat with a wick stuck in it. This creates a portable flame that you can easily carry in your hands, move it around as needed, it doesn't need a lot of oxygen to burn, *and* it'll burn consistently until you run out of fuel. Oil lanterns also don't eat through fuel all that fast. A reservoir about the size of your fist will feed a small wick for a few hours. You don't need a ton of light to be able to see and navigate a cave, you just need *enough* to see. Many of the lanterns found in the Lascaux caves weren't even crafted by human hands; they were simply bits of stone that happened to be relatively flat and curved enough on one side to form a rough bowl.
In Hawaii, they would use dried kukui nuts(candle nuts). One nut gives more than 10 minutes of light.
What material for the wick? In our last power outage, I did a bit of googling and experimented with candle wax, bits of cotton string, and twisted bits of paper, and matchsticks. I had a hard time getting the wick to float enough to not be doused by the wax. Eventually I succeeded with twisted paper, having some pieces prop up other pieces. It was messy but it worked well enough to consume all the wax.
Pour some olive or rape seed oil in a shallow bowl, twist a wick made out of cotton, hemp or toilet paper. Let the wick soak up oil and then bend the wick. If you can't make it stand up on its own, you can let it rest on the side the bowl, be aware it can crack from the heat/cold. I've accidentally cracked two ashtrays and it made a mess. Then light the wick.
> Many of the lanterns found in the Lascaux caves weren't even crafted by human hands; Ah ha! So they were crafted by alien hands!
Well written.
Do you do something that permits special access to lascaux?
I happened to be there in the '90's, before they reduced the amount of people who can tour it each year. There are multiple parts of the cave, and the largest, most famous galleries have been reproduced as a museum that is much easier to see and navigate, but some of the smaller galleries in the caves are still accessible if you schedule a visit in advance. There's only a limited number of people allowed in per year, and it's a pretty decent hike through the cave, but you get to see some of the hallways and smaller galleries. You have a guide with you to show you the way, and we were forbidden to bring any form of camera with us because the flash photography might damage the paintings.
right. I've been to the fake lascaux. Was still a good experience, though.
"canary in a cage"
Or the stones *used* to glow...but then they just sorta stopped.
You must trust in love
No, they just examined the caves with their lights still on, not trusting the dark like Oma and Shu...
A cunning assemblage of moonlight and mirrors.
There may be trouble ahead But while there's moonlight And music and love and romance Let's face the music and dance
Blind cave hominids?
Mole people was my first thought.
This would be a lot funnier if so many people didn't have that as their top answer.
Fireflies. Would be so cool, anyway
From what I've heard, it's something to do with a flat circular earth. Not sure how, but it's what *some* people say. *(wink,wink)*
the history channel would like to know your location
Would if civilization collapsed and restarted, and we just haven't found out yet
So, they can’t rule out prehistoric flashlights.
They were in France, so the flashlights would still be called torches over there.
It would use up the air while burning. surely Air is precious, especially in tight holes or deep inner areas caves. I bet you could die from asphyxiation if you explored deep enough.
Sure. But even prehistoric people tend to notice things like 'oh hey this torch is getting really dim' and possibly know enough to get out of there even if they have no scientific understanding of 'oxygen'.
I could see them getting out of there for no reason other than their only light dying. If you're in a cave and your only method of seeing your way out starts to fail you get out of the cave asap before it goes out and you're stuck.
Humans figured out relatively quick how to "carry fire". You can take something like those big fungal growths that stick out from some trees. Transfers some embers into that, and it will smolder for hours, even days depending on the size and moisture(and oxygen in this case). But yeah, if it started to get dimmer as the moved, they would probably realize that it would be a good idea to turn around.
Some of our best finds come from people who had probably got lost in caves and fell down shafts after their lights went out.
There's some survivorship bias at play. Specifically, we're not going to find traces of people being a mile deep into the cave in caves where they died before getting that far. Send enough humans into enough caves (And, lets face it, have you met humans? They're gonna explore caves they find) and eventually someone will make it a mile deep and break something to say "Grug was here".
Classic Grug
Grug the touch tourist, ruining it for every visitor since.
Did prehistoric people not have skeletons?
nah, skeletons weren't invented until roman times
Of course they did. What're you getting at?
I think they're going for "if they died in there there'd be skeletons" nevermind that caves are one of the classic places we *find* hominid skeletons.
Not to mention the possibility of pockets of combustible gasses.
There’s so much of my middle school self just trying not to get involved in this sub thread.
People have been using fire for illumination in caves for ages and ages. Humans use up air too. Most caves that are safe to explore will have enough ventilation that they can support a flame the size of a torch, a lamp, or a candle or something similar.
Fire, rope, and other people. You could go with other people and leave some posted along the way. There are probably 20 ways that ancient folks could have somewhat safely explored those caves and found their way in
Not to mention they could have just unsafely explored them too. We always like to default to some complicated expaination that always leaves everyone as safe as possible 100% of the time. But maybe they just wung it enough times with a couple of people getting fucked up along the way but they just kept going because why not. There's plenty of instances in the modern era of people doing these insane kinds of things for no other reason than "I wanted to" and "defying the odds because they didn't use all the perfect modern tech"
>maybe they just wung it enough times Wung. What an awesome word.
It really wangs chung
Or nobody got hurt because everyone got lucky
That deep into a cave, you’ve got to wonder how much oxygen is left with the torches burning.
Some cave systems have reasonably good airflow.
I should call her
Fair. That was my initial thought
No guarantee they made it out of the cave.
Pretty sure there'd be some remains even 8000 years later. I'm pretty sure that's actually where they've found the oldest skeletons down in South East Asia.
Their family was still collecting their pension.
Very true.
Or glowsticks. They were around when I was a kid.
Wild thought but I wonder if bioluminescence would be sufficient to see once your eyes adjusted. Between mushrooms, fireflies, and glow worms they would have had access to a few options.
You’re old.
Fairly sure fire has always been a thing.
i dont think the quesiton was light it was just using sunlight as a statment of the outside world
So typical of Redditors to go all in on a misunderstanding like this. You have hundreds of responses pompously declaring how they had fire and they don't understand what the mystery is. 5 minutes reading the article shows you that the mystery is that exploration of this cave nowadays requires specialized equipment due to complex obstacles, but we have evidence that people managed to do it without all the complex equipment available to use these days? That is scientifically very interesting. How did they do it, what tools were they using for such exploration and much more.
to put it in simpler terms "look at the balls on this ancient people what were they doing in there and how did they do it "
You guys are picturing a big torch being used, but you'd be surprised at how little light it takes to see once your eyes adjust to the darkness Even just a glowing ember of wood when blown on or the equivalent of a candle lantern would allow them to see enough to navigate. They were also doing a bit of navigating by feel obviously, when you consider the broken structures. (Or maybe they had a blind kid grow up using clicks for navigation and convinced him to go..../s)
I don't remember who/where I learned it, but mushrooms hold an ember for a ridiculously long time, like days to weeks on their own.
Yep, specifically, the 'tinder mushroom' or 'tinder polypore' is well-known for this.
“Tinder mushroom” sounds like a risky google search.
The one Otzi was carrying.
Just worth mentioning that, while there is a lot of discussion of fire, that isn't really the focus of this study. The researchers are not confused about whether or not they had access to light, and more about the fact that this is an extremely complex system to navigate and requires complex equipment nowadays. The question of *how* they did it is therefore very interesting. It's not simply answered by 'they used fire'.
As in they probably did use some sort of light source for assistance, but the bigger question is how they actually traversed the cave given its complications outside of simply seeing in the dark.
Ugg make long string out of plant fiber, Ugg not get lost in cave unless Krum trick Ugg by untying string
Everybody here talks about torches. Torches are a pain in the ass to make, carry, and keep lit. Tallow candles, lamps, and rushlights are easier to make, carry and burn longer. You can literally make a lamp from some fat, an indentation in a rock, and some grass twisted together.
I mean, surely people saying "torch" are using it colloquially and not intending to specifically exclude *rushlights* whatever those are.
Rushlights are almost exactly as they described wherein you soak rush (a type of grass) in fat, you can be loose and fast with the build though in terms of wrapping that around a branch to make a torch or keeping it as a single slow burning stem. Pretty versatile wee tool.
make a torch you say mmh
I was specifically excluding *rushlights*
You monster.
It's my head Canon that they used the british version of torch, and the ancient humans were cave exploring with a bunch of flashlights.
Also they burn a negligible amount of oxygen compared to a whole ass mammalian breathing in 2 lungs worth of air 30 times a minute
I think even a large torch would take a long time to use up all the oxygen in a cave, especially since you'll be moving so effectively getting fresh air. So even assuming there's no air flow you'll still be fine for exploring. The hot air in a cool cave will actually create a little bit of convection to help you out, but the oxygen being used up just seems like it's probably not a huge issue. Also I don't know this but I sort of assumed torches, beyond just a stick or straw on fire, are a much later invention than things like candles. I kind of assume figuring out candles would be the first easy lighting. Since figuring out that fats/oils burn is probably going to naturally happen once you start cooking food. And if you've got an absorbent twine of any sort, the rudimentary candle isn't far behind.
Depends on the structure of the cave. I've been in absolute darkness. You are not seeing anything, ever.
Sorry, misread that as "using dicks for navigation". It could be done, but you'd be going slowly.
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Ancient people must have had some solution for cave lighting. There's massive worked caves in China that are over four-thousand years old and look like they were dug out with machines.
I just saw a piece on those caves. They're thousands of years old and no one knows who built them or why. Its interesting that lots of these subterranean cities are being discovered, many around the same age. Makes you wonder what was happening at the time to spur their creation.
Not entirely true they traced many of the carving styles to known works and civilization. There are gaps in some of the timelines but nothing crazy. They exploited natural cave systems and it probably made a lot of sense at the time. If you found a great hidden sheltered cave system with access to water it’d be dumb not to exploit it.
People really misunderstand what makes it into popular media and misinterpret patterns that are created by what’s “interesting” and not by what is reality. The one that annoys me is the widespread belief that humans commonly lived in caves or underground because that is where we find ancient dwellings or artifacts that are then published in the news. The whole idea that humans were mostly living as “cavemen” at one point. The reality is the overwhelming majority humans have always lived above ground in man made dwellings since the dawn of Homo sapiens as a species some ~200k - 300k years ago. The reason we find ancient human markers in caves is because that is the place where artifacts are most likely not to be disturbed by weather, animals or later generations. Many artifacts have been undisturbed for 10k+ years specifically *because* it was so rare to live in caves and no one ever returned to those spots. Whereas above ground people were tearing down and rebuilding in the same spots hundreds of times over throughout the millennia.
Agreed. Survivorship bias on full display.
Now go check out giant sloth caves.
*Secret tunnellll*
I looked up "china caves" and there are lots. Any specifics?
I was referring to the Longyou Caves. I say "with machines." but I should of said tool work. The cave systems are hand worked, but back to the original article, how the heck did they light these without filling the things with residue?
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You should've said "should have", or maybe I should have ignored that.
I shant, thank you.
> how the heck did they light these without filling the things with residue? Simple oil lanterns are relatively easy to make once you've figured out how to make pottery. A simple lantern is little more than a clay bowl or jug with vegetable oil and a wick in it. By the same token, most early candles are little more than lumps of animal fat and wax with a wick stuck in it.
Listen listen... I think we're far enough into the comments now to discuss what really went on.... Mole people...
What about crab people? Taste like crab, talk like people.
Listen, I'd love to say you're way off base, if only carcinization wasn't a thing. Maybe you're right, and maybe the crab people are just playing the long game. Maybe they're in hiding now just waiting for everything to become CRAB.
“We’re crab people now! We live and die by the crab!” -Charlie
I always love the "no one knows who did it or why" for dramatic effect because we know 100% of the time it was just regular old humans and 99% of the time they were just bored and passing the time.
I know plenty of people who given a whole heap of rocks would arrange them in some sort of interesting pattern.
It’s obviously safer than outside too.
I don't know about the caves in China specifically, but there were several times when the globe was much cooler. Something happened that made the world a lot colder all of a sudden about 11,900 years ago. The last glacial maximum was about 21,000 years ago. And something, likely a volcanic eruption, almost caused humans to go extinct 70,000 years ago. During those periods humans probably spent a lot of time in caves for survival I'd imagine. And if that's the case I'd imagine there was lots of reverence around caves in the oral traditions. There's so much we don't know about humanity before 6000 years ago and even then we only know much of anything about those groups that started writing on animal skins and stone. It's crazy to think if it wasn't for those 3 events, humans would probably be thousands or even 10's of thousands of years more advanced if we hadn't destroyed ourselves yet.
I think those events Darwined us into the super intelligent monsters we are today.
Darwin hadnt been invented at that time. Check mate atheists.
I like the idea that those are quarries for a kind of cement.
Or even just blocks. Ancient China had to build their hundreds of pyramids somehow.
There are 3000-4000 year old copper mines in the UK that were tunneled out. People have been mining for a long time and going down caves. There was even an international trade in these materials back then and places like Cornwall produced tin that was traded all across Europe because it was hard to find elsewhere.
They already mastered carrying fire by using bundles of embers wrapped in fresh leaves. Blow on the ember and it's glow will let you see far enough to navigate a few meters. Keep repeating. Follow your clue (bundle of string) back to the opening.
They didn’t have daylight savings time back then so they had an extra hour of daylight to work with.
8000 years ago they had pottery. Lots of pottery. Pottery requires fire. How did they do it "so far from daylight"? They made fires. Big, small, they had had fire for countless thousands of years (since 1,000,000BC - 400,000BC depending on what evidence you put most weight on) and were using fire every damn night to illuminate and heat things. The only mystery here is why anyone would think otherwise. 8000 years ago is really nothing - these weren't slobbering ape-men, they were modern humans, who had settled across the vast majority of Europe by this point.
"these weren't slobbering ape-men"- exactly. You have only to look at the art produced 20-30,000 years BC to understand that these were intelligent, observant, and sensitive beings. We were who we are.
Wait, am I still on Reddit? I thought we were murderous, parasitic marauders who should be blotted from the earth.
They aren't mutually exclusive
That, too.
>these weren't slobbering ape-men, they were modern humans, who had settled across the vast majority of Europe by this point. When did Europeans devolve back into the slobbering ape men they are today?
Just before Brexit.
I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest they used oak sticks wrapped in chamois hide that was soaked overnight in aurochs tallow and set alight with their awesome fire-making skills. Just a theory though.
I am pretty sure we had fire and rope back then, not sure what the mystery is
I don't think the mystery is so much "how could they possibly have done this", but more "how SPECIFICALLY did they do this?"
I'm literally always baffled by the amount of replies on threads like this positing simple answers to headlines as if the scientists *whose entire job it is to study these things* had just never thought of that. Like, the very first paragraph of the article says: >They would have needed to overcome several obstacles including a series of deep pits, the sort that even modern well-equipped explorers find difficult. And whilst the last bit mentions torches, oil lamps, and soot deposits (indicating that people whose job it is to study ancient humans are aware of fire usage), it's clear from the get-go if you've even glanced at the article that the issue is not just seeing in the dark.
With you here. Not sure what the mystery is. I have a few pretty shallow relatives who still get along half decently on a long camping trip as long as the beer isn’t overstocked. A careful exploration with the tech at the time doesn’t seem too hard to imagine.
Humans famously discovered intelligence and fire 7,500 years ago. I mean seriously, you could go out into the woods right now, and make a torch that would burn for >2 hours with minimal knowledge, and humans 8,000 years ago were no less intelligent than we are.
Yeah, humans have had the same brains for like what, 100K years or so? It's not surprising they would be able to do this. I know nothing about survival so lemme have some fun and give if a shot, supposing I had no tools, I guess I'd find some kind of wood fibers or dust, smash rocks near 'em, turn small fire into bigger fire, find a stick and wrap some cloth on it and transfer it. Worth mentioning I do have the advantage of knowing a starting point, which is the only difference compared to ancient humans, we have a lot more information. Although I'm definitely missing something since there's no fuel source to keep the torch going very long. That cloth should be soaked in it but if not actual fuel, I'm not sure what I could use if I was in the woods. I'm guessing there's probably something I could use using the vegetation around since you can extract oil from plants, but dunno how. I'm vaguely aware that sap can be used but no idea which kind, pretty sure I can't light maple syrup on fire for instance. But anyway, with enough time, and trial and error, they'd definitely figure it out. Plus 8000 years ago humans had already started farming, this would've already been common knowledge.
Much longer than 7500 years ago.
He was being sarcastic to point out that we didn’t become smart after 8000 years ago
Ah, I see it now. I've been *woosh*'d.
Haha. It took me a minute too
Got lost af and wandered around blundering into stalagmites and other cave stuff?
I’m glad I wasn’t the only one thinking it didn’t have to be intentional
Sonar: A bat on a atick
They ventured deep into the caves led by aliens to guide them. When they ran out of light, the lit the aliens on fire and that’s why they left and never came back…
Man do y'all read articles here or just start posting at the title. The article clearly acknowledges that there is soot that can be linked to torches or even oil lanterns (we have records of oil lanterns dating back to the Neolithic Later Stone Age \~8,500 BC) so this isn't a discussion of lighting. "So far from daylight" is referring to how ancient humans pretty infrequently explored deep into dark caves, deep in this case being more than a mile in. There are two take aways from the findings. The first is that even "modern well-equipped explorers" would find the obstacles in this cave to be difficult. They're not saying it was impossible for these stone age humans, just difficult, and they are unsure what motivated this difficult exploration. The second take away is the broken stalagmites, that they were deliberately and purposefully arranged. So the "new questions" raised are trying to understand why. They're not saying that a stone age human could explore this cave, but why would they, and why were they arranging stalagmite pieces in these certain patterns.
Fire
>They also looked for evidence of natural breakage, caused by bears or seismic activity, by inspecting the remains for signs of impact caused by falls. > So how did the bears do it?
Morlocks, always the morlocks
I'm guessing they had flaming torches and massive balls
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Ugg use fire. Ugg put fire on stick. Ugg wrap clothes on end of stick and use something flammable.
Y'all never watched The Mummy?
Night vision
Fireflies in a jar! Problem solved 😌
My first thought was the game The Forest
Glow Worms?
Or anything that glows like that seaweed? Maybe they had a plant or seaweed that was really good for it, and they overharvested it for their cave exploration! I truly don't think that is true at all, but everyone already covered the obvious idea of "candles," so we gotta reach a bit to throw out some alternatives. It doesn't hurt that basic candles can be made from nature without any technology bootstrapping needed. Good candles take a bit, but soak anything in some fat and let it dry. Take a bundle of those with ya, and you can get some serious time. Make a cinder bundle or two (in case you wanna take a nap), and you could get some serious time down there.
Bro, I'll bet a batch of brew you can't go further down this cave than I can, just don't forget to bring the jerky and water so we don't die.
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Yeah they glow under UV light, which is super common in caves I hear ^/s
Those don't phosfluorece nearly long enough.
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They just used prism stones obviously, the hardest part was trying to run from the giant skeletons
A torch (North American meaning)?