Largest known cave art images in US by Indigenous Americans discovered in Alabama:
Archaeologists in Alabama have discovered the longest known painting created by early Indigenous Americans, a new study finds. Indigenous Americans crafted this 1,000-year-old record-breaking image — of a 10-foot-long (3 meters) rattlesnake — as well as other paintings, out of mud on the walls and ceiling of a cave, likely to depict spirits of the underworld, the researchers said.
The cave has hundreds of cave paintings and is considered the richest place for Native American cave art in the American Southeast, the researchers said. To investigate its historic art, the team turned to photogrammetry, a technique that involves taking hundreds of digital images in order to build a virtual 3D model. Using this method, the researchers spotted five previously unknown giant cave paintings, known as glyphs.
"This methodology allows us to create a virtual model of the space that we can manipulate," study first author Jan Simek, a distinguished professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Tennessee, told Live Science. "In this particular case, the ceiling of the cave is very close to the floor. So your field of vision is limited by your proximity to the ceiling. We never saw these very large images because we couldn't get back far enough to see them."
After creating the virtual model, "we could look at it from a greater perspective," he said. "It allows us to see things in a way that we can't in person."
[...] This cave was first discovered in 1998 and remains unnamed, going by the moniker "19th unnamed cave" in order to protect the discoveries. The cave contains over 3 miles (5 kilometers) of underground passages with the majority of paintings discovered in one large chamber, according to a 1999 study published in the journal Southeastern Archaeology. In continuing to use photogrammetry techniques on the 19th unnamed cave and others, the team hopes to further improve understanding of Indigenous American art.
The study will be published online Wednesday (May 4) in the journal Antiquity.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2022.24
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 05 2022, @09:47PM (7 children)
Are we at the next stage in the euphemism treadmill? "Native Americans" is not good anymore? That was the replacement for "American Indians", after all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 05 2022, @09:59PM
Academia is innovative in that way.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 05 2022, @10:01PM
injunus-americanus?
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 05 2022, @10:25PM
The "Indigenous Americans" I know prefer to be referred to as "Indians", so this looks like another "Latinx" being forced on an unwilling population. SJWs are oppressing minorities now!
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 05 2022, @11:09PM (1 child)
O
M
G
Everyone quick! We must stop the academics from using different words than us. What's next, literally hitler? /sarcasm
Any story that even mentions a minority drags you creepy crawlies out from your rocks.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday May 06 2022, @04:21PM
The extra irony being that 'Native' and 'Indigenous' don't even mean the same thing!
A Native tribe (aka born there) to the US could be indigenous to Mexico (aka where they arose), for example.
Imagine being so ignorant you get triggered by using the most correct terms!
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday May 05 2022, @11:16PM
They're just working their way back around to "injuns," that's all. It's thanks to a crafty cabal of counter-subversives in academia.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 06 2022, @12:40AM
"Injun" is totally inappropriate. Maybe it was ok back in the days when there weren't so many Indians in America, but not now - for fuck sake, the CEOs of Google and MS are Indians.
"Indigenous" is oxymoron - only "indigenous" people are Africans living in Africa, and even then Africa is a huge continent where different people moved about.
"Native American" is the perfect designation. But then, I'm no Injun so what do I know how they feel about it.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 05 2022, @10:44PM (4 children)
It's right next to the sacred indian casino and sacred indian billboards.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 05 2022, @11:09PM
Which do not honor US/State labor laws, or any other law. Work there and you are on your own.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 05 2022, @11:17PM (1 child)
Casinos are the only real moneymaker most reservations will ever have. As a paleface, I approve of the Red Man supporting himself and his people. Indians gave the world tobacco. The world gave Indians liquor. Indians gave the world easily accessible gambling. It's a cycle of cultural exchange.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 06 2022, @01:12AM
Don't forget the syphilis.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 06 2022, @01:14AM
You must be in CA.
Can you blame them? Their "reservation" is unproductive desert land, all the productive land - coastal territories and well-watered valleys are all taken up by the gringos and mexicans ("spaniards").
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Thursday May 05 2022, @11:23PM
I must say the one image in TFA didn't show any glyph or evidence at all on the raw rock surface. I wonder how they were able to discern it using regular light.
It's also a little surprising that the artists didn't use more typical materials like charcoal or ochre. Even if they didn't have a ready source of the latter (though the tribes in that area were part of the Mississippian cultural and trade sphere), charcoal is only as far away as the torch they were burning for light.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 06 2022, @02:55AM