In the stark inland desert of Patagonia in Argentina, there is a remote cave decorated with nearly 900 paintings of human figures, animals and abstract designs. Until recently, archaeologists had assumed that the rock art at this site, known as Cueva Huenul 1, was created within the past few thousand years.
But in a paper published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, archaeologists say that one of the cave’s most mysterious motifs, a comblike pattern, first appeared some 8,200 years ago, making it by far the earliest known example of rock art in one of the last places on Earth to be settled by our species. Cave artists continued to draw the same comb design in black pigment for thousands of years, an era when other human activity was virtually absent at the site. The cave art provides a rare glimpse of a culture that may have relied on this design to communicate valuable insights across generations during a period of climactic shifts.
“We got the results and we were very surprised,” said Guadalupe Romero Villanueva, an author of the study and an archaeologist at the Argentine government agency CONICET and the National Institute of Anthropology and Latin American Thought in Buenos Aires. “It was a shock, and we had to rethink some things.”
Patagonia, which spans the southern tip of South America, was not reached by humans until about 12,000 years ago. These early inhabitants thrived at Cueva Huenul 1 for generations, leaving signs of habitation.
Then, around 10,000 years ago, the area became more arid and hostile as a result of climatic shifts. The archaeological record in the cave likewise dried up for the next several thousand years, suggesting that the site was largely abandoned because of environmental pressures.
The comb motifs overlap with this long period of hardship, according to Dr. Romero Villanueva and her colleagues, who identified the age of the paintings with radiocarbon dating. The team also found that the black paint was probably made with charred wood, perhaps from burned shrubs or cactuses.
“As interesting as the ages are, for us it’s more significant that they span, more or less, 3,000 years of painting basically the same motif during all this time,” said Ramiro Barberena, an author of the study and an archaeologist also at CONICET in Argentina as well as the Temuco Catholic University in Chile.
He added that this was evidence “for continuity in the transmission of information in these very small and very mobile societies.”
Though the meaning of the comb motif has been lost to time, the researchers speculate that it might have helped preserve the collective memories and oral traditions of peoples who endured this unusually hot and dry period.
The relationships between groups of ancient humans that developed and shared such rock art may have enhanced the odds of survival in this challenging environment, Dr. Barberena said.
Andrés Troncoso, an archaeologist in the department of anthropology at the University of Chile who was not involved with the research, said he agreed with that interpretation. The paper “provides a contribution to the discussion about how humans have dealt with climatic change in the past,” he said.
Though the purpose of the comb motif is likely to remain a mystery, the motif’s persistent presence in the cave opens a new window into Patagonia’s prehistoric peoples.
“You cannot help but think about these people,” Dr. Romero Villanueva said, adding: “They were at the same place, admiring the same landscape; the people living here, maybe families, were gathering here for social aspects. It’s really emotional for us.”
LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
