cave bear bones in calcite
Jun. 1st, 2011 11:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thanateSo, instead of finishing anything I certified our yard as a wildlife habitat with the National Wildlife Foundation, complete with ordering a sign to put out on the fence. There's someone with a sign in my parents' neighborhood, and I'd talked to my mother about it before; she hasn't done anything about it for two reasons, the first being that her property hasn't got any road frontage, and there's much less point in posting signs if nobody's liable to see them. The other one, though, is that their run-down of habitat requirements includes needing water of some sort on the property, and despite being largely in floodplain, she's got a riparian barely-a-stream and enough damp to produce mosquitos in the back.
As it turns out, you're only required to check one block on the "water" section, and it includes options such as "seasonal" and "puddling," both of which we have in the parking area; I surprised a butterfly dabbing at moisture in the gravel just the other day on the way out to my car, in fact. Somebody dark and showy, although it didn't hold still long enough to ID. I'm not particularly worried about water here in any case, given that we've got a stream that would be easily within sight if it weren't for the trees, and if you walk two blocks downhill you can fall in the river, but it's nice to have things that actually qualify. (This doesn't mean I'm not contemplating tub gardens, possibly with exciting carnivorous plants...)
Then we went down to see the Cave of Forgotten Dreams last night. Definitely worth the price of admission, despite all the panoramic sweeping shots being horribly out of focus when presented as 2D. Also, the narration was... sort of the video equivalent of a lovely classical music program presented by Karl Haas, as my family would put it. Lovely cave paintings, some interesting context and interpretation from people whose interviews seemed largely cut to make them look as ridiculous as possible, and then a painfully arty soundtrack and some very peculiar philosophising from someone who seemed to think that archaeology ought to be interpreted by hippie artists rather than archaeologists. And albino crocodiles, who are apparently poised to take over the world of art interpretation just as soon as they get out of their greenhouse... (not making this up)
I would have been curious to see the 3D version of the cave painting bits (possibly with earplugs) for a better look at how the paintings meshed with the stone contours, but on the whole, fascinating. Thirty thousand years ago, people were painting the depths of this cave, overlaying pictures of ice age animals in the same spots as much as five thousand years apart. (pictures) Also, they've got giant mammal bones buried in calcite and some pretty impressive helictites, and unlike all the cave tours I've ever been on, there were people there before they looked like that.
Experimentally cross-posty from dreamwidth. Comments encouraged in either location.
As it turns out, you're only required to check one block on the "water" section, and it includes options such as "seasonal" and "puddling," both of which we have in the parking area; I surprised a butterfly dabbing at moisture in the gravel just the other day on the way out to my car, in fact. Somebody dark and showy, although it didn't hold still long enough to ID. I'm not particularly worried about water here in any case, given that we've got a stream that would be easily within sight if it weren't for the trees, and if you walk two blocks downhill you can fall in the river, but it's nice to have things that actually qualify. (This doesn't mean I'm not contemplating tub gardens, possibly with exciting carnivorous plants...)
Then we went down to see the Cave of Forgotten Dreams last night. Definitely worth the price of admission, despite all the panoramic sweeping shots being horribly out of focus when presented as 2D. Also, the narration was... sort of the video equivalent of a lovely classical music program presented by Karl Haas, as my family would put it. Lovely cave paintings, some interesting context and interpretation from people whose interviews seemed largely cut to make them look as ridiculous as possible, and then a painfully arty soundtrack and some very peculiar philosophising from someone who seemed to think that archaeology ought to be interpreted by hippie artists rather than archaeologists. And albino crocodiles, who are apparently poised to take over the world of art interpretation just as soon as they get out of their greenhouse... (not making this up)
I would have been curious to see the 3D version of the cave painting bits (possibly with earplugs) for a better look at how the paintings meshed with the stone contours, but on the whole, fascinating. Thirty thousand years ago, people were painting the depths of this cave, overlaying pictures of ice age animals in the same spots as much as five thousand years apart. (pictures) Also, they've got giant mammal bones buried in calcite and some pretty impressive helictites, and unlike all the cave tours I've ever been on, there were people there before they looked like that.
Experimentally cross-posty from dreamwidth. Comments encouraged in either location.