"These hand paintings in Sumpang Bita cave in South Sulawesi were once thought to be among the oldest paintings in the world at 39,000 years"
Why are these cave paintings with hands all over the world? It is kind of ominous to think of the reasons and conditions why they are found everywhere.
My understanding is that hand paintings like this fall out fairly naturally- after collecting and grinding the iron oxide for paint (there's a great but now unavailable Google+ post by Yonatan Zunger that explains why barns are red for the same reason: supernovas), you want to use some sort of mask or template, and a hand is pretty much the most available thing for early societies.
After he wrote it I pointed out most historical barns in many parts of the US are white, using whitewash (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitewash) which doesn't really change the conclusion of the article, which itself is a masterclass in explaining the root cause of metallicity in the universe.
What are you thinking of? I thought those were by far the coolest, even if not oldest. (I haven't seen that before, didn't realise it was so common as you say.) Partly because they are absolutely identifiable in a way that the humans and pig.. really isn't to a layman, but also it's just so personal, much more of a 'connection', to me anyway, to the person who did it. The 'someone was actually there tens of thousands of years ago, painting around their hand, and now I'm looking at it' feeling hits a lot harder.
Why are these cave paintings with hands all over the world? It is kind of ominous to think of the reasons and conditions why they are found everywhere.