More This and That

[nightdog_barks]

Ugh, very blah today with more overcast skies and cold rain. On the other hand, I am reading Robert Jackson Bennett's City of Stairs and so far it is tremendously good, with some impressive world-building and an interesting lady protagonist.

Here's some cool stuff I saw today ...

1) Looking for the origins of modern horses. The horse pictured in the article resembles nothing so much as a giant Dalmatian. :D

2) Neandertals were making cave art about 65,000 years ago. In other words, before Lascaux, Altamira, and Chauvet.

3) Not your ordinary red cardinal. You guys, this bird is GORGEOUS.

Eh, that's all I've got.

Comments

[silverjackal]

The horse news is astonishing because the Takhi looks so very like the ancient cave paintings... but there is the occasional rare depiction of spotted horses. I suspect the origin may be even more complex, with as-yet unknown species at the root. Much like the fact that people are frustrated in attempting to identify the origin of domestication of the modern dog from the wolf. The evidence keeps shifting wildly in both time and geography. It is a fallacy, I think, to assume that there *must* be a single point. Nothing says that dogs (or horses) could not have been domesticated at multiple times, in different places, and in the case of the horse perhaps from slightly different subspecies of some ancient Equus

The Neanderthal art is also news-that-sort-of-isn't. (Though not less delightful for being shared.) There have been claims about Neanderthal art floating around forever, and it's only a lingering and very outmoded conceit that dictates that only anatomically modern Humans (i.e. Homo sapiens sapiens) made art. We already have ample evidence that Neanderthals made tools, and personal adornments, and buried their dead with ochre and flowers. How were they *not* making art as well? They were humans too, just a slightly different variety.

The yellow cardinal is indeed beautiful and quite startling! Just glimpsing the colour one would expect a canary. :D