9000 BC: The Magdalenian people who lived at Altamira Cave in Spain painted a collection of mostly bison along with a horse, a deer, and a pig on the cave surface. The images must have been a kind of communication. Today we might call it media. The images are in color. Today we would call the industries that produced the pigments chemicals and mining. Probably they ate the bison, deer etc, but the animals are not yet livestock.

Altamira's lack of soot suggests that these people had a source of light that burned clean. (Treehuggers rejoice!) It's a rather remarkable possibility when compared to the Sistine Chapel that had to be cleaned after only a few hundred years.

So Altamira is a stop on the history of basic materials, food, fuel, media, and shelter.

Lulu


Britney and Lulu

thank you, very informative

Our mothers would kill us if we got tatoos. Even worse, Grandmamá might cancel our trust fund. On the other hand, they might be willing to accept a temporary image out of respect for the artist, or for the Magdalenian people, whom they would call the equals of innovative folks like Wilber Wright or James Joyce.


Britney and Lulu

1843: In London, according to Charles Dickens in A Christmas Carol , people burned coal or charcoal for heat. One scene has the gas workers on the street outside the Scrooge & Marley warehouse warming themselves by a fire. One wonders if maybe they burned horse manure that had been left on the street by passing vehicles.

Dickens says that the fog was so thick that people used candles and gas light before dark. The people in London may not have understood at the time, but the soot from the coal caused the fog.

The dirty London air reminds me of the clean air that the Magdalenian artists had at Altamira Cave. Maybe they had a source of natural gas. Or it could have been an animal or vegetable oil.


Britney and Lulu

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Britney and Lulu

You would think It was animal fat right? I don't know if that burns cleanly though.


clever got me this far then tricky got me in

Yes, animal fat of a particular animal. Or something like beeswax. And I suppose it could have been natural gas that seeped through a crack in the wall. As near as I can tell, no one has studied it to see how the Altamiran artists might have lit the cave.

The Londoners, as I understand it, have stopped using coal, and the famous London fog has passed into history (or herstory).


Britney and Lulu

1801: “Coalbrookdale at Night”

Oil Painting by Philipp Jakob Loutherbourg at the Science Museum, London

This oil painting shows the Bedlam Furnaces along the river Severn at night. Light from the furnace surrounds a tall smokestack that is almost hidden by the light.

To one side of a road, three stone buildings (three story?) are behind a woman and a child who watch, two dogs, three men on the road. Miscellaneous debris, which might be wood spindles or perhaps scarp iron, litters both sides of the road along which two horse drawn carriages (probably wooden) move. In the distance, another large multistory-multismokestack building.

Loutherourg’s painting has at least one thing in common with the Altamira Cave and “A Christmas Carol”. All three record events as they happened.

At Altamira the people probably didn’t have dogs, and they ate the horses rather than hitched them to wagons. And at Altamira, they may have had some unknown energy source, but it probably was not coal (actually coke) like at Coalbrookdale.


Britney and Lulu

500 BC: A tribe of Central Asians buried a Sythian chief near what is now Altay, China.

About 80 years ago archaeologists found the chief's grave. In the grave they found a rug, now known as the Pazyryk Rug. For pictures google: pazyryk rug or pazyryk rug thomas cole . Most experts accept it as the oldest known rug. The Pazyryk weavers made the rug in the modern manner from wool. The rug has images of people on horseback and of moose. They must have used the horses to herd the woolly animals (sheep?), instead of for food like at Altamira. Maybe they ate moose meat. Probably they shipped the rugs along the Silk Road to China and Europe.

To get a sense of how these people lived, one might watch The Horseman, a movie with Omar Sharif. The movie is set 1500 years after the weavers made the rug, but except for the fact that the Central Asians have become Muslim, not much has changed. Or not, but that is our speculation.


Britney and Lulu

This thread contains information about four works of art that record economic activity at four times in history.

9000BC: Altamira Cave postings 1,2,3,4,6, cool cave picture at 4. posted by alexkidd

500 BC: Pazyryk rug. posting 11

1801: "Coalbrookdale at Night" posting 10

1843: London, A Christmas Carol posting 7


Britney and Lulu