Ancient Cave Paintings and Modern Man

Art captures extinct animals and obsolete technology

Apr 11, 2023

Photograph of the prehistoric cave paintings, with a woman standing on tiptoe is drawing with a black marker. She has already drawn a floppy disk, a typewriter, and is working on drawing a rotary phone. An arrow points to one ocher animal and the text “Giant sloth” is written next to it. — Photo of cave painting (Iriarte et al. 2022) being desecrated by Kit Irwin

In Colombia, archeologists found an eight-mile stretch of cave paintings in Serranía de la Lindosa. Tens of thousands of images were painted in red ocher by prehistoric artists 12,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age.

The images include animals that are now extinct, like mastodons and giant sloths. Seeing how art is able to capture a world that no longer exists led me to think about technology that has become obsolete.

When I was 25, a 21-year-old man I was dating told me that I was lucky to have started working at the birth of computers. I should have told him that the first mechanical computer was designed in 1822, but I didn’t know that then. There was no internet, no search engines at the time. True, I have seen and used punch cards, paper tape, cassette tapes, heavy disks that required two hands to lift and stored only 16K of data, but he was only four freakin’ years younger. If the term cougar had been in use then for women dating younger men, it would have been applied to me. Our relationship felt a little scandalous.

Technology keeps changing. Mores keep changing. I keep changing.

In 12,000 years what will people remember about our world? About you?

My advice: Find a cave and start drawing.