The Candle Burning at Both Ends: How Climate Change is Rubbing Salt in the Wounds of the Past
It is safe to say that the effects of climate change are threatening our future. Sea waters rising, extended droughts and a myriad of other concerns seem to shadow the future more and more as we envision it. But the effects of human caused climate change may not just be distorting our future but also our past. Leang Sakapao Cave Hand Stencils. Image: Linda Siagian Typically, the oldest rock art was thought to have come from Europe. Scenes of people hunting mammoth scrawled on cave walls usually jumps to mind, but the world's oldest rock art is much closer to home (should you be Australian like myself). For example, cave paintings in Sulawesi and Borneo date back to a whopping 52,000 to 40,000 years ago at least. These incredible sites, and many others like them, not only hold cultural significance to local communities but also offer an enormous wealth of knowledge to modern archaeologists and scientists globally. Through studying sites like these, parts of the answer to that quest...