Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/12/08/miles-of-ice-age-art-discovered-along-south-american-river.html
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This finding is pretty unbelievable…but I’m a little concerned that it doesn’t seem to have been picked up by any major science outlets, despite being on rando internet publications for weeks now.
That it appeared on the BBC only makes me more suspicious.
Smithsonian…though they’ve failed me in the past.
Archaeologists found the first of the enormous set of images in 2017 but kept the trove secret while continuing work and preparing a television series on the discovery.
Anyway, hope it’s real?
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shed light on what these now-extinct species looked like
This is cool and all, but these very simplistic drawings definitely don’t shed light on what these species looked like.
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If it isn’t real it’s a pretty darn elaborate hoax. I haven’t seen any archaeologists dispute the findings so far.
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Yeah, 15 kilometers of images. But then, they’ve been busy for over three years on something, and that’s a lot of kilometers to have been unremarked upon by anyone for the last two centuries of archaeology. I guess I’m just waiting for an archaeologist to confirm it.
It’s real, but the bad BBC science coverage vibe you are getting is right-- the fake part is that it’s NOT some new discovery by a British expedition. Obviously it’s not new to indigenous people who live there, but it’s also not new to Columbian archaeologists who have been working there for over 30 years. Here’s an English-language paper on the site.
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!!!
Wow, that’s an all-new level of journamalismic sloth.
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It was kept quiet for a long time to avoid looting and because the area was under rebel control. There is a really fascinating thread on it here.
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Seems like it would be at least as easy to keep a team of archeologists quiet for a few years about an important and sensitive cultural find than to keep a team of pranksters quiet for a few years while they created a massive, elaborate, and convincing forgery.
BBC can be really bad on science coverage. And don’t get me started on the time they credulously reported Peruvian law enforcement claims to have found a ring of fat-stealers killing people to sell their valuable fat on the international black market. (Fat-stealing pishtacos are a common witchcraft accusation in the Andes, and of course they were just covering up for drug murders.)
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Better hope these guys don’t find out about this:
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