I saw a story in the news yes­ter­day that played on one of my long­stand­ing obses­sions. I am fas­ci­nated by the inter­sec­tions between sci­ence, his­tory, reli­gion, and pol­i­tics. These things join in a way that offers a sense of per­spec­tive and a host of ques­tions about what truly mat­ters. I’ve writ­ten about this before. I’m likely to again.

This par­tic­u­lar news story is the kind of thing that passes as niche trivia, the sort of story of inter­est only to peo­ple in a nar­row field, or to hob­by­ists who dab­ble in that field. That’s a shame, because it truly is some­thing of cos­mic impor­tance to how we think about our­selves and the things we value. Our sense of val­ues, in turn, deter­mines what we spend our money on, what we spend effort wor­ry­ing about, how we vote, what we wor­ship, and where we are going as a cul­ture, a nation, and as a world.

Here is the arti­cle. If you don’t want to click the link, the short ver­sion is that new test­ing tech­niques have shown some cave art to be much older than had pre­vi­ously been thought. Some is more than forty thou­sand years old.

Okay, that’s very obscure. Let me tell you why it mat­ters. (more…)