Claim: Pareidolia is bias

So, [and I say this somewhat tounge in cheek] to bring this back around to the claim mentioned in #1, that pareidolia is "a cognitive bias that hinders us from studying evidence with due openness and objectivity" might this recent paper about the cave paintings, and how they are interpreted, actually support the claim, in that the authors are intent on interpreting the degraded image along the lines of known things, pigs, bipedal humanoid morphologies etc, rather than being "objective" and considering all possibilities such as some unknown thing [aliens/spacecraft etc]?
 
So, [and I say this somewhat tounge in cheek] to bring this back around to the claim mentioned in #1, that pareidolia is "a cognitive bias that hinders us from studying evidence with due openness and objectivity" might this recent paper about the cave paintings, and how they are interpreted, actually support the claim, in that the authors are intent on interpreting the degraded image along the lines of known things, pigs, bipedal humanoid morphologies etc, rather than being "objective" and considering all possibilities such as some unknown thing [aliens/spacecraft etc]?

Interesting.

If the red markings are just random marks that we can maybe interpret as humans and pigs, that would be classic pareidolia right? Seeing a pattern in a random collection of stimuli that was NOT intended to look like what the pattern suggests is pareidolia.

If the red marks are some sort of intentional attempt to produce something that looks like something, it's not pareidolia if we see what was intended by the creator. Right? There is the possibility that we may see something NOT intended by the creator, and that would be pareidolia. But again, if the marks are some sort of attempt to draw something, we should be concerned that pareidolia might make us see something unintended while trying to understand what was originally intended. I suppose in that case, the authors of the OP paper might have a point.

As for pareidolia keeping us from seeing aliens and UFOs, as there are no actual aliens or UFOs aside from what artist create, how would one know they were seeing an alien or UFO from 40,000YA? In trying to interpret the marks, experts start with what IS known. There is fossil evidence for things like pigs, dogs, humans and other fauna in the area. There is no evidence for aliens or UFOs. No alien bodies or fossil remains and no crashed UFOs. Occam's razor says these are probably representations of what was in the area at the time they were made, though the exact animal may be up for debate.

In fact, as the UFOlogist have no actual evidence of aliens or UFOs, as in alien spacecraft, just what the popular culture produces at any giving time, it's the UFOlogist that are more likely to find those things because of pareidolia. Pre-supposing aliens and UFOs with NO evidence and then looking for evidence of said UFOs might "hinder us from studying evidence with due openness and objectivity".
 
They are unsure whether that should also describe the figures on this thread.
Outta curiosity, I looked up some other cave paintings in Indonesia. These are the human figures I found in a cursory search:

Capture.JPG
cave 2.jpg

cave 4.jpg
indonesia cave painting 1.jpg


None of these resemble the "human figures" with the pig... CAVEAT: Maybe I saw other human figures that DO look like that but I didn't recognize them! But the other human figures I found from Indonesian caves do not lead me to accept those three as humans.

Though note -- the first image does at least have the two projections off from the head, which Ann K sees as dog ears. If those are humans, they may be studiously looking away from the pig...

Edited: Struck through and "x"ed out a bit in response to Ann K's post below... I was the victim of an erroneous website...
 
Last edited:
@JMartJr, the first picture is not from Indonesia, but from Lascaux in France. And while the animal pictures in there are superb and impressive (and mostly huge), this, the lone human figure, is another that looks like it was done by a small six-year-old.
 
On the other hand, the pig does seem to resemble other pigs closely enough.
I'm going off-topic a little here, but that's what sort of worries me. Not much, just a bit.
Don't want to start a conspiracy theory-like rumour, but I'm surprised that the pig is stylistically so similar (to me, anyway) to the Lascaux paintings.

Prof. Maxime Aubert and his team discovered the oldest then-known representational art in 2020, believed to be from 45.5 Kya.
It resembles some of the Lascaux paintings, with its disproportionately small, spindly limbs*.
The 45,500 year-old painting of a pig was accompanied by stencils of hands, just like at Lascaux.

@Giddierone has made us aware that Prof. Aubert has had the good fortune to discover even older representational art- extraordinarily, also a pig, dated to 51.2 Kya. It's stylistically similar (at least re. relative proportions of limbs and improbably bulbous body) to his 2020 discovery- and arguably to the Lascaux pictures.

45,500 year-old pig at left, 51,200 year-old pig at right.
pig 1.JPG


Small area of of Lascaux 2 art, ponies/ horses. Note limbs. It is generally accepted the Lascaux art is "only" 17,000 years old.
lascaux 2.JPG


I'm not aware of any palaeoarchaeologists commenting on the two oldest pieces of representational art- approximately 5,700 years apart- both being pigs (even if pigs were an important prey item for humans for 1000's of years) and both having (I think) a similar style to some of the Lascaux animals.

It's as if there's a shared "prehistoric style" of art stretching from Indonesia to France over at least 34,000 years.

I won't pretend to have any expertise in these things, and I'm not aware of any murmurings of doubt amongst those that have,
so I guess it's all above-board.

*Remembering these are wild animals thousands of years pre- the domestication and selective breeding of pigs (including the Sulawesi warty pig).
 
I won't pretend to have any expertise in these things, and I'm not aware of any murmurings of doubt amongst those that have,
so I guess it's all above-board.

Yes, we'll have to wait and see. Sounds legit for now, but they sure do have some artistic ques from Lascaux. And with Gunung Padang, the claim wasn't just that it was a pyramid, (it's not) it was the oldest pyramid by far. Something members of the Indonesian government liked to tout. Indonesia, home of the world's oldest pyramids and now the world's oldest art.
 
It's as if there's a shared "prehistoric style" of art stretching from Indonesia to France over at least 34,000 years.
I think it far more likely that there have been PIGS over that distance and that time, rather than a human-transmitted style of art. They need not have been domesticated, but could still be an important prey animal.
It resembles some of the Lascaux paintings, with its disproportionately small, spindly limbs*.
Please note, pigs HAVE "disproportionately small spindly limbs".
 
Please note, pigs HAVE "disproportionately small spindly limbs".
Well, yes. But the 51,200 Kya pig in particular looks like a fat sausage on legs. It looks like it would be vulnerable in the wild.
I guess- maybe like the Lascaux animals- the people of the time might have seen prey animals in those terms, big animated food parcels, and so emphasised the (desired) plump bodies in their art.

Professor Aubert identifies the pictures as being Sulawesi warty pigs (also called Celebes warty pigs) which is a semi-domesticated species,
External Quote:
It is the only pig species that has been domesticated apart from the wild boar; being semi-domesticated may have had an influence on the variability of its appearance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celebes_warty_pig
...and like the Eurasian wild boar has probably experienced some gene-flow from domesticated varieties.

Possible example of gene flow, possibly scientifically unsound so click to enlarge if interested.
15e8539a71213ddde279fff365a231ad.png

You wait c. 150,000 years for an indication that H. sapiens has abstract thinking, and someone draws a pig.
A gap of 5,200 years, and someone else draws a pig (which is found by the same guy). I like pork, but I do wonder.
 
You wait c. 150,000 years for an indication that H. sapiens has abstract thinking, and someone draws a pig.
A gap of 5,200 years, and someone else draws a pig (which is found by the same guy). I like pork, but I do wonder.
I still don't understand how painting a pig shows "abstract thinking". There's little more concrete than the thing you killed for supper last night. Paint a representation of the trap that you made to catch it, sure, and you'll have demonstrated an ability to analyse a problem, generalise, and formulate a solution. But a pig's just a pig.
 
I guess- maybe like the Lascaux animals- the people of the time might have seen prey animals in those terms, big animated food parcels, and so emphasised the (desired) plump bodies in their art.
I think we are wandering way off the topic of pareidolia here, but Lascaux is full of paintings of animals that migrated through the area, but they were not prey animals. The one thing that they almost never portrayed was the one thing that was by far their usual source of meat: reindeer.

Of a similar date are the drawings in nearby Rouffignac cave, referred to as "the cave of 100 mammoths" (although "100" is a severe underestimate). Do not underestimate the artistic and observational skills of our distant ancestors. The cave drawings depict mammoths with an anal musk gland, a detail which was not verified for centuries until an intact specimen was found frozen in permafrost. It amazes me to think that the pictures were done by people who saw mammoths wandering through France, and things like lions and wooly rhinoceros as well.

It is quite possible that the finest paintings in Lascaux were done by a single talented individual during his lifetime. The same might have happened at Rouffignac.
 
I guess- maybe like the Lascaux animals- the people of the time might have seen prey animals in those terms, big animated food parcels, and so emphasised the (desired) plump bodies in their art.
I think we are wandering way off the topic of pareidolia here, but Lascaux is full of paintings of animals that migrated through the valley, but they were not prey. The one thing that they almost never portrayed was the one thing that was by far their usual source of food: reindeer.

Of a similar date are the drawings in nearby Rouffignac cave, referred to as "the cave of 100 mammoths" (although "100" is a severe underestimate). Do not underestimate the artistic or observational skills of our distant ancestors. The cave drawings depict mammoths with an anal musk gland, a detail which was not verified for centuries until an intact specimen was found frozen in permafrost. It amazes me to think that the pictures were done by people who saw mammoths wandering through France, and things like wooly rhinoceros as well.

It is quite possible that the finest paintings in Lascaux were done by a single talented individual during his lifetime. The same might have happened at Rouffignac.
 
Last edited:
From Wikipedia article on pigs: pigs in the Neolithic. "Pigs is pigs!"

External Quote:
The initial emergence of wild pigs, followed by the genetic divergence between boars and pigs and the domestication of pigs.

IMG_0674.jpeg


IMG_0675.jpeg
 
Last edited:
I still don't understand how painting a pig shows "abstract thinking".
It shows you have a conscious internal representation of that animal, not just a reaction to it or a generalised memory.

Reproducing "the image in your head" involves planning and tool use: the ability to maintain a constant memory of the appearance of the animal, plus the ability to work to a systematic plan for some time, so that your memory is translated into a two-dimensional pattern on stone which nonetheless conveys the appearance of the animal in such a way that the subject is immediately identifiable by others- an astonishing ability!

I think we can be confident that the image would be recognisable to at least some of the artist's peers, just as it is to us today.
The picture is an external memory storage device! The artist's work shows us that he or she saw this animal.

We don't know the purposes of prehistoric art. Maybe to help in retelling stories, maybe to impress others with how clever you are, maybe a magic/ religious appeal for similar game in future
Lascaux is full of paintings of animals that migrated through the valley, but they were not prey
(I don't know, but I'd guess that the Lascaux people would sometimes hunt equines/ bovids if the opportunity arose),
who knows.
But the art presumably did have a purpose, and the effort put into it doesn't seem to confer any survival benefits* unless it helped reinforce or elevate the artist's status in their group- which depends on others being impressed by the artist's representation of an animal that they had seen and remembered.

*Just occurred to me, maybe people occupied with such activity were less inclined to go wandering off from the cave at inopportune times, or get involved in fights about mates etc. that might occur with everyone just sitting around eyeing each other up. Maybe pastimes originally had a survival/ social benefit after all!
 
Last edited:
Back
Top