Word: caves
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Spring has come to Bosnia, and irises, primrose and lilacs pattern the mountainsides, but the temperature still dips below freezing at night, and heavy rains are frequent. The terrain is excellent for hiding, however. O'Grady had crashed in a cave-pocked, densely forested region used during World War II for that purpose by partisans evading the Nazis. The downed flyer had soon consumed the eight 4-oz. packs of water in his emergency kit. But he was able to catch rain in Ziploc plastic bags and at one point tried to squeeze water out of his wet woolen socks...
...clear from the start that the cave that park ranger Jean-Marie Chauvet stumbled upon in the south of France last year was a major archaeological find. Like the famous Lascaux cave nearby, the limestone cavern was covered with spectacular paintings from the depths of prehistory. This one seemed much older, though -- maybe 20,000 years, compared to 17,000 for Lascaux -- and it contained much more artwork, including images of animals, such as owls, panthers and hyenas, that had rarely if ever been seen on cave walls...
...electrifying as the discovery was, the news just announced by the French Ministry of Culture is equally astonishing. Radiocarbon dating showed that the images aren't 20,000 years old, or even 27,000 (the age of what had been believed to be the earliest cave painting, at Cosquer cave near Marseilles), but 30,000 years or more -- making these the oldest cave paintings ever found. The dating is based on eight paint samples tested at three laboratories. If it holds up, says New York University anthropologist Randall White, an expert on prehistoric art, "it's a pretty big shock...
...quality of the paintings, however, as much as their great antiquity, that makes them so surprising. The artwork in the Cosquer cave is nothing more than the crude outline of a human hand. The Chauvet cave drawings, made 30 centuries earlier, are exquisitely rendered likenesses that use the caverns' natural contours to heighten a sense of perspective. The contrast suggests that the art of early man did not mature steadily in any simple linear fashion. Says Patrice Baghain, a regional director of the French Culture Ministry: "It throws the entire notion of progressive artistic development into question...
...passed both the House and Senate by nearly unanimous votes. While Clinton's advisers refused at first to budge on the issue, they began worrying about a Republican bill that would force their hands and, in effect, remove China policy from presidential control. In their view, a pre-emptive cave-in was the better part of valor...