The Past We Can Never Return To – The Anthropocene Reviewed

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In September of 1940, an 18-year-old mechanic named Marcel Ravidat was walking his dog, Robot, in the countryside of Southwestern France when the dog disappeared down a hole. Robot eventually returned but the next day, Ravidat went to the spot with three friends to explore the hole.

And after quite a bit of digging, they discovered a cave with walls covered with paintings, including over 900 paintings of animals, horses, stags, bison and also species that are now extinct, including a wooly rhinoceros. The paintings were astonishingly detailed and vivid with red, yellow and black paint made from pulverized mineral pigments that were usually blown through a narrow tube, possibly a hollowed bone, onto the walls of the cave. It would eventually be established that these artworks were at least 17,000 years old.

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[kurzgesagt]

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[vlogbrothers]

Thanks to everyone at kurzgesagt for the extraordinarily moving animations and sound design. And I so appreciate the kind words about our work. I personally learn so much from kurzgesagt, as do my kids--not just about neutron stars and ants, but about how to approach the universe with curiosity and intellectual rigor.
EDIT: Some people below have asked what this video is about. Fair question! It is mostly about the Lascaux Cave Paintings, of course, but I wrote it because I wanted to explore why we study history, and what we do and do not learn from looking at the distant past. Every record of the past is incomplete, and our personal experiences inevitably shape our understanding of what happened before us, and I think the history of Lascaux shows a lot of the nuances and complexities that accompany the study of history. I wanted the essay to be about how much we don't know and will never know when it comes to history, but why it is still productive and important to consider what we have of a historical record.
p.s. A new episode of The Anthropocene Reviewed comes out this Thursday, and a backlog of 25ish episodes is available for free wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks. -John

[ceciliatran]

John: why are there only paintings of animals ? ?
Cavemen: well painting faces IS PRETTY FRICKIN HARD, JOHN

[profdc]

“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.” - Heraclitus

[ananyabhalla]

"This a handprint, but not a hand. This is a memory you can't return to." This made me cry somehow.

[LoneTiger]

_“We all have our time machines, don't we. Those that take us back are memories... And those that carry us forward, are dreams.”_
― H.G. Wells & Jeremy Irons.
EDIT: I put Jeremy Irons because of the way he quoted that line on the movie. Don't be so serious. 😁

[puiu]

Wow at the end when John stopped talking i just remembered this was a Kurzgesagt video. He did a super good job

[mikaelnilsson]

"If you ever been a child"
Me: Wow he is talking directly to me

[erictaylor]

Imagine those kids thinking, "We need to protect this" as the entire rest of their world was being torn to pieces. Pretty amazing.

[luniquekero]

"we hoped you liked it"
-*teary eyes*.... a little..!

[topalltime]

20k years later : scientists are confused why there is 2 caves with almost the same cave art

[Gameslinx]

"If you've ever been a child"
As someone born at the age of 24, I can't relate to this

[leonoliveira]

"ALMOST AS IF ART ISN'T OPTIONAL FOR HUMANS."
This is good, and should be spread far and wide.

[Maribro]

Imagine just checking out a cave with your friends and finding untouched history from thousands of years ago. That must’ve been such an incredible and larger than life feeling

[vinniecairns]

It's weird because John Green was speaking but the acoustics in my house made it sound like I was crying.

[Volken]

Crazy how art is prolific across all human history. Like a timeless language that speaks to everyone, no matter when or where we're from.

[mochievious]

When I started watching this video, I didn't realise how emotional it would make me...

"This is a handprint, but not a hand. This is a memory you can't return to." Isn't that going to be us one day? A beautiful, unattainable memory.

[IAmNumber]

Wow. His voice sounds so different when he’s not doing Crash Course videos. John Green is crazy smart and insightful.

[waterunderthebridge]

“...today we’re gonna do something different...”

Me: So no existential crisis and depressive nihilism today...?

They almost had us in the first half

[sranice]

I rewatch this every now and then. It always makes me emotional. It humanises history, the billions of people who have lived and died between the people who made those paintings and it brings a new meaning to art. Maybe art is just a human instinct.