ELF– Engelsk läsförståelse (HPMARS2022P4)

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Decoding the Cat

Cats have a curious allure. Even the most pampered house cats seem to flaunt their independence, as if to say that they do not really need us to get by. 1 this hauteur – or perhaps because of it – many of us cannot resist bringing these regal creatures into our homes, litter boxes and all. In fact, cats outnumber canines as human companions, although we know surprisingly little about their cognition.

Our partnership with cats is long-standing. Feline DNA suggests that the domestic cat may have split from its wild counterpart in the Middle East nearly 10,000 years ago. In 2014, a study identified a set of genes that may have been crucial in the 2 of the prehistoric cat into the cuddly pets we know today. These genes have been linked to key behavioral traits, such as the ability to learn and reduced fearfulness, which would have helped cats adapt to life in human company.

Yet many mysteries remain in deciphering feline behavior and intelligence, particularly 3 to our growing knowledge of dogs. This gap arose in part because of the more urgent need to study dogs. Negative interactions between humans and hostile or misbehaving dogs are common societal problems.

A bigger reason for our poor grasp of the feline mind stems from the challenges of cat behavior. Whereas the ancestors of dogs roamed in packs and learned sophisticated strategies for interacting socially with other animals, the wildcat progenitors of today’s house cat were more 4 animals. The patterns that govern their exchanges with one another and humans are therefore harder to parse.

Cats are also tough to manage in the laboratory. As a result, most studies of cats are based on observations in the home rather than controlled experiments in the lab.

Julia Calderone, Scientific American Mind

Thus, 5 these complications, we still have much to learn about cats. We can easily decipher a score of signals from dogs, but with cats it’s more like five or six, including purring, meowing and licking.

The Cave of Altamira

Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola, a Spanish landowner and amateur archaeologist, was fascinated by what he saw at the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1878. The prehistoric artifacts on display dominated his thoughts upon his return to his country estate near the medieval city of Santillana del Mar near Spain’s northern coast. Sautuola started to think more and more about some bone fragments he had seen in a local cave a few years before.

Sautuola and his young daughter, María, visited the cave of Altamira the summer after his Paris visit. Holding a lantern, the little girl explored some passages on her own. When he heard her call out in astonishment, Sautuola rushed to his daughter’s side. As they peered up to where her light cast its glow, father and daughter saw vivid paintings of animals covering the entire roof of the grotto.

But the initial discovery was met with skepticism, and it would take years before the world accepted the marvel that is Altamira. From the moment of his discovery, Sautuola was convinced the artwork was ancient, but his joy was short-lived. The Ninth International Congress of Anthropology and Prehistoric Archaeology Congress held in 1880 in Lisbon, Portugal, examined his findings in the cave. Led by French archaeologist Émile Cartailhac, the delegates dismissed any notion that this art could possibly be Paleolithic.

The skepticism of the academics was perhaps not surprising. Paintings of this age and this quality had never been seen before. If they were genuine, they would present a major challenge to existing assumptions about prehistoric people. Altamira’s cave art employs a wide range of artistic techniques believed to be too complex for the Paleolithic era. The use of perspective, creation of pigments using water or fat mixtures, and use of a paintbrush-like tool seemed too advanced for those believed to be a crude people.

Bitterly disappointed by the skepticism of the archaeologists, Sautuola endured more humiliation when it was suggested that he had hired a local artist to create an elaborate hoax. Some scholars went so far as to suspect that the Altamira paintings were a coordinated stunt staged by Spanish Jesuits to discredit archaeologists.

However, between 1890 and 1901, more discoveries of cave art in Europe began casting doubt on the scholars’ attitudes. The spate of other finds confirmed that there were people living well back into the last glacial period, like those at Altamira, who were capable of creating a vibrant body of artwork. New questions were raised about the cave at Altamira, and attitudes began to change.

Today, archaeologists have established that the bulk of the artwork in the cave is between 14,000 and 17,000 years old. Designated a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1985, Altamira also contains some of the earliest Stone Age painting ever found. Over 35,000 years ago, someone entered the Altamira cave with a natural yelloworange pigment (ocher) and water, and, using their fingers, traced various parallel curves on the main ceiling near the cave mouth. It is now believed that art found in other caves in the same region of Spain could date to more than 40,000 years ago. The earliest paintings found in the Chauvet Cave, discovered in France’s Ardeche gorges in 1994, may date from a little later – around 33,000 to 32,000 years ago.

Why, or for what purpose, were these cave paintings made? There is one clue of extraordinary importance: the use of the rock itself, the way the little imperfections of the walls and ceilings become part of the complete work. Is this related to the animism of hunter-gatherer societies, in which elements of nature are personified and imbued with human will and intelligence? Does the art represent a union between life and the inert rock, a connection between the figures created and their natural context, uniting the natural world with human expression? The painters and creators of these forms may well have combined their role as artists with that of priests: mediators between the community and the rest of nature.

María Sanz de Sautuola – possibly the first person to see the animals of Altamira since the last ice age – later met with the French archaeologist Émile Cartailhac, who had once poured scorn on her father’s claims that the Altamira art was from the Paleolithic. His 1902 visit to Altamira, when he met María, took place in the same year he had published an article, “The Mea Culpa of a Sceptic,” where he acknowledged his error, “committed 20 years ago ... an injustice which it is necessary to publicly put right [and for which] it is necessary to bend before reality, and to see justice is done to M. de Sautuola.”

José Antonio Lasheras
National Geographic History