Clever Experiment Reveals How Our Ancestors Used Lighting Sources in Caves - ScienceAlert
To try and learn more about ancient cave-dwelling life - from the painting of rock art to socialization - a team of researchers has now recreated three common types of ancient lighting techniques: torches, grease lamps, and fireplaces.The grease lamps worked best for keeping smaller spaces illuminated for a longer period of time, burning for over an hour without much smoke – although their light only stretched about half as far as the light from the torches.That's not a detail this new study goes into, but the team did run a simulation using their lighting measurements to see how these torches, lamps, and fireplaces would work in the Atxurra cave in Spain, well known for its Paleolithic-era artworks.The team behind the new study sees this as just the start of this type of investigation – more types of lighting sources and fuels can be tested, and simulated in more types of settings, to better understand how our ancestors spent their time in caves