Eli5 How did ancient drawings in caves survive thousands of years without wearing away completely?
In: Earth Science
>How did ancient drawings **in caves** survive thousands of years without wearing away
In a cave, what’s going to wear them away? Most weathering processes don’t exist in caves (light, wind), that’s why they’re good dwellings.
**More importantly**, there’s a huge survivor-bias here. All we have to go on are ones that DID survive. There’s no way to know how many more there were that DID wear away completely. Of course there’s still some weathering in caves, from water, crumbling walls, moss/mould, maybe animals. But any of the ones that eroded are gone, just like you said! When we find cave drawings that survived 1000s of years, that’s the 1% of initial drawings that happened to be in suitably dry, dark, stable caves. The vast majority didn’t make it.
It’s like how we think “wow old machines really were built to last”. Partially true, but also most machines of the 50’s were in landfills by the 60s, and the 50s machines still in use today are the 1% that didn’t break, *and* got super well maintained.
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