To save everyone a click, cave paint has some sun-blocking properties. There is literally zero evidence that people covered themselves in cave paint to protect from the sun.
Indigenous Australians have been observed using mud to protect themselves, and providing they recognised the need to do so it is much more likely that cave people would have observed pigs and hippos doing this and used readily available mud to shield themselves from the sun rather than routinely covering themselves in difficult-to-make pigments.
For anyone curious about this, there’s an article by the University of Michigan where the researcher (Raven Garvey) mentioned in OP’s shared article is a professor and breaks down in details about it too.
news.umich.edu/sunscreen-clothes-and-caves-may-ha…
Now I am just kinda wondering how difficult it was to actually make the paint for cave paintings. I wouldn’t have assumed it was hard because, you know… Cavemen made it. 🤷🏻♂️
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To save everyone a click, cave paint has some sun-blocking properties. There is literally zero evidence that people covered themselves in cave paint to protect from the sun.
Indigenous Australians have been observed using mud to protect themselves, and providing they recognised the need to do so it is much more likely that cave people would have observed pigs and hippos doing this and used readily available mud to shield themselves from the sun rather than routinely covering themselves in difficult-to-make pigments.
For anyone curious about this, there’s an article by the University of Michigan where the researcher (Raven Garvey) mentioned in OP’s shared article is a professor and breaks down in details about it too. news.umich.edu/sunscreen-clothes-and-caves-may-ha…
Now I am just kinda wondering how difficult it was to actually make the paint for cave paintings. I wouldn’t have assumed it was hard because, you know… Cavemen made it. 🤷🏻♂️