Nakuru, Kenya — Scientists studying cave paintings in Kenya have announced that they have translated some of the oldest cave paintings ever found there.

“We believe that we have deciphered what most of them mean,” Dr David Drummlin said on Thursday. “There are quite a few that we’re still working on, but I think we’ve figured out the gist of what they were painting about.”

Drummlin explained that all of the paintings in the cave are between 8,000 and 10,000 years old, making them some of the oldest ever discovered. That they are in one of the dryest caves in the world has helped to preserve them over the millenia.

The paintings near the mouth of the cave are the oldest, dating around 10,000 years ago. The paintings get younger as they move deeper into the cave, the youngest dated at about 8,000 years old. The age difference between each set of paintings gets shorter, indicating that as time went on, the painting activity increased.

“We speculate that there may be as little as a few years’ difference between some of the newest sets,” Drummlin said. “There was almost a frenzy of paintings at the end. Then, all of a sudden, they stop. Poof.”

It is speculated that some major event happened in the area that either killed the painters or drove them to another region.

“The interesting part is what the paintings are about,” Drummlin said as he gave reporters a tour. “It seems that they were concerned about some of the same global issues that we are concerned with today. The main one, it seems, is global warming.”

Drummlin explains that the deciphered paintings are warnings to other cavemen that excessively large fires were contributing to greenhouse gases. The prehistoric scientists had predicted a major catastrophe like the one that had wiped out the dinosaurs. Little did they know, however, that the dinosaurs were actually wiped out after a meteor struck the Earth about 65 million years ago.

The cavemen had noticed that the grasslands that they had hunted over centuries had been steadily getting more sparse. The scientists among them blamed lack of sunlight and increases in temperatures for the changes.

“What causes things to heat up?” Drummlin asked. “Fire, of course. The cavemen blamed the rapid spread of cooking and heating fires for the increases in temperatures and more smoke in the air. The smoke blocked out the sunlight, which stunted grass growth. And those increases in average temperatures for climate change that reduced the average annual rainfall amounts. Consequently, grasses became more sparse and the game that they hunted began to migrate away to find greener pastures. It was a serious problem for them.”

The newest cave paintings showed a frenzy of activity that lead up to a certain event. “The same symbols appear over and over again. There was something in particular that they were worried about. The particular event, though, evades translation.”

Drummlin’s team will continue their work over the summer months and will return to the U.S. to begin planning their next expedition for 2006.

The team’s findings will appear in next month’s Caveman Quarterly.

-staff reporter-bs