How skepticism can fight radicalism, conspiracy theorists, and Holocaust deniers
Why have some conspiracy theories been pushed back into the public? Because when you try to force them out of the mainstream, they'll find a wider audience on the fringes.
Dr. Michael Shermer is the Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine, a monthly columnist for Scientific American, and Presidential Fellow at Chapman University.
Michael Shermer: There’s a market for what we do; that is, skepticism. What is skepticism? It’s just a scientific way of thinking. So why aren’t scientists doing this?
Because they’re busy doing their own thing in their particular fields. What the skeptical movement has developed is a set of tools like the Baloney Detection Kit, a set of tools to deal with particular claims that are on the margins of science like creationism, intelligent design theory, the anti-vaccinations, the holocaust revisionists, you know, all these conspiracy theories and so on and all these alternative medicines, there’s hundreds and hundreds of these claims that are all connected to different sciences, but the scientists in those particular fields are too busy working in their research to bother with what these claims are because they claims really aren’t about those fields, they’re just hooked to them.
They’re about something else, because back in the ‘80s when I first saw some professional scientists debate Duane Gish, the “Young Earth” creationist, they did not fare well. And I saw some holocaust historians debating or confronting Holocaust so-called revisionists or deniers, they did not fare well because they didn’t know the special arguments that are being made by these fringe people that have nothing to do with the science really, they have an agenda, and they’re using these little tweaked questions to get at the mainstream and try to debunk it for their own idea logical reasons.
So for example, like Holocaust revisionists, they make this the big deal about why the door on the gas chamber at Mauthausen doesn’t lock. “I mean if it doesn’t lock how are you gassing people if you can’t lock the door? So they must not have gassed people in there, so if they didn’t gas people at Mauthausen they probably didn’t gas people at any of the death camps. And if they didn’t gas people at any of the death camps then there must not have been a Holocaust.” What?! Wait a minute. All from this door that doesn’t lock?
Well I eventually went and found out that that wasn’t the original door; that took me a couple of years, but that’s the kind of specialty thing that skeptics do that mainstream scientists, scholars, historians don’t have time to do.
So over the 25 years, not just us there’s other skeptic magazines and conferences and groups of people that meet at meet ups and so on all over the world, and it’s because of the Internet, especially this whole idea of what we now call fake news, alternative facts, has gotten bigger and bigger and it just gets unfolded in real time online within minutes and hours and we have to jump on it fast.
That’s really in part what we do so that’s what we’ve been doing for 25 years is kind of putting out brushfires here and there, but also developing a set of tools that can apply to any future ideas, because I don’t know what’s going to be popular five years from now. Heck I don’t know what’s going to be trending tomorrow, who knows?
So you’ve got to have these tools at the ready and that’s what we’ve been doing at Skeptic magazine, but let's address a college campus issue these days.
Ok, I really think this goes back to the 1980s. I noticed it first when I was in graduate school, the second time when I got a PhD in the history of science.
My first round was in the ‘70s in experimental psychology graduate school, and I didn’t notice any of this campus stuff. In the late ‘80s when I was in my doctoral program—because history deals a lot with literature, the kind of post-modernist deconstruction of what texts means, it was really taking off. So I initially thought “What is this? But okay I’ll give it a shot I’ll keep an open mind here and just try to follow the reasoning.” And I kind of see where they were going.
So what is the true meaning of Jane Austen’s novel here, or Shakespeare’s play there, or this novelist or that author? And I can see that there may not be one meaning. Maybe the author meant it as kind of provoking you to think about certain deep issues and you have to find your own meaning in the text. Okay, I can understand that.
But then it kind of started to spill over into history and I was studying the history of science, and I kind of like to think of science as progressing toward some better understanding of reality that I believe is really there.
And it’s not that science is perfect and we’re going to get to a perfect understanding of reality, I know that’s not going to happen, but it’s not the same as literature, it’s not the same as art and music; it’s different than that.
If Darwin hadn’t discovered evolution somebody else would have, in fact if somebody did! Alfred Russell Wallace discovered natural selection is the mechanism of evolution.
And if Newton hadn’t discovered calculus somebody else would have. Well, they did—Leibniz, and so on.
These are things that are out there to be discovered, and I see that differently than art and music and literature, which is constructing ideas out of your mind.
And so I don’t think that the postmodern kind of deconstruction of the text applies completely to history, and you can see immediately why it fails because this is what led to in the ‘90s the whole Holocaust denial movement, so-called revisionists. They call themselves revisionists and their argument was “all history is text, it’s just written by the winners and the winners write themselves as the good guys and the losers are the bad guys and this is all unfair. Look, maybe the winners here have unfairly critiqued Hitler and the Nazis” and so on.
Yeah, but what about the Holocaust thing? It looks pretty bad. “Yeah well maybe it didn’t happen the way we have been led to believe it happened because, again, the history of the Holocaust it was written by the winners.”
You can see immediately why this kind of textural analysis can cascade into complete moral relativism and insane ideas like Holocaust denial.
That’s when I thought okay this is wrong; this has gone too far.
And in the mid ‘90s after we founded Skeptic magazine in ‘92 this was one of the earliest things we started going after because it was around ‘95 or so that the so-called science wars took off and that “science is just another way of knowing the world, no different and no better than any other way of knowing the world.” Wait, time out. What was that part about we’re just like everybody else? Science has its flaws but it’s not just like art or music, it’s different.
So then by the 2000s I think this really trickled down into all the social sciences, anthropology, biology, evolutionary biology and just attack, attack, attack to the point where any particular viewpoint that an oppressed minority finds offensive or anybody finds offensive can be considered a kind of hate speech or a kind of violence. You could sort of see the reasoning from the 1980s all the way through to today, you can see how they get there, but we should have drawn that line and stopped, well a bunch of us tried to stop it back in the ‘90s and well, it had a momentum of its own.
So I really think this whole idea of we have to protest Ben Shapiro because he’s a conservative and he’s pro-life and this is evil and wrong and it’s hate speech and it leads to violence, wait, Ben Schapiro is a really smart guy and if you can’t refute his pro-life arguments— I’m pro-choice, I think I could beat him in a debate, or I could at least tie him in a debate.
But if you don’t even know his arguments because you don’t want to listen to him and you’re going to shout him down, well, kudos to the Berkeley people who let him speak recently, but boy that has not been the trend recently. And this is the problem.
The problem is this, none of us has the truth. The only way to find out if you’re deceiving yourself or not, if you’ve gone off the rails, if you’re wrong in some way is to listen to other people who disagree with you.
And these were the original arguments laid down by John Stuart Mill 1859, “On Liberty.” This is the classic work.
One, I might be partially wrong and so by listening to somebody who disagrees with me I get to correct my idea.
Two, I might be completely wrong and off the rails and boy good thing I figured this out before I went to far.
Three, I might be completely right but I’m not 100 percent sure about my arguments and hearing somebody on the other side helps me refine my arguments and strengthen my arguments.
If I could refute that conservative or that radical leftist or whoever it is, then, how much stronger my position is.
And four, it’s not just the speaker’s right to speak, it’s the listener’s right to listen. Maybe I the protester don’t want to hear this person, but maybe there’s people in the room that do want to hear this person for whatever reason. It’s none of my business.
And then finally, in terms of moral progress that I like to track, one of the biggest drivers for the last five centuries has been the principle of free speech. This is at the basis of all liberal democracies of all civil societies, that everybody must have the freedom to express their points of view no matter how much we dislike them. I don’t care if you’re a Nazi or you think we didn’t land on the moon or whatever your ideas are, go ahead and tell us your best arguments and we’ll see in the marketplace of ideas how well you do.
And it’s been my experience that this is the quickest way to silence somebody.
Like the holocaust deniers: don’t lock up David Irving in jail like they did in Austria when he showed up at the airport, heck no, let him give his talk in a public forum and expose his ideas for the craziness that they are, for the lies that they are and then everybody can see it. End of story. But if you lock him up then people are going to be, “Oh what’s he got to say? It must be really good because they won’t let him say it.” It has the opposite effect the banned in Boston effect.
So that’s my argument for free speech and why these college kids have gone off the rails here. Let the people speak if you invite them.
Liberal college students have taken to shouting down certain right-leaning speakers on campus that they don't agree with. Michael Shermer, the publisher of Skeptic Magazine, thinks that is the worst thing you can do. He posits that all you do when you prevent someone from speaking is make certain people want to hear them more. This has led to the rise of the conspiracy theorists and why fringe ideas—from something as silly as flat-earth believers to something as morally reprehensible as Nazism and Holocaust deniers—have been pushed back into the mainstream. Michael's new book is Heavens on Earth: The Scientific Search for the Afterlife, Immortality, and Utopia.
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How New York's largest hospital system is predicting COVID-19 spikes
Northwell Health is using insights from website traffic to forecast COVID-19 hospitalizations two weeks in the future.
- The machine-learning algorithm works by analyzing the online behavior of visitors to the Northwell Health website and comparing that data to future COVID-19 hospitalizations.
- The tool, which uses anonymized data, has so far predicted hospitalizations with an accuracy rate of 80 percent.
- Machine-learning tools are helping health-care professionals worldwide better constrain and treat COVID-19.
The value of forecasting
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTA0Njk2OC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYyMzM2NDQzOH0.rid9regiDaKczCCKBsu7wrHkNQ64Vz_XcOEZIzAhzgM/img.jpg?width=980" id="2bb93" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="31345afbdf2bd408fd3e9f31520c445a" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="1546" data-height="1056" />Northwell emergency departments use the dashboard to monitor in real time.
Credit: Northwell Health
<p>One unique benefit of forecasting COVID-19 hospitalizations is that it allows health systems to better prepare, manage and allocate resources. For example, if the tool forecasted a surge in COVID-19 hospitalizations in two weeks, Northwell Health could begin:</p><ul><li>Making space for an influx of patients</li><li>Moving personal protective equipment to where it's most needed</li><li>Strategically allocating staff during the predicted surge</li><li>Increasing the number of tests offered to asymptomatic patients</li></ul><p>The health-care field is increasingly using machine learning. It's already helping doctors develop <a href="https://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/early/2020/06/09/dc19-1870" target="_blank">personalized care plans for diabetes patients</a>, improving cancer screening techniques, and enabling mental health professionals to better predict which patients are at <a href="https://healthitanalytics.com/news/ehr-data-fuels-accurate-predictive-analytics-for-suicide-risk" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">elevated risk of suicide</a>, to name a few applications.</p><p>Health systems around the world have already begun exploring how <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7315944/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">machine learning can help battle the pandemic</a>, including better COVID-19 screening, diagnosis, contact tracing, and drug and vaccine development.</p><p>Cruzen said these kinds of tools represent a shift in how health systems can tackle a wide variety of problems.</p><p>"Health care has always used the past to predict the future, but not in this mathematical way," Cruzen said. "I think [Northwell Health's new predictive tool] really is a great first example of how we should be attacking a lot of things as we go forward."</p>Making machine-learning tools openly accessible
<p>Northwell Health has made its predictive tool <a href="https://github.com/northwell-health/covid-web-data-predictor" target="_blank">available for free</a> to any health system that wishes to utilize it.</p><p>"COVID is everybody's problem, and I think developing tools that can be used to help others is sort of why people go into health care," Dr. Cruzen said. "It was really consistent with our mission."</p><p>Open collaboration is something the world's governments and health systems should be striving for during the pandemic, said Michael Dowling, Northwell Health's president and CEO.</p><p>"Whenever you develop anything and somebody else gets it, they improve it and they continue to make it better," Dowling said. "As a country, we lack data. I believe very, very strongly that we should have been and should be now working with other countries, including China, including the European Union, including England and others to figure out how to develop a health surveillance system so you can anticipate way in advance when these things are going to occur."</p><p>In all, Northwell Health has treated more than 112,000 COVID patients. During the pandemic, Dowling said he's seen an outpouring of goodwill, collaboration, and sacrifice from the community and the tens of thousands of staff who work across Northwell.</p><p>"COVID has changed our perspective on everything—and not just those of us in health care, because it has disrupted everybody's life," Dowling said. "It has demonstrated the value of community, how we help one another."</p>Dark matter axions possibly found near Magnificent 7 neutron stars
A new study proposes mysterious axions may be found in X-rays coming from a cluster of neutron stars.
Are Axions Dark Matter?
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="5e35ce24a5b17102bfce5ae6aecc7c14"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/e7yXqF32Yvw?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span>Put on a happy face? “Deep acting” associated with improved work life
New research suggests you can't fake your emotional state to improve your work life — you have to feel it.
What is deep acting?
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTQ1NDk2OS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxNTY5MzA0Nn0._s7aP25Es1CInq51pbzGrUj3GtOIRWBHZxCBFnbyXY8/img.jpg?width=1245&coordinates=333%2C-1%2C333%2C-1&height=700" id="ddf09" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="9dc42c4d6a8e372ad7b72907b46ecd3f" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="1245" data-height="700" />Arlie Russell Hochschild (pictured) laid out the concept of emotional labor in her 1983 book, "The Managed Heart."
Credit: Wikimedia Commons
<p>Deep and surface acting are the principal components of emotional labor, a buzz phrase you have likely seen flitting about the Twittersphere. Today, "<a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/article/5ea9f140-f722-4214-bb57-8b84f9418a7e" target="_blank">emotional labor</a>" has been adopted by groups as diverse as family counselors, academic feminists, and corporate CEOs, and each has redefined it with a patented spin. But while the phrase has splintered into a smorgasbord of pop-psychological arguments, its initial usage was more specific.</p><p>First coined by sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild in her 1983 book, "<a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520272941/the-managed-heart" target="_blank">The Managed Heart</a>," emotional labor describes the work we do to regulate our emotions on the job. Hochschild's go-to example is the flight attendant, who is tasked with being "nicer than natural" to enhance the customer experience. While at work, flight attendants are expected to smile and be exceedingly helpful even if they are wrestling with personal issues, the passengers are rude, and that one kid just upchucked down the center aisle. Hochschild's counterpart to the flight attendant is the bill collector, who must instead be "nastier than natural."</p><p>Such personas may serve an organization's mission or commercial interests, but if they cause emotional dissonance, they can potentially lead to high emotional costs for the employee—bringing us back to deep and surface acting.</p><p>Deep acting is the process by which people modify their emotions to match their expected role. Deep actors still encounter the negative emotions, but they devise ways to <a href="http://www.selfinjury.bctr.cornell.edu/perch/resources/what-is-emotion-regulationsinfo-brief.pdf" target="_blank">regulate those emotions</a> and return to the desired state. Flight attendants may modify their internal state by talking through harsh emotions (say, with a coworker), focusing on life's benefits (next stop Paris!), physically expressing their desired emotion (smiling and deep breaths), or recontextualizing an inauspicious situation (not the kid's fault he got sick).</p><p>Conversely, surface acting occurs when employees display ersatz emotions to match those expected by their role. These actors are the waiters who smile despite being crushed by the stress of a dinner rush. They are the CEOs who wear a confident swagger despite feelings of inauthenticity. And they are the bouncers who must maintain a steely edge despite humming show tunes in their heart of hearts.</p><p>As we'll see in the research, surface acting can degrade our mental well-being. This deterioration can be especially true of people who must contend with negative emotions or situations inside while displaying an elated mood outside. Hochschild argues such emotional labor can lead to exhaustion and self-estrangement—that is, surface actors erect a bulwark against anger, fear, and stress, but that disconnect estranges them from the emotions that allow them to connect with others and live fulfilling lives.</p>Don't fake it till you make it
<p>Most studies on emotional labor have focused on customer service for the obvious reason that such jobs prescribe emotional states—service with a smile or, if you're in the bouncing business, a scowl. But <a href="https://eller.arizona.edu/people/allison-s-gabriel" target="_blank">Allison Gabriel</a>, associate professor of management and organizations at the University of Arizona's Eller College of Management, wanted to explore how employees used emotional labor strategies in their intra-office interactions and which strategies proved most beneficial.</p><p>"What we wanted to know is whether people choose to engage in emotion regulation when interacting with their co-workers, why they choose to regulate their emotions if there is no formal rule requiring them to do so, and what benefits, if any, they get out of this effort," Gabriel said in <a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/01/200117162703.htm" target="_blank">a press release</a>.</p><p>Across three studies, she and her colleagues surveyed more than 2,500 full-time employees on their emotional regulation with coworkers. The survey asked participants to agree or disagree with statements such as "I try to experience the emotions that I show to my coworkers" or "I fake a good mood when interacting with my coworkers." Other statements gauged the outcomes of such strategies—for example, "I feel emotionally drained at work." Participants were drawn from industries as varied as education, engineering, and financial services.</p><p>The results, <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fapl0000473" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">published in the Journal of Applied Psychology</a>, revealed four different emotional strategies. "Deep actors" engaged in high levels of deep acting; "low actors" leaned more heavily on surface acting. Meanwhile, "non-actors" engaged in negligible amounts of emotional labor, while "regulators" switched between both. The survey also revealed two drivers for such strategies: prosocial and impression management motives. The former aimed to cultivate positive relationships, the latter to present a positive front.</p><p>The researchers found deep actors were driven by prosocial motives and enjoyed advantages from their strategy of choice. These actors reported lower levels of fatigue, fewer feelings of inauthenticity, improved coworker trust, and advanced progress toward career goals. </p><p>As Gabriel told <a href="https://www.psypost.org/2021/01/new-psychology-research-suggests-deep-acting-can-reduce-fatigue-and-improve-your-work-life-59081" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">PsyPost in an interview</a>: "So, it's a win-win-win in terms of feeling good, performing well, and having positive coworker interactions."</p><p>Non-actors did not report the emotional exhaustion of their low-actor peers, but they also didn't enjoy the social gains of the deep actors. Finally, the regulators showed that the flip-flopping between surface and deep acting drained emotional reserves and strained office relationships.</p><p>"I think the 'fake it until you make it' idea suggests a survival tactic at work," Gabriel noted. "Maybe plastering on a smile to simply get out of an interaction is easier in the short run, but long term, it will undermine efforts to improve your health and the relationships you have at work. </p><p>"It all boils down to, 'Let's be nice to each other.' Not only will people feel better, but people's performance and social relationships can also improve."</p>You'll be glad ya' decided to smile
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="88a0a6a8d1c1abfcf7b1aca8e71247c6"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/QOSgpq9EGSw?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span><p>But as with any research that relies on self-reported data, there are confounders here to untangle. Even during anonymous studies, participants may select socially acceptable answers over honest ones. They may further interpret their goal progress and coworker interactions more favorably than is accurate. And certain work conditions may not produce the same effects, such as toxic work environments or those that require employees to project negative emotions.</p><p>There also remains the question of the causal mechanism. If surface acting—or switching between surface and deep acting—is more mentally taxing than genuinely feeling an emotion, then what physiological process causes this fatigue? <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2019.00151/full" target="_blank">One study published in the <em>Frontiers in Human Neuroscience</em></a><em> </em>measured hemoglobin density in participants' brains using an fNIRS while they expressed emotions facially. The researchers found no significant difference in energy consumed in the prefrontal cortex by those asked to deep act or surface act (though, this study too is limited by a lack of real-life task).<br></p><p>With that said, Gabriel's studies reinforce much of the current research on emotional labor. <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/2041386611417746" target="_blank">A 2011 meta-analysis</a> found that "discordant emotional labor states" (read: surface acting) were associated with harmful effects on well-being and performance. The analysis found no such consequences for deep acting. <a href="https://doi.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fa0022876" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Another meta-analysis</a> found an association between surface acting and impaired well-being, job attitudes, and performance outcomes. Conversely, deep acting was associated with improved emotional performance.</p><p>So, although there's still much to learn on the emotional labor front, it seems Van Dyke's advice to a Leigh was half correct. We should put on a happy face, but it will <a href="https://bigthink.com/design-for-good/everything-you-should-know-about-happiness-in-one-infographic" target="_self">only help if we can feel it</a>.</p>Listen: Scientists re-create voice of 3,000-year-old Egyptian mummy
Scientists used CT scanning and 3D-printing technology to re-create the voice of Nesyamun, an ancient Egyptian priest.
- Scientists printed a 3D replica of the vocal tract of Nesyamun, an Egyptian priest whose mummified corpse has been on display in the UK for two centuries.
- With the help of an electronic device, the reproduced voice is able to "speak" a vowel noise.
- The team behind the "Voices of the Past" project suggest reproducing ancient voices could make museum experiences more dynamic.
Howard et al.
<p style="margin-left: 20px;">"While this approach has wide implications for heritage management/museum display, its relevance conforms exactly to the ancient Egyptians' fundamental belief that 'to speak the name of the dead is to make them live again'," they wrote in a <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-56316-y#Fig3" target="_blank">paper</a> published in Nature Scientific Reports. "Given Nesyamun's stated desire to have his voice heard in the afterlife in order to live forever, the fulfilment of his beliefs through the synthesis of his vocal function allows us to make direct contact with ancient Egypt by listening to a sound from a vocal tract that has not been heard for over 3000 years, preserved through mummification and now restored through this new technique."</p>Connecting modern people with history
<p>It's not the first time scientists have "re-created" an ancient human's voice. In 2016, for example, Italian researchers used software to <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/hear-recreated-voice-otzi-iceman-180960570/" target="_blank">reconstruct the voice of Ötzi,</a> an iceman who was discovered in 1991 and is thought to have died more than 5,000 years ago. But the "Voices of the Past" project is different, the researchers note, because Nesyamun's mummified corpse is especially well preserved.</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"It was particularly suited, given its age and preservation [of its soft tissues], which is unusual," Howard told <em><a href="https://www.livescience.com/amp/ancient-egypt-mummy-voice-reconstructed.html" target="_blank">Live Science</a>.</em></p><p>As to whether Nesyamun's reconstructed voice will ever be able to speak complete sentences, Howard told <em><a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Weird/wireStory/ancient-voice-scientists-recreate-sound-egyptian-mummy-68482015" target="_blank">The Associated Press</a>, </em>that it's "something that is being worked on, so it will be possible one day."</p><p>John Schofield, an archaeologist at the University of York, said that reproducing voices from history can make museum experiences "more multidimensional."</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"There is nothing more personal than someone's voice," he told <em>The Associated Press.</em> "So we think that hearing a voice from so long ago will be an unforgettable experience, making heritage places like Karnak, Nesyamun's temple, come alive."</p>World's oldest work of art found in a hidden Indonesian valley
Archaeologists discover a cave painting of a wild pig that is now the world's oldest dated work of representational art.
- Archaeologists find a cave painting of a wild pig that is at least 45,500 years old.
- The painting is the earliest known work of representational art.
- The discovery was made in a remote valley on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi.
Oldest Cave Art Found in Sulawesi
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