Way to go, Old People! (Ice Age Street) / We'll Leave a Light On in the Cave for You / Alison Adcock: After the Last Glaciation

The fighting woolly rhinos at Chauvet Cave. Charcoal from these drawings has yielded radiocarbon dates of 31,000-32,000 years BP #IceAgeArt: image via The Ice Age @Jamie_Woodward, 5 February 2017

The Předmostí mammoth is 22,000 years old. It was retrieved from the loess deposits of Moravia in 1895 #IceAgeArt: image via The Ice Age @Jamie_Woodward, 5 December 2016

A delightful Great Auk in Cosquer Cave on the French Mediterranean - painted in the last glacial period about 21,000 years ago #IceAgeArt: image via The Ice Age @Jamie_Woodward, 5 February 2017

#IceAgeArt: The beautiful #mammoth from Arcy-sur-Cure, Burgundy: image via The Ice Age @Jamie_ Woodward, 24 November 2014

Ice age cave art reveals mystery hybrid species that gave rise to modern European bison #IceAgeArt: image via The Ice Age @Jamie_Woodward, 23 October 2016

A bear or a lion? This mammoth ivory carving from Vogelherd Cave in SW Germany was crafted 40,000 years ago in the last glacial #IceAgeArt: image via The Ice Age @Jamie_Woodward, 5 February 2017

The panel of four #IceAge horses in Chauvet Cave - skillfully drawn in charcoal ~30,000 years ago #IceAgeArt #France: image via The Ice Age @Jamie_Woodward, 25 January 2017

#IceAgeArt in SW France: Fighting bull #mammoths drawn on the wall of Rouffignac Cave: image via The Ice Age @Jamie_Woodward, 21 December 2014

Beautiful reindeer engraving in the Cave of Altxerri in northern Spain. Can you see the fox on its neck?#IceAgeArt: image via The Ice Age @Jamie_Woodward, 3 February 2015

Mammoth tusk - human hands - a walking bison - extraordinary #IceAgeArt - the Zaraysk bison 20,000 years old: image via The Ice Age @Jamie_Woodward, 19 December 2014

#IceAgeArt Two small deer carved on a reindeer bone discovered in 1852 in the Cave of Chaffaud, western France: image via The Ice Age @Jamie_Woodward, 12 December 2014

A miniature masterpiece - #mammoth ivory horse from the Grotte des Espélugues, Lourdes #IceAgeArt: image via The Ice Age @Jamie_Woodward, 2 January 2015

The galleries of Rouffignac Cave in the Dordogne were decorated with c. 150 mammoths towards the end of the last glacial period #IceAgeArt: image via The Ice Age @Jamie_Woodward, 24 January 2017

Detail from the panel of sixteen lions at Chauvet Cave created in the last glacial period ~30,000 years ago #IceAgeArt: image via The Ice Age @Jamie_Woodward, 22 January 2017

Dame à la Capuche (Lady with the Hood) - one of the earliest images of the human face sculpted in mammoth ivory 25,000 years ago #IceAgeArt: image via The Ice Age @Jamie_Woodward, 22 January 2017

#IceAge games? Four simple human figures carved from woolly mammoth toe bones ~25,000 years ago in the eastern Czech Republic #IceAgeArt: image via The Ice Age @Jamie_Woodward, 21 January 2017

Horses and the head of a bull at #Lascaux in 1947 when @TIME magazine took the first good photographs of this remarkable site #IceAgeArt: image via The Ice Age @Jamie_Woodward, 12 January 2017

Wonderful detail of a cave bear head in the Alcove of the Lions at Chauvet. This image was created about 30,000 years ago #IceAgeArt: image via The Ice Age @Jamie_Woodward, 9 January 2017

#IceAgeReindeer - the panel of swimming deer at Lascaux dating to the Magdalenian - about 17,500 years ago #IceAgeArt: image via The Ice Age @Jamie_Woodward, 21 December 2016

A woolly rhinoceros, a bison, and a hunter lying alongside a broken spear? The only human figure so far recognised at Lascaux #IceAgeArt: image via The Ice Age @Jamie_Woodward, 22 November 2016

The Licking Bison of La Madeleine rockshelter was very carefully observed and exquisitely crafted in last glacial Dordogne #IceAgeArt: image via The Ice Age @Jamie_Woodward, 8 November 2016

#IceAgeArt appreciation - a beautiful miniature mammoth carved in ivory and decorated with crosses 35,000 years ago in southern Germany: image via The Ice Age @Jamie_Woodward, 8 November 2016

This tiny yet beautifully proportioned feline head was sculpted in marl in the last glacial at Kostienki in Russia #NationalCatDay#IceAge: image via The Ice Age @Jamie_Woodward, 29 October 2016

Only a very lucky few get to enter the remarkable Chauvet Cave #IceAgeArt: image via The Ice Age @Jamie_Woodward, 29 October 2016

#OnThisDay in 1940 Upper Palaeolithic cave paintings are discovered at Lascaux in the Dordogne #IceAgeArt #UNESCO: image via The Ice Age @Jamie_Woodward, 23 October 2016

And then there were three - a delightful frieze of woolly rhinos in Rouffignac Cave in southwest France #IceAgeArt: image via The Ice Age @Jamie_Woodward, 11 September 2016

Very exciting! Upper Palaeolithic figurine discovered in French cave#IceAgeArt: image via The Ice Age @Jamie_Woodward, 1 August 2016

#IceAgeArt Ibex beautifully carved in relief on a baton of antler from Grotte Duruthy in SW France #Magdalenian: image via The Ice Age @Jamie_Woodward, 29 January 2015

The elegant sculpted frieze of horses at La Chaire à Calvin, SW France #IceAgeArt: image via The Ice Age @Jamie_Woodward, 29 January 2015

In the foothills of the Pyrenees, at the very end of the last glacial, humans painted these pebbles at the Grotte du Mas d'Azil #IceAgeArt: image via The Ice Age @Jamie_Woodward, 11 September 2016

The remarkable clay bison reliefs of the Tuc d’Audoubert in SW France - Magdalenian c. 16,000-12,000 BP #IceAgeArt: image via The Ice Age @Jamie_Woodward, 23 June 2015

We'll Leave a Light On in the Cave for You

Drawing of the Incandescent Light Bulb (page 2 of 2): Thomas Edison, 27 January 1880 (Records of the Patent and Trademark Office, US National Archives)

Without it, what savage unsocial nights
Our ancestors must have spent! All those deadly
Winter nocturnes in caves and unillumined icy
Fastnesses: they must have laid around and
Grumbled at one another in the dark like the blind,
Fumbling each other's features for the wrinkle of a smile.
What tedious repartee must have passed! Perhaps
This accounts for the dullness of much archaic
Poetry, whose somber cast is notorious and must
Have derived from the traditions of those
Long unlanterned nights. Jokes came in with candles.
How did they see to pick up a pin, if they
Had any? How did they get dinner down? Think of
The mélange of chance carving that must have
Ensanguined dining after dusk! Lights out,
Not even love's what it's cracked up to be.
The senses absolutely give and take
Reciprocally. One wants to know whether that's
An elbow, a knee, or the night table
Before one returns the favor of a friendly nudge.
Wasn't it by the midnight taper all writers once digested
Their meditations? By that same light we ought
To approach them, if we ever expect to catch
The tiger-moth of inspiration that dances
In the word incandescent.

Drawing of the Incandescent Light Bulb (page 1 of 2): Thomas Edison, 27 January 1880 (Records of the Patent and Trademark Office, US National Archives)