Science desk
< April 11	<< Mar \| April \| May >>	April 13 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Science Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is a transcluded archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

April 12

Interpreting the Archeology of the Cueva de las Manos Site

What does this source, Advances in the Archaeology of the Pampa and Patagonia, say about the Cueva de las Manos site? More specifically, what is the layman's interpretation of the archeological information presented on the site? I'm looking to distill any of the information on Cueva de las Manos in the article into a non-technical form that is more approachable for a general audience. Thank you in advance! Tyrone Madera (talk) 02:16, 12 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I do not see material in this article that is readily adoptable to being translated into layman's terms beyond what we already have. It is a lengthy review article (81 pages), mostly rather technical and involved with dating, based on geological and archaeological findings, as presented in the (in 1987) more recent literature. This is put in a larger context of classifying cultural artifacts according to cultural-tradition phases (with such names as Magellan I, II, III, IV and V, Toldense, Casapedrense, Patagoniense). A great deal of the many mentions of Cueva de las Manos are in various tables; in most other cases, they are in an enumeration, as in, for example, "The apparent persistence of the Toldense phase until the third or second millennium B.C. at Cueva de las Manos, Cueva del Arroyo Feo, Cárdenas, and Cerro Casa de Piedra was mentioned earlier." Gradin is called "the principal authority on indigenous Pampean-Patagonian art", with respect to the Cueva de las Manos specifically referring to Gradin et al. (1977, 1981). The 1977 publication is referenced in our article, while the 1981 publication is: Gradin, C. J., Aschero, C. A., and Aguerre, A. M. (1981). Arqueología del área Rio Pinturas (provincia de Santa Cruz). Relaciones de la Sociedad Argentina de Antropología 13: 183–227. --Lambiam 08:48, 12 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Lambiam, Thank you! Yeah, I didn't know exactly what to make of the data, but I guess interpretation would qualify as OR. Thank you for reading this long, extremely detailed article. I'm glad that someone with more scientific experience than I was able to have a go with it :) Tyrone Madera (talk) 15:52, 12 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. Are you able to access doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199271016.013.0031 and doi:10.1080/20555563.2020.1757859 to see if either has info on Cueva de las Manos as well? Thanks again! Tyrone Madera (talk) 17:49, 12 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The former publication, a book, does not mention the site in the running text but contains a brief description in an appendix with information on sites:

Cueva de las Manos (Argentina)

This is perhaps the best-known site in the country, because of its evocative zoomorphic, anthromorphic, and geometric rock-art panels. It is located in the canyon of the Pinturas River in the north-eastern section of the province of Santa Cruz. The lowest levels have been dated to 9320 ± 90 bp and contain scrapers, arrowheads, nuclei, and other lithic tools. Chert is the predominant material used for this industry, although basalt and chalcedony, and small amounts of obsidian, are also present. The faunal assemblage includes Lama guanicoe, foxes, felines, and fish.

(I wouldn't consider the location to be in the north-eastern section, being more to the west, but this is what the text says.)

The latter publication, a journal article, mentions the site three times: in the caption of an illustration of stemless projectile points (SPPs) in central-western Santa Cruz province, showing a siliceous SPP from Cueva de las Manos; in the caption of a map of site locations; and in a table of earliest stratigraphic radiocarbon dates for SPP chronology, giving 9320 ± 90 ¹⁴C yr BP for Cueva de las Manos. (I wouldn't consider the location of Cueva de las Manos to be in central-western Santa Cruz province, being more to the north than to the middle, but this is what the text says.) --Lambiam 11:38, 13 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Lambiam, Thank you so much! I haven't been able to access the texts, so your summaries mean a lot to me. Tyrone Madera (talk) 15:30, 13 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Do you have a page number or location I could use in a citation for "the best-known site in the country"? Tyrone Madera (talk) 15:53, 13 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Page 986. Just to be sure, this is the printed hardcover edition, ISBN 978-0-19-927101-6. There are, however, also pdf's carrying the same ISBN where this text appears on page 695. I have not examined the source of the discrepancy. --Lambiam 20:01, 13 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Relative speed of healing

After an anonymous cat brought in an anonymous mouse, an anonymous person managed to rescue the mouse and set it back outside. That made me wonder: Smaller animals have smaller bodies and, if they are injured, typically injuries are, in absolute terms, small. I've had cuts in my finger that would amputate legs from a mouse, and I've left enough skin on mountain-bike trails to cover several mice. Small animals also typically shorter lifetimes. So I wonder: How fast do animals of different size heal? Is there a constant "healing speed"? Will it always take the same time to heal a broken leg, or is the time proportional to the cross section of a broken leg? Or does the different speed of different metabolisms mean that injuries can heal at very different absolute and relative speeds? In case you wonder: In the concrete case, both the culprit and the victim seem to have escaped serious harm. I'm less certain about the anonymous person, but (s)he will recover ;-). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 07:53, 12 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I was more wondering about the anonymous cat. After all, everyone knows that a cat must have three different names. --184.147.181.129 (talk) 08:01, 12 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Probably directly correlated to the width of the wound, with some contribution from the depth, and very little from the length. This is just my guess, given that wound healing is accomplished by cells dividing, crawling around and rebuilding basement membranes with collagen that they have to make. These processes are governed by the rate that cytoskeletal proteins can be assembled and disassembled. Also, mammalian cells are all roughly the same size, so there will be no advantage or disadvantage for a small or large organism. But I could be totally wrong... Abductive (reasoning) 09:03, 12 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]