'Never ending' cave network found beneath Borneo jungle

Here is news (well, news to me - the project of mapping the caves goes back 30 years) of a cave network found beneath the jungles of Borneo.

What I found most fascinating about this is the ancient human handprints found on the walls of the caves. A reminder that mankind has always found a way to leave his mark:

www.dailymail.co.uk...

These incredible images show British scientists on an expedition to map a 'never-ending' cave network in a project that dates back more than 30 years.
The twisting network of caverns underneath Gunung Mulu National Park, in Sarawak, Borneo, contains the largest cave chamber in the world, the largest cave by volume and what is believed to be the largest cave passage.
Scientists carry out bi-annual visits into several caves and have so far mapped out an incredible 186 miles of the underground network.

There are more picture in the article which I haven't reproduced. They're best seen at full size

[edit on 8-9-2010 by berenike]

I love stories like this. I googled Borneo caves, and found this fascinating article from NatGeo. The cave explorers found some other interesting art besides the hands, and this is absolutely fascinating!

news.nationalgeographic.com...

"The explorer expressed special enthusiasm for a 5-by-4-foot (1.5-by-1.2-meter) bee's-nest image, which the team revisited near a site known as Gua Tewet.

"This rock art is a representation of a huge bee nest, plus what I call a bee tree, a kind of tree with eight wild bee's nests under the branches of the tree," Fage said. "That's unique in the world."

reply to post by hotbakedtater


Thanks - I was just looking for related articles myself. Here's another one from National Geographic:

ngm.nationalgeographic.com...

There's a wonderful picture of the cave art - and there's a zoom option.

Little bit more info here:

www.archaeology.org...


Loads of info here, with pictures and maps:

www-personal.une.edu.au...




More pictures & info:

www.pbase.com...


Langs cave - photo from Ben Johnston (see link immediately above):




Deer Cave - photo from Ben Johnston:

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/dcf4fb1cdacc.jpg[/atsimg]




[edit on 8-9-2010 by berenike]

Awesome! Thank you. I find this very fascinating, and wonder how often humans are forced into the caves to continue our life on this planet.

am I the only one thats not suprised? watch some history channel you computer only freaks. you think the main stream calls everyone a "neanderthal" but you dont keep up on current events bc you are anti-TV.

pathetic.

and you know who you are

reply to post by Electric Crown


You might be right - we troglodytes don't watch much tv. We'll just leave it for the
homo (notso) sapiens

Have a picture of the beautiful Deer Cave as a welcome to ATS:
www.adventures.com.sg...

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/82eec58a0fcd.jpg[/atsimg]

reply to post by berenike

Wow, these are cool pictures. Would love to go there and see these caves.
Interesting history.



reply to post by Electric Crown

Hey skippy, Appreciating the pictures and the links doesn't make anyone pathetic,
well - except maybe those who find something to be negative about in everything...

something about that first picture of Deer Cave (above) totally reminded me of Lord of the Rings.

What a great image! I'm going to try to find a higher-resolution so I can have new desktop image :-)

Great thread - thanks for sharing

reply to post by TXRabbit

Originally posted by berenike

Originally posted by TXRabbit
something about that first picture of Deer Cave (above) totally reminded me of Lord of the Rings.

You mean this guy looks like Gollum???

Those hands on the wall look huge. The present people in that area do not have the size of that hand.

What? No La Chupacabra? Darn.

reply to post by berenike


Well all caves are never ending technically. Egress and all that. But this is certainly interesting.

Just makes me wonder though. 50,000 years and not one cavern-based empire? I mean maybe those natives out west can count but they didn't exactly use caves, they made indentations into the wall of a cliff or mountain.

Seriously though. 50,000 years of humanity and nobody got the great idea of perfect isolationism in a cave? They've had fans for a while too and I'm pretty sure it would be kind of simple to get this stuff working. Sad.

Following one of the picture links, I was able to look at the handprints closely. SOME of the prints have hands....not shaped as ours are shaped now.....

Originally posted by hotbakedtater
Following one of the picture links, I was able to look at the handprints closely. SOME of the prints have hands....not shaped as ours are shaped now.....

Maybe the hand prints were drawn around and painted in, making them bigger?
Just a thought

Originally posted by 2theC
reply to post by TXRabbit

 

Originally posted by berenike

Originally posted by TXRabbit
something about that first picture of Deer Cave (above) totally reminded me of Lord of the Rings.

You mean this guy looks like Gollum???

edit on 8-9-2010 by 2theC because: sorry wrong picture! but still....

I LOL'd.
Definitely some LOTR stuff right here.

On a more serious side note though, this is actually really cool.
I noticed a comment someone posted about wondering how often humanity has been forced underground to continue life... Awesome thoughts, this thread makes me wonder too. (and wow, what would life be like underground? O_o')

But hey,
these caves look absolutely beautiful!
The world wouldn't have to be ending for me to go live in them.

reply to post by wavemaker


These aren't necessarily done with just ink on the hand and a quick press.

Notice that the entirety of the center (where the palm would be raised) is filled in.

It's most likely that the individuals who left their mark used their original hand print as an outline and just "painted" over it.

edit to add:

notice the very bottom hand print, the grooves from raised areas are still there, unpainted. The hand print is also much smaller than those surrounding it, leading me to believe my initial hypothesis is correct.

holy crap is that a hidden Navy submarine in that one picture....lulz where are the star people hiding all my gold.

I sure would love to be one of the scientist on this job. Incredible pics. There's so much still left to discover on the earth and I wish it were possible to explore the whole planet without having to worry about anything but that. Then I would really be living life to the fullest.

Here is a short article about the bat observatory at the Mulu Caves. It includes a few short videos of the swarms of bats leaving the Deer Cave at dusk:

blog.malaysia-asia.my...

.........

I saw a documentary about the bats some time ago. The floor of the cave is covered in bat droppings - some feet thick if memory serves correctly.

Occasionally a bat would fall having lost it's place amongst all the others as they clung to the ceiling. It was likely to land on its back and become stuck in all the mess, unable to free itself.

A few times in my life, when things have been tough, I've thought of those little bats. So long as I'm not flat on my back, stuck in a heap of droppings, starving and at the mercy of tiny predators who could eat me alive, I figure I'm not too badly off

Depending on what you read there are 2 - 3 million of between 12 and 27 species of bats in the cave.

.............

Here is a related article:
www.travelpod.com...

Here are naked bats being groomed by insects (picture taken from article):

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/f0efc8045296.jpg[/atsimg]

Tracing caves in the future will be done from the surface using special equipment. The underground caves can be seen from any angle and from pretty good distances when using the equipment. Nice thread.