The Trainwreck Labs Newsletter
Coming to your inbox every Monday with a brand new fun-fact and all the answers to Trainwreck Labs games from the past week.
This week, we have…
A fun fact inspired by a recent Globle answer
Trivia!
Answers to last week's games
Reader survey
Zimbabwe rocks! A look at ancient rock art
The dimensional portals in Matobo cave paintings do give a tiny bit of credence to the Ancient Aliens theory, but not much. Image generated by DALL-E.
One of the coolest relics of early human life is rock art, which can take many forms such as drawings or paintings (pictographs), carvings (petroglyphs), and patterned rock arrangements. Zimbabwe (Globle’s October 15th answer) claims the highest concentration of rock art paintings in southern Africa. In Matobo Hills National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, you can find over 300,000 paintings, dating back up to 20,000 years. Most paintings were drawn by the San, or Bushmen. The paintings include dramatic Stone Age hunts, and wildlife such as antelope, giraffe, and elephants. Males were depicted more frequently than females, often carrying bows, arrows or other objects. Materials used for painting included plant extracts, egg shells, and blood. These paintings used a wide range of colours, including reds, purples, oranges, browns and yellows, applied with brushes made from feathers, porcupine quills, or using fingers. The paintings in Matobo Hills are usually found in rock shelters and associated with archaeological remains, showing human occupation of the area since the Early Stone Age.
The animals, tools, and activities depicted in rock art can shed light on our ancestors’ daily life, though the images depicted are often symbolic rather than representative. Some artists even incorporated granite cracks into their scenes, which were seen as a portal for animals and people to enter a spiritual dimension. For the Mwari religion, the Matobo rocks are seen as the seat of ancestral spirits, and sacred shrines in the hills are places where contact can be made with the spiritual world. Rock art has played a significant role in making the landscape a sacred space, contributing to the spirituality of hunter-gatherers that made it, and speaking to their relationship with the land they lived on.
Learn more
Trivia!
The world’s oldest known cave painting is in Sulawesi, Indonesia (51 200 years old). What is it a depiction of?
Answers to last week's games
Monday, October 14 to Sunday, October 20.
Globle
Oct 14 Pakistan
Oct 15 Zimbabwe
Oct 16 Guyana
Oct 17 Vatican City
Oct 18 Luxembourg
Oct 19 Venezuela
Oct 20 United States of America
Oct 21 Play now!
Globle: Capitals
Oct 14 Mexico City
Oct 15 Brussels
Oct 16 Gaborone
Oct 17 Abuja
Oct 18 Phnom Penh
Oct 19 Bratislava
Oct 20 Khartoum
Oct 21 Play now!
Chronogram
#562 Igor Stravinsky
#563 Douglas MacArthur
#564 Ada Lovelace
#565 P. T. Barnum
#566 Eleanor Roosevelt
#567 Giordano Bruno
#568 Auguste Rodin
#569 Play now!
Fictogram
#329 Azula
#330 John Wick
#331 Hagar the Horrible
#332 Edward Elric
#333 Mario
#334 Bigger Thomas
#335 Josie McCoy
#336 Play now!
Metazooa
#441 wolf
#442 tardigrade
#443 blue jay
#444 sugar glider
#445 skunk
#446 brown bear
#447 tiger prawn
#448 Play now!
Metaflora
#380 jackfruit
#381 rosemary
#382 chestnut
#383 durian
#384 tobacco
#385 geranium
#386 ginger
#387 Play now!
Linxicon
The following are the shortest paths from last week:
#245 psychological -> communication -> mail -> address
#246 virtue -> optimism -> optimistic -> probable -> likely
#247 motor -> driver -> interpreter -> interpret -> interpretation
#248 yield -> farm -> farmhouse -> resident
#249 ethics -> organs -> belly -> round
#250 surely -> surefire -> fire -> electricity -> battery
#251 pink -> color -> sight -> reach
#252 Play now!
That’s all for this week. Thanks for reading!
Before you go…
Need a hint, and can’t wait for next week’s newsletter? Join the Trainwreck Labs Discord server!
