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Oslo ravers hospitalised in bunker poisoning accident

Seven people were rushed unconscious to hospital in Oslo on Saturday night after a rave party in a bunker led to widespread carbon monoxide poisoning.

Published: 30 August 2020 13:12 CEST
Oslo ravers hospitalised in bunker poisoning accident
An ambulance outside Akerhus hospital. Photo: jamieca/Wikimedia Commons
A further 13 people were treated, with five of those affected judged by doctors to be in a critical condition. 
 
More than 200 people had gathered in the cave to dance to the sound system, Oslo police wrote on Twitter, with neither the participants nor organisers realising that using a diesel generator in a confined space was so dangerous. 
 
 
“It was a rave party in honour of someone who had a birthday,” Arve Røtterud from the Oslo police told the VG newspaper. “Carbon monoxide poisoning should be taken seriously, and several there were under the influence of drugs when they left.” 
 
 
According to Ronny Andersen, from the fire services, the party-goers, who were between 20 and 30 years old, had brought in several portable generation units, with the oxygen level in the cave as low as 16 percent when the emergency services arrived. 
 
“They started these up to generate power for the music, this created carbon monoxide and removed the oxygen, and that is why there was such a poor breathing atmosphere in there.” 
 
Anders Bayer, press officer at Oslo University Hospital, said that it was lucky fewer had not been affected. 
 
“What is serious about carbon monoxide poisoning is that you do not notice it, and then can become unconscious and die in a relatively short time.” 
 
Two of the 25 patients were police officers who entered the cave to help evacuate the partygoers. 
 
According to Røtterud, police discovered the accident when a car was flagged down by one of those affected.  
 
The cave is approximately 70 meters deep and shaped like an 'E', Andersen said, and was built as an air raid bunker. 
 

ARCHAEOLOGY

Study confirms ancient cave art in southern Spain was created by Neanderthals

Neanderthals, long perceived to have been unsophisticated and brutish, really did paint stalagmites in a Spanish cave more than 60,000 years ago, according to a study published on Monday.

Published: 3 August 2021 09:13 CEST
Study confirms ancient cave art in southern Spain was created by Neanderthals
Photo: Joao Zilhao/ICREA/AFP

The issue had roiled the paleoarchaeology community ever since the publication of a 2018 paper attributing red ocher pigment found on the stalagmitic dome of Cueva de Ardales (Malaga province) to our extinct “cousin” species.

The dating suggested the art was at least 64,800 years old, made at a time when modern humans did not inhabit the continent.

But the finding was contentious, and “a scientific article said that perhaps these pigments were a natural thing,” a result of iron oxide flow, Francesco d’Errico, co-author of a new paper in the journal PNAS told AFP.

A new analysis revealed the composition and placement of the pigments were not consistent with natural processes — instead, the pigments were applied through splattering and blowing.

(Photo by JORGE GUERRERO / AFP)

What’s more, their texture did not match natural samples taken from the caves, suggesting the pigments came from an external source.

More detailed dating showed that the pigments were applied at different points in time, separated by more than ten thousand years.This “supports the hypothesis that the Neanderthals came on several occasions, over several thousand years, to mark the cave with pigments,” said d’Errico, of the University of Bordeaux.

It is difficult to compare the Neanderthal “art” to wall paintings made by prehistoric modern humans, such as those found in the Chauvet-Pont d’Arc cave of France, more 30,000 years old.

But the new finding adds to increasing evidence that Neanderthals, whose lineage went extinct around 40,000 years ago, were not the boorish relatives of Homo sapiens they were long portrayed to be.

The cave-paintings found in three caves in Spain, one of them in Ardales, are throught to have been created between 43,000 and 65,000 years ago, 20,000 years before modern humans arrived in Europe. (Photo by JORGE GUERRERO / AFP)

The team wrote that the pigments are not “art” in the narrow sense of the word “but rather the result of graphic behaviors intent on perpetuating the symbolic significance of a space.”

The cave formations “played a fundamental role in the symbolic systems of some Neanderthal communities,” though what those symbols meant remains a mystery for now.

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