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CAVE

Two charged after mass poisoning at Oslo bunker rave

Two people have been charged after an illegal rave party in an Oslo bunker landed 27 people in hospital with carbon monoxide poisoning, police said Monday.

Published: 1 September 2020 08:41 CEST
Two charged after mass poisoning at Oslo bunker rave
Illustration photo: Ben Garratt on Unsplash

Up to 200 people, most of them aged between 20 and 30, attended the weekend party in an abandoned bunker in central Oslo, authorities said.

Private gatherings of more than 20 people are currently prohibited in Norway because of the new coronavirus pandemic, while public gatherings are limited to 200 people under strict conditions.

Police discovered the illegal rave when a patrol came across a group of distraught youths late Saturday in a central Oslo neighbourhood.

Officers then found several people unconscious in a former public safety bunker.

A total of 27 people, including two police officers who entered the site, were hospitalised. Five were in serious condition but out of danger.

They were all believed to have suffered from carbon monoxide poisoning caused by portable generators.

Five were released from hospital on Sunday, and several others were due to be released Monday.

Three remained under observation or in intensive care, the Oslo hospital said.

Police said they had an opened an investigation.

“Two people have been charged in this case, for trespassing and unauthorised use of the bunker,” a statement said.

“Police will examine whether more people will need to be charged in this case or if the charges need to be widened,” it added.

No arrests have been announced at this stage.

According to emergency services, the consequences could have been catastrophic. Invisible and odourless, carbon monoxide can be deadly in high doses.

READ ALSO: Oslo ravers hospitalised in bunker poisoning accident

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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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