Ancient form of sign language; NAD supports bill requiring captioned videos on planes
Ancient form of sign language
I read an interesting article on DiscoverMagazine.com about cave paintings that may show an ancient form of sign language.
The article explained that tens of thousands of years ago, people held their hands against cave walls in modern-day Europe and blew a spray of paint on them to create stencils of their hands. Some of the stencils showed shortened or missing fingers and researchers previously thought the hands were mutilated, maybe due to frostbite or disease or ritual purposes. But other experts said the artists may have been folding their fingers to make hand signs.
The articles said two linguists from the IKER lab in France have analyzed 92 hand stencils at the Gargas Cave in France and found that they correspond to hand positions that would be easy to make one-handed in the air. This means there aren’t stencils that show an “impossible” hand configuration, such as the index finger being bent at the top joint. The researchers are now looking at other caves in Europe with hand stencils and said they are finding the same pattern, giving weight to the hypothesis that these represent a sort of sign language. The signs could have been used for hunting purposes by people who wanted to be silent and not alert animals.
The stencils at Gargas Cave are dated to about 30,000 to 35,000 years ago, which is a few thousand years after modern humans replaced Neanderthals in the region.
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NAD supports bill requiring captioned videos on planes
The NAD posted a video and web page encouraging people to take action to contact their representatives and senators to support a bill that would require captioned videos on planes and accessible PA announcements. The bill is called the Air Carrier Access Amendments Act (ACAAA).
The NAD said it is disappointing that the U.S. Department of Transportation and airlines have not made improvements in decades. They said the ACAAA would require the DOT to develop rules that will require 100% captioned videos on planes and to require accessible PA announcements. For more information on the bill and for letter templates that you can use to contact your representatives, I’ve included a link to NAD’s website in the transcript.
Cave stencils:
https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/cave-paintings-may-depict-ice-age-sign-language
NAD: