Undistinguisable from modern pick axe marks, and with a similar angle and pressure than an human worker would apply. A much stronger animal wouldn't make such uniform and shallow marks in clay.
Not all the marks in a prehistoric cave are necessarily prehistoric.
> Undistinguisable from modern pick axe marks, and with a similar angle and pressure than an human worker would apply. A much stronger animal wouldn't make such uniform and shallow marks in clay.
What a load of B.S.
Have you ever done any significant manual excavation with a pickaxe and shovel?
No human is going to be leaving such long and deep scars in clay with a pickaxe. The progress is much slower for mere humans, clay is an awful material to dig through.
For a massive clawed animal however clay would not be such a challenge to leave such long uniform scars. Sure the pattern resembles what one might imagine a pickaxe leaving, but humans lack the force to drive a pickaxe in that fashion through clay.
> No human is going to be leaving such long and deep scars in clay with a pickaxe
> clay is an awful material to dig through.
> humans lack the force to drive a pickaxe in that fashion through clay.
All wrong. Digging in granite would be "awful". Digging in clay... Meh. I do it all the time. I have meet a lot of humans able to dig a hole into clay in fact, so I'm not the only one.
If you find shovels "intimidating" maybe you should try it more. Even small children are able to play with it.
They don't look like pickaxe marks at all to me. They aren't as uniform or straight, they aren't all going in the same direction and they don't have uniform depths.
The marks in the first photo are done by a stone chisel (or something similar), not the kind of marks that a pick axe would make normally. Very different tools with different purposes.
Undistinguisable from modern pick axe marks, and with a similar angle and pressure than an human worker would apply. A much stronger animal wouldn't make such uniform and shallow marks in clay.
Not all the marks in a prehistoric cave are necessarily prehistoric.