If you've not watched the Herzog classic "Cave of Forgotten Dreams" - I highly highly recommend it - the paintings are amazing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_of_Forgotten_Dreams
I was recently remembering my son's obsession with trains, buses and dustbin lorries when he was 2 to 5 - a friend tried to explain it as akin the the passion people would have felt for mega-fauna of the past. Did children of the cave-ages obsess over mammoths in the way he did over our local bus?
I could imagine the coals, not quite so much flame any more, soft and still in the windless depths, casting a warm glow for eyes to adjust in sanctity, so that the hands could find the lines in the mind and put them out on the wall.
Just a fantastic moment in time, echoing on throughout history.
Especially if you have a chance to see it in 3D and/or on a big screen. The paintings incorporate the curves and contours of the cave walls to represent things like the bulging of muscles or even to simulate movement and that's difficult to convey in 2D. They did a remaster and IMAX re-release earlier this year and seeing it that way makes the images even more magical.
Its just such a humbling thing, to look at a piece of art that is 10's of thousands of years old, and realize that a human was once there, making it, just so that some day, a human would be there, looking at it.
What it would be to have a way to talk to these old humans and let them know just how inspiring their work turned out to be...
Would that we could have the same impact on humans a thousand years from now, ten thousand years from now. Hello, Future Human.
Coincidentally, last week the local public television station was replaying a very old program of Bill Moyers interviewing Joseph Campbell, who died in the late 80s and was known for studies of mythology. He had visited Lascaux, and believed that it was used for coming of age ceremonies:
JOSEPH CAMPBELL: The message of the cave is of a relationship of time to eternal powers that is somehow to be experienced in that place. Now, I tell you, when you’re down in those caves, it’s a strange transformation of consciousness you have. You feel this is the womb, this is the place from which life comes, and that world up there in the sun with all those … that’s a secondary world: this is primary. I mean, this just overcomes you. ...
Now, what were these caves used for? The speculations that are most common of scholars interested in this, is that they had to do with the initiation of boys into the hunt. You go in there, it’s dangerous, it’s very dangerous. It’s completely dark. It’s cold and dank. You’re banging your head on projections all the time, and it was a place of fear. And the boys were to overcome all that, and go into the womb of the earth. And the shaman, or whoever it was that would be helping you through, would not be making it easy.
BILL MOYERS: And then there was a release, once you got into that vast, torchlit chamber down there. What was the tribe, what was the tradition trying to say to the boy?
JOSEPH CAMPBELL: That is the womb land from which all the animals come.
BILL MOYERS: I see.
JOSEPH CAMPBELL: And the rituals down there have to do with the generation of a situation that will be propitious for the hunt. And the boys were to learn not only to hunt, but how to respect the animals and what rituals to perform, and how in their own lives no longer to be little boys but to be men. Because those hunts were very, very dangerous hunts, believe me, and these are the Original men’s rile sanctuaries, when: the boys became no longer their mothers’ sons, but their fathers’ sons.
https://billmoyers.com/content/ep-3-joseph-campbell-and-the-...
Beowulf and Episode IV – A New Hope may not have much direct bearing on any given person's pubescent path, aside from media consumption, but within it: much.
It's genuinely a hard and interesting question. We only get these little scraps of history that far back, there's so much time missing from our view.
"The Sun is a god who is jealous of his sister, the Moon, and once tried to get busy with a really pretty human, but her husband found out and..."
"Electrons are fundamental particles composed of quarks that..."
Having the answer is actually more important than verifing the answer, in most cases. It's part of why our advancement is slower than it could be.
It makes me wonder how much palaeolithic art has been lost because it wasn't done inside a cave.
So this reproduction you're talking about, it's the "Neocueva" from Museo Nacional y Centro de Investigación de Altamira I suppose? I guess it'll serve as a better than nothing, but similar to you, I'm really skeptical it'd be the same for me. Just being aware it's a reproduction I feel like kind of defeats the purpose. I want to feel the spirits of my ancestors when I'm there.
Seems there are more caves with paintings though, another one is Cueva de El Castillo at Monte Castillo, Puente Viesgo, Cantabria. Anyone here from HN that visited those caves before and could share their experience?
It's hard to find an original one that hasn't already gone through this cycle unfortunately. Maybe ones with booked tours at invitation only fare better?
Yeah, makes sense that'd eventually damage it. Also people moving around pushing the air around. The fact that time stood still in the places is probably the reason they're so well preserved in the first place.
Wonder if you could like glass them in or something, to really isolate them? Feels kind of sad knowing I'd damage the drawings by visiting them in person, but also really want to see them.
Pardon me, but we are talking about homo sapiens here? Those people would be not different then you and me. If you would raise one of their child's today it would just blend in. They were/are the same species then you and me... I just want to say please don't ride that all cavemen were stupid apes train. That boot sailed a long time ago regarding to modern science.
If Rembrandt, Raphael or Warhol were born back then they wouldn't have had the cultural milieu to create the same things.
Or something similar. Compare it with his style when he got older. It's related.
We know that good nutrition during childhood has a significant impact on IQ, as does avoiding parasite infections. Those ancients were the same species as us, but it is also known that that they likely suffered from food precarity at times and endemic infections, so the belief they had their shit less together than many modern populations is reasonable.
Please have a look at how indigenous tribes live and cure the sick to get a feeling what it would have might be back 50k+ years.
What I got during Museum visits and talking with people working in academics those people had a pretty good living. Well feed and even major injuries were treated well.
So please come on.
This is contradicted by any and all documentation on not only "indigenous tribes", but even developed countries until the age of antibiotics. Injuries were much riskier in the past than now, and no idyllic Shangri-La you fantasize about had any magic to avoid that. The food precarity of hunter-gatherer lifestyles is why so many societies adopted agriculture. Plus, infant mortality was through the roof, and risk to also mothers was high. I think you took from "Museum visits and talking with people working in academics [sic]" a misunderstanding that you wanted to hear.
That our species survived down the millennia does not mean they had maximized health, just as we today have not maximized health. But we have made greater strides in childhood IQ-relevant areas.
Translated from German:
> For a long time, scientists assumed that the first artworks in human history originated in Europe around 40,000 years ago. Recently, however, cave paintings discovered on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi have challenged this assumption. Thanks to a new dating method, it has been revealed: one of the rock paintings is at least 67,800 years old.
The documentary is available in German and French only. Subtitles are available only in the aforementioned languages too. I used AI to make high-quality English subtitles from the official ones.