Spelunking For Answers Part 1

Recently, I have become entranced with prehistoric art, and specifically the cave paintings found in Europe (although similar prehistoric artwork was found all over the world.) These artworks represent the origin of mankind, as well as the origin of art, and possibly the start of mythology, religion or naturalism. We'll never be sure to what the exact meanings are behind the paintings, but these could be the most important works of art to date. For some reason, I never grasped the importance and I'll try to breakdown my own ignorance here.

Photo: Banksy

Myth #1: There is a predominant notion that prehistoric art is simple and crude; the earlier the artwork, the less refined the technique. How would our paleolithic ancestors have developed painting techniques, beyond the stick figure, before inventing lightbulbs or refrigerators? I always believed that hunter-gatherers were so preoccupied with their food sources that there would be no time for fine art. Of course, I gathered most of my information from growing up watching the Flintstones and had never paid too much attention to the idea of cave drawings. Recently, I've become fascinated with the findings at the Cave of Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc in southern France, discovered only in 1994. Like most mysteries, once you stumble across it, the ideas take hold and it is impossible to let go. The images that were found: naturalistic paintings of horses, bison, bears, cave lions, wooly mammoths and bears continue to dance in one's head, reverberating deep in the ancestral heart. The humans depicted are often crudely depicted, which in contrast to the beautifully rendered animals tells us more about their values. Note: that no human conflict is ever captured on these walls.) In Judith Thurman's fascinating 2008 article in The New Yorker about the cave, she writes how in these halls the artists invented perspective, animation, scaffolding to reach high places, stenciling, pointillism, powdered colors, brushes, stumping cloths, and blowing pigments with the mouth. The techniques are astonishing, and anything but "primitive". These marks upon the walls are not just the origins of art, but are in fact astonishing works of art in and of themselves.