All of you have seen cave art, right? Either sketches or photos in books or online. If you're really lucky, maybe you've been in a cave yourself with a flashlight or something. But is it possible that the way we look at cave art today hides a key aspect of the art? 🧵
First off, something to note: Although the term cavemen still persists as a synonym for paleolithic human, and although the idea of cavemen is still replicated throughout society, there isn’t much evidence that prehistoric humans actually lived in caves that often.
They lived often in rockshelters or like, the mouths of caves, but further in, in the dark zone, they didn’t live or shelter there unless in extraordinary circumstances like natural disasters or people *really* wanting to kill them.
There is ample evidence, however, that they used caves for ritualistic purposes.
There are a few questions to ponder when it comes to cave art, then. What exactly was the purpose of going into these very dark, often hard to access and dangerous, places to paint and sketch? Even if they wanted to use the combination of art and cave for some sort of ritual,
why not just paint on portable rocks, then carry the rocks in, rather than having to haul torches and the necessary materials for art deep into the caves?
Good questions, but pretty obvious. However, if you take a careful look at certain cave art, even more questions arise.
Good questions, but pretty obvious. However, if you take a careful look at certain cave art, even more questions arise.
In 1993, the scholar Edward Wachtel travelled to southern France, specifically the caves of Lascaux, Font-de-Gaume, Les Combarelles, and La Mouthe to see the art for himself. After visiting the first three, he had more questions than answers. 
First off, many of the images were obscured by what are called "Spaghetti lines." These were webs of lines drawn overtop of the images, but Wachtel noted that it seemed they were always careful not to completely destroy the image, just obscure it.
This wasn't something done by paleolithic teenage delinquents trying to destroy the art, it was done more carefully.
Secondly, there were many instances of superposition that weren't just lines. Animals were given extra body parts, for example, like in the images (an ibex w/ 2 heads, a mammoth w/ 3 trunks). Another example is a drawing of a bull superimposed on a drawing of a deer.
The latter example wasn't due to lack of space. There was ample free space to draw a bull and a deer separately. No, this again was deliberate.
It wasn’t until Wachtel got to La Mouthe cave that it all clicked. The upkeep and infrastructure at La Mouthe was less well funded than the other French caves. Wachtel was brought there not by a government official or scientist or anything but a local farmer.
There were no electric lights in the cave like in the other ones he had visited. The farmer brought a lantern. Under the lantern’s flickering light, Wachtel saw the caves in a new way. In a new light, if you will. (Picture of the cave entrance).
The images in the caves were meant to be in 3 dimensions, roughly 2 dimensions of space, and one of time.
Decades prior, Sigfreid Giedion hypothesized this, writing:
The flickering movement of fire, the only source of light for the prehistoric cave painters, was integral to the art itself. The movement of fire, combined with the rough rock that provides a surface for the paintings, made the paintings themselves move.
In a certain way, prehistoric people had invented the movie, or proto-movies. They descended to the depths to watch movies.
The most famous piece of art in La Mouthe cave is a 3 ft high drawing of what some people think is a hut, and some people think is a animal trap. It has spaghetti engravings drawn over it. This was one of the first images that Wachtel realized was a proto-movie.
He got the farmer to swing the lantern around a bit when standing in front of it. This is Wachtel’s description of what he saw (he uses the word tectiform, which is a very specific word meaning a piece of paleolithic cave art that represents a dwelling, a house):
Understood this way, the antelope with two heads, in the dance of the firelight, is an antelope moving from grazing to looking for predators. The mammoth with two or three trunks becomes a mammoth in motion, swinging it’s trunk.
The bull superimposed over the deer would become a deer transforming into a bull, then back again.
Keep in mind this is only some cave art, certainly not all. But if Giedion and Wachtel are correct, that's uhhhhh very cool.
Keep in mind this is only some cave art, certainly not all. But if Giedion and Wachtel are correct, that's uhhhhh very cool.
Sources: The First Picture Show: Cinematic Aspects of Cave Art, by Edward Wachtel, 1993
Sacred Darkness: A Global Perspective on the Ritual Use of Caves ed Holley Moyes, 2014
Sigfried Giedion, "Space Coinceptioin in
Prehistoric Art," in Explorations in Communication, 1960
Sacred Darkness: A Global Perspective on the Ritual Use of Caves ed Holley Moyes, 2014
Sigfried Giedion, "Space Coinceptioin in
Prehistoric Art," in Explorations in Communication, 1960
Many pictures of La Mouthe cave here donsmaps.com/lamouthe.html?…
Natural spaghetti lines
If you want to learn more in a similar vein, I talk about this and similar stuff here:
https://twitter.com/DilettanteryPod/status/1403927103842648070
“From paleolithic times to the present, all painters have been challenged by a fundamental problem: how to express the four dimensions of experience on a two-dimensional surface.”
-Edward Wachtel
-Edward Wachtel
You can do a virtual tour of the Lascuax cave here (it's very cool): archeologie.culture.fr/lascaux/en/vis…
One more thing to add: The paintings in Lascaux and Font-de-Gaume are estimated to be 17 000 years old, the time between us and Jesus multiplied by 8.5. The paintings at Lees Combarelles are more recent, 13,680–11,380 years before the present. Couldn't find dating for La Mouthe.
Enter the thread portal:
https://twitter.com/DilettanteryPod/status/1370323268574404608
Something related I just learned about: Another type of Paleolithic proto-animation that has been hypothesized are thaumatropes.
This is an example of a thaumatrope:
This is an example of a thaumatrope:
Researchers Marc Azéma & Florent Rivère have pointed out that multiple bone discs have been found from the paleolithic era with two seemingly related images on either side, possibly thaumatropic sequences.
The first one they mention is the death/injury of a deer:
The first one they mention is the death/injury of a deer:
The second one they mention is a chamois (fancy french goat-deer). The image in the last tweet was this example.
Thaumatrope literally means 'miracle wheel' in the ancient greek it's derived from.
Thaumatrope literally means 'miracle wheel' in the ancient greek it's derived from.
"The artist seems to have wanted to represent the moment where the animal passes from life to death, the climax of a hunt: a set of chevrons marks the mammoth's brow, signifying the casting of a deadly projectile."
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