Hi Richard -
My obsedrvation based on experience is that children will go into caves to explore them, but not to paint, not without some adult to guide them.
Other thoughts while shaving:
While beauty is in the eye of the beholder, is there any quantitative way to measure cave art? Number of pigments, distance from pigment sources, complexity of paint manufacture, complexity of application? Range of depicted animals?
Perhaps what we're seeing in the caves in just little deviant widely time separated samples of perhaps continuously evolving (at best) above ground cultural complexes. As even the migrations are poorly understood right now, inferences going much beyond each sample are tricky and fraught with hazards.
No doubt there is a need to free our concepts from the bounds presented by the survivability of artifacts.
Fire and torches are big elements here as well. Caves are unpaintable without light.
A big question that I have, as a space journalist who had to look at the anthropological studies in order to follow the effects of asteroid and comet impacts on man, is when exactly did man first master the ability to transport fire, and when did he master fire-starting technologies. Anybody have any ideas or data here? I didn't find much right at hand when I researched my book.
Also, a real question for me is how the divergence of DNA groups may be related to asteroid and comet impacts and the spliiting of human groups by them. This is also important in terms of shared technologies, shared culture.
E.P. Grondine
Man and Impact in the Americas
Hi Paul,
I need to question the relevance of quoting Bednarik in reference to the Franco-Cantabrian art, especially given his criticisms concerning the dominance of views on the same distorting perspectives of history?
Unfortunately I wasn't able to read the article from the link provided, however, a few comments.
The caves and the paintings sometimes found amongst them, need to be understood in the context of the taphonomic processes at force if not at least in the context of quite often being focal points of activity over many thousands of years. Any such claims regarding continuous or even intermittent use (concluded by and large from indirect dating) are therefore mostly meaningless. Note also, that stone and bone are only two of many materials where evidence for "detailed" or "sophisticated" art may be found that may possibly be detected amongst the "archaeological evidence", there are far more materials that are unlikely to survive, and it is questionable how much of the surviving material is actually ever detected.
The idea of truly exceptional art is purely subjective. To then try to apply this concept to art from thousands of years ago assumes that one has a full understanding of the culture and capabilities of people long gone which is untenable.
Indeed, I might ask precisely which paintings you consider to be the work of "gifted savants" and against which other paintings they are being compared? How would one tell objectively which was the work of one and not the other?
Further, whilst there may exist a "commonly" accepted idea of exceptional art at any one given point in time, for example Monet, this is usually not in the lifetime of the individual, is specific to only a limited culture, and in this example demonstrates that if this was the exclusive domain of "gifted individuals" it did not stop thousands if not millions of other people from drawing, painting, or creating art in all manner of ways simultaneously. So we should not assume that the cave paintings were the work exclusively of specially "selected" individuals. Indeed, in contrast, it is becoming apparent that Bednarik's prediction that much cave art may be the work of children may well be true.
However, the very fact that we cannot separate between taphonomic and cultural processes provides a far simpler explanation for any perceived patterns seen in the "archaeological record" than does a hypothesis concerning "gifted" artists.
Just a few thoughts
Richard
