Digit wrote:I would agree Ish, but what I was saying is that you cannot state that art of that quality is proof of language.
In fact the need for cave paintings, whuch spanned a relatively short period of time, could equally be used to argue for a lack of language and that the need for the paintings vanished as language became more sophisticated.
I'm getting in way over my depth here, but (rather surprisingly) I'm once again tending towards thinking Ish has a point. Art, it might be argued, requires at least a small degree of abstract thought, and er... language er... help!
On the other hand, those elephant painting videos on YouTube (Rich mentioned them) are pretty impressive.
Hi WA - I mainly agreed with Dig because I didn't want to get stuck on a point that we could argue back and fro on all night - trading painting elephants and animals that can talk - because we don't really know.
Which is why I asked: What do we know for sure?
For instance, do we know they were anatomically incapable of forming words in their mouths?
Or do we not really know anything about them at all, with regard to speech?
No we don't Ish, and like you I'm pretty damn sure that they did.
The big issue, for me, on the cave art, is how did it came about and why did it stop?
Nobody achieves that quality of work overnight, the standard of reproduction was never again achieved in Europe untill several thousand years later.
There is form, colour, scale, proportion. Just consider colour, how many pigments and binding agents were used? That must have learned over a period of time, and none of it seems to have had caves for practice. Cave art is there in a fully fledged state. What did they use as their canvas before caves? Why did change to caves? Why did they stop?
If the paintings were by HSN then perhaps extinction of the artists ended it?
Perhaps a change in religious practice made it out of date?
It probably stopped because somebody said "what are you crazy? Drawing those things on rocks? Draw it on my body and I'll give you a month's supply of deer meat!" That was when they realized it didn't last on human flesh so they came up with tattoos instead!!!
i'm not lookin' for who or what made the earth - just who got me dizzy by makin it spin
And once they could tattoo themselves now that made them "human - separate from the animals" because now they could carry the gods around with them all the time!
i'm not lookin' for who or what made the earth - just who got me dizzy by makin it spin
Well, Dig - many anthropologists say that ancient palaeo man regarded caves as liminal barriers between this world and the others. That they were drawing specific animals to 'draw through' their power animals through the membranes of the cave walls.
This ritual focus on walls being crossing places between worlds is continued in what we know about what took place in the Neolithic Catal Hoyuk and Gobekli Tepe. At CH, they had plastered bulls coming through the walls, and at GT they constantly moved the walls around during the ceremonies.
It's all about the walls - but contrary to the term 'cave man', we know that they didn't live in caves as they regarded them as sacred places - at most, some of them would live on the edges of caves but never deep in them.
Last edited by Ishtar on Fri Jul 11, 2008 2:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.
It's the line of thought that explains what we know about them Ish, so until someone comes up a better one it's the one for me.
It explains why the caves appear not have practice areas, it explains the lack of acessibility shown in many cases and gives a good explanation for why the practice ceased.
For me it also suggests that very possibly HSN was the progeniter of our artistic/spritual side with HS being the Philistine. It also gives support to the idea that we are hybrids.
Here Das Klub members suffer multiple heart attacks!
I've been a lone voice crying in the wilderness for years on the part about HSN not being club weilding cave dwellers and the possibility, even probability, that we are hybrids, but things are begining to swing our way Ish.
I tend not to be pedantic about things and all that I've suggested may come to naught, but like all good theories it best fits the evidence.
Digit wrote:
I tend not to be pedantic about things and all that I've suggested may come to naught, but like all good theories it best fits the evidence.
and there's no evidence that palaeo person regarded caves as sacred.
like there's no evidence that HSS painted the caves at Chauvet,
but there is evidence that robusts (HSN) may have been responsible, especially youngsters.
Beagle, you remarked concerning the whys and wherefores of rock art. Nobody knows when it started and it certainly hasn't stopped, continuing into the present day. The remnants that are left behind from the past are only remnants. Taphonomic logic dictates that there can be no reliable conclusions to be drawn from the cluster of art in the Franco-Cantabrian set. Indeed much of this "cave art" is from the Holocene and wrongly attributed to the Palaeolithic. The majority of the world's rock art is Middle Palaeolithic (not Upper) and is not found in Europe.
and Ish,
no self-respecting professional anthropologist says "that ancient palaeo man regarded caves as liminal barriers between this world and the others". and don't expect me to hang around here and demonstrate how wrong you are.
There will never be conclusive evidence that caves were considered sacred I accept MS, but it fits as the mostly likely scenario. If you have an alternative I'd like to here it.
The type of cave art as practiced in Europe has ceased, and it was European art that I specifically mentioned.
Recent suggestions have accorded much of the European cave art to HSN.
