I’ve always wondered about the cave drawings of animals and such found in various places in Europe, especially the Lascaux cave drawings in France.
They always have very exact depictions of animals, detailed and anatomically correct and sometimes colored exactly as the animals actually appeared. But depictions of HUMANS alongside the same drawings are depicted as stick figures, with little or no details.
Archaeologists have almost always stated that these drawings are religious in nature and may have been the early man’s way of getting some sort of power over the animals derived from the depiction of the animals to aid them in their hunting.
After considering these things for a long while, I decided that the archaeologists are all wrong.
Who would have had the time to paint these detailed drawings on the cave walls? Not the men who would be out all day hunting for survival of their families.
Who would have had any interest in decorating the caves? Certainly not the men, since they only slept there.
The answer was the WOMEN!
They used the pigments from berries and plants plus ochre and other colors from the minerals found around the caves. They have a natural eye for details, and could have lots of time on their hands for such intellectual expressions. The women would have decorated their living quarters while the men were away on the hunt.
But what about the ‘stick figures’ used for the humans? How did that work?
Anybody who has had any experience with sports or military planning of attacks should recognize the drawings immediately. Like the X’s and O’s on the coach’s blackboard, or the general’s map of the battlefield with his men versus the enemy on it, they are actual plans for the hunt.
The men come back from the hunt and see the animal drawings on the wall, then ‘add’ their own stick figures, representing themselves as hunters, going after the bison or stags on the wall. They were either retelling their exploits of the day as to how they brought down the huge animal, or they were planning their attack for tomorrow’s and future hunts.
There is also another possible explanation. The animals depicted are ‘shopping lists’ from the women to the men saying, “Bring back a bison for dinner!” as she points to the bison on the wall, and the stick figures are the cavemen, which she would point to, then to the cavemen, saying this is how you are supposed to do it!
Brilliant! I love this kind of analysis. And it seems quite reasonable.
Spot on conjecture! Thanks for sharing. You’ll love Werner Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams; it streams on Netflix.
Sorry to burst your bubble. The men who hunted saw the living animals and made the great illustrations on how they ran. The women only got to see the butchered parts, the steaks. If the women painted them for a dinner menu, you would see roasts, chops, and steaks on the walls. The men with an eye for detail painted them. They kids made the stick figures.
I used to wonder about the same thing but came to a different conclusion.
For me, it closely mimics the process used when I was being trained to hunt AFV, IFV and APC so many many moons ago.
The vehicles were always done in as much detail as functionally possible. The methods of attack were drawn in a much more minimalist style.
Imo, those cave paintings are hunting lessons for the young sons.