30,000 years ago, or up to 40,000 years ago. That’s a long-long way back for humans. And yet the art in some of these cave paintings is surprisingly sophisticated.
It’s really quite remarkable, when you think about it. The concept of representing something from the real world that is three-dimensions with a drawing on a two-dimensional surface. The very idea of outlining a creature to represent its boundaries is pretty abstract. When did that idea of abstract representation of real objects first occur? How did the idea spread?
[[How did the idea spread?]]
Via the NYT’s
And they did it in the dark, in "a world lit only by fire".
A related question is, did the idea spread from a single location?
In her Plato Prehistorian: 10,000 to 5000 B.C. Myth, Religion, Archaeology, Mary Settegast reproduces a table which shows four runic character sets; a is Upper Paleolithic (found among the cave paintings), b is Indus Valley script, c is Greek (western branch), and d is the Scandinavian runic alphabet.
Life back then was a trip everyday without anything
An you imagine life then ?
It’s the spark of genius, that little bit of Himself that resides in each of us.
