did the people who painted the cave know the relationship between sex and birth? I remember reading that there are some modern hunter-gatherers who were unclear on the concept, but I might be misremembering.
PS, the figure has also been interpreted as a shaman with a bird mask in a trance, partly because of the bird-headed staff near him.
Yes, we moderns are ever so much superior to these rubes, who putatively were incapable of drawing the connection between sex and the rather regular arrival of children, nine moons later. Like these brutes couldn't even count, for God's sake.
Notwithstanding these rubes created some world-class art that continues to speak to us today, from perhaps as much as 27 millennia ago. Go figure.
If you doubt my claim, just go Google on "Lascaux" and fire up the first link. Then you can take it from there.
Who has interpreted the Dead Man of Lascaux as "the shaman with a bird mask in a trance" such that I need credit him? Any why — what theory does he expound? And why should I find that intrinsically valuable?
Sorry for venting. I'm just getting sick and tired of the arrogance of the modern-day intelligentsia. [May God help you if you are in that party.]