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In my last blog I talked about hunting as a ‘sport’, and particularly about shooting wild animals simply to dismember them and take the head as a ‘trophy‘ – and I concluded by saying that in this, the following blog, I would discuss the statements made by noted anthropologists and archaeologists concerning the cave paintings of animals presumably used in early Paleolithic hunting rituals as long as 35,000 to 40,000 years ago.
Two of the world’s most distinguished anthropologists, the Abbé Henri Breuil and Siegfried Giedion, who devoted years to the study of Paleolithic cave art, were constantly impressed by the acuity of perception, drawing skill and expressive power displayed by the early European cave artists of Lascaux (France) and Altamira (Spain) working in the later years of the Upper Paleolithic era (20,000 to 15,000 B.C.) Yet although some thirty years separate the work of Breuil and Giedion, they were both affected by an ineffable, intangible quality the prehistoric paintings possessed: namely that they ‘radiated’ a high degree of empathy for the animals they depicted – a quality suggesting the degree of feeling for the life of the animal expressed by the hunter-artist: a recognition that their prey were vital living creatures in their own right…. sharing the same world – creatures on whom they themselves depended for their own survival.
In addition, we know enough of primitive cultures to know that the Paleolithic hunter believed that to possess the ‘likeness’ of a particular animal on the cave wall gave him power over the animal spirit…. thus helping to ensure success in the hunt. (Does not something of this same psychological phenomenon still exist today? Is it not somehow reassuring – a confirmation of the psychical link existing between oneself and a beloved person or animal – to have a photograph of them on one’s desk…. or in one’s wallet?) And one other intrinsic element of much Paleolithic cave-art – and the pre-hunt ritual practices that anthropologists such as Breuil and Geidion have suggested took place – was to ensure the animals that – in the Abbé Breuil’s own words – ‘They will not be killed without mercy…’
The discovery in 1994 of the large Chauvet Cave complex in the Ardeche Valley of France revealed what are considered to be the oldest known animal paintings in the world. Radiocarbon tests found them to be around 40,000 years old – some 25,000 years older than the cave art of Lascaux and Altamira – and belonging to the late Neanderthal period and relatively early days of the Upper Paleolithic Ice Age in Europe. The Chauvet paintings and drawings also manage to convey a strength of empathic feeling on the hunter-artist’s part no less evident than that which impelled the hands of the Lascaux artists – indicative of a similar belief in ‘sympathetic magic’ and ritual with regard to their animal prey as that which attended the much later hunter-gathers of Lascaux and Altamira. Indeed, in many instances the Chauvet artists displayed a virtuoso talent in drawing – in using line and tone – that in my view surpassed the ‘craft’ displayed by the much more recent Lascaux hunters.
In 1964, Sir Julian Huxley, eminent English biologist and brother of the famous writer Julian, wrote the following in Essays of a Humanist:
‘Though undoubtedly man’s genetic nature changed a great deal during the long proto-human stage, there is no evidence that has in any important way improved since the time of the Aurignacian cave man….Indeed, during this period it is probable that man’s nature has degenerated and is still doing so.’
The Lascaux Caves and their paintings were discovered in 1940, and Julian Huxley woul d have been very aware of their great artistic and cultural/humanistic implications…. especially in terms of prehistoric man’s sensitivity to the lives of the animals upon which he himself depended. Yet he obviously could know nothing of the far older human culture exemplified by the cave art of Chauvet…. which was only discovered 19 years after his death; if he had, I suspect it would have further confirmed him in his thoughts about the decline of contemporary humankind. For his views concerning Aurignacian culturewere based solely on a small group of already known, relatively insignificant (and probably temporary) Aurignacian cave-dwellings, situated some 100 kilometers southwest of Lascaux.
It is interesting, is it not, that such a well-known 20th Century scientist as Sir Julian Huxley should comment on our evolutionary decline before he (or anyone else) knew of Chauvet’s existence. So it may be that he based his standard of ‘humanness’ on man’s ability to respect – and feel for - the important status accorded the higher animals: a judgment most likely induced by his knowledge of the animal art of Lascaux and Altamira. What he might have said had he known about Chauvet is anyone’s guess.
The French Archaeological Ministry permitted the German filmmaker Werner Herzog to take a camera into Chauvet and make a documentary record of the complex. It is now available on DVD, entitled, ‘The Cave of Forgotten Dreams’ . (The general public are not, at this time, allowed into the cave.) I have also written extensively about the cave in the book, ‘What the Hell Are the Neurons Up To?’
And a final thought: I wonder what a Chauvet hunter-artist – presuming he was familiar with the English language – would have reacted to the suggestion that hunting was a ‘sport’?
