# ADSactly History: The painter in the cave

Hello, dear @adsactly readers! In this series dedicated to understanding the spiritual evolution of our distant ancestors, I would like to focus on primitive art. As I was saying in the previous post, it is very frustrating to try to understand the spirituality of the earliest human inhabitants of our planet, as such things are not easily preserved. We have plenty of stone tools to help us know how they survived, but then what was the primitive man thinking late at night huddled in his cave with his kin? And when did he develop the mental capacity for abstract thinking, that would make him more similar to us than to the animals that surrounded him?

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_{[source](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/sep/12/earliest-known-drawing-found-on-rock-in-south-african-cave#img-1)}</center>

Take a good look at the image above - it might look like an ordinary rock, but it is a priceless stone as it bears a simple design on it, which scientists have established to be the earliest known drawing. After years of tests, experts at the University of Bordeaux (France) announced last year the pattern made with ochre crayon is 73,000 years old. The rock was found in the Blombos Cave, in the southern tip of South Africa. It’s an area rich in archaeological finds, which allow us to understand the mind of Homo Sapiens. The simple design, six thin lines crossed by other three line, was drawn with some sort of pointed crayon on a flake of stone the size of two thumbnails.
According to Christopher Henshilwood, leader of the research team and director of the Centre for Early Sapiens Behaviour at the University of Bergen in Norway,the drawing is more than a random doodle:
> “The lines are very deliberate.When we reproduced the lines, you have to have a very firm hand and have to apply the ochre quite determinedly to make them look like that.”
>
The cross-hatched design must have meant something to the Homo Sapiens in the area as it was also found engraved on dozens of ostrich shells discovered at two other nearby sites, Diepkloof and Klipdrif.

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_{[source](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305440314000430)}</center>

Although it might not seem like much to our modern eyes, the simple fact that a very primitive man used the same pattern repeatedly is proof that he was endowed with a higher consciousness, which allowed him to use symbols. What did those lines stand for, we have no way of knowing.
Up to the discovery of the South African stone, the oldest paintings in the world were considered the red dots found on a cave walls at El Castillo in Spain, dated some 40.800 years old. Again, purposefully making dots on a wall must have meant something. Can you imagine the surprise of the other people in the cave, seeing one of them get up, get some red pigment and start drawing on the wall? Just as amazing as seeing your toddler drawing - and the reason most parents treasure those doodles is basically the same, it’s proof the child is developing well and understands abstract representation.

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_{[source](https://www.google.com/search?q=cave+paintings&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjIzcvjwNDjAhVjU98KHUGvAQ0Q_AUIESgB&biw=1366&bih=632)}</center>

Homo Sapiens was not content with just being, living from day to day, he left his mark on his environment. Such an example is the discovery of hand-stencils in the Indonesian province of Sulawesi. They are some 39,000 years old. The primitive artists used hollowed-out bones to spray pigment over their hands to create the stencils, a common motif in prehistoric art.

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_{[source](https://www.google.com/search?q=cave+paintings&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjIzcvjwNDjAhVjU98KHUGvAQ0Q_AUIESgB&biw=1366&bih=632)}</center>

Similar stencils were found in Argentina, in the Cave of Hands (Cueva de las Manos), a site estimated to be 10,000 years old. Maybe it was their way of claiming that cave for their tribe or maybe it had something to do with a hunting ritual. The question is hotly debated in scientific circles, as in some places the stencils represent a hand with missing fingers. Some have said it could be a sign of ritual mutilation, but the more commonly-accepted theory is that the number of fingers missing from the drawing might be associated with hunting a specific animal, as they required different techniques. It could have been a way of letting other tribes know what animals can be found in the area.

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_{[source](https://www.google.com/search?q=cave+paintings&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjIzcvjwNDjAhVjU98KHUGvAQ0Q_AUIESgB&biw=1366&bih=632)}</center>

Indeed, the most famous examples of primitive art are clearly associated with hunting. A few years ago, experts in my country, Romania, made an incredible discovery at a site called the Coliboaia Cave. Located in the Western part of the country, the cave has its walls decorated with easily-recognizable images of bears, bisons, rhinos and horses. They are believed to be 32,000 years old, yet it is still hard for me to believe that there were once rhinos roaming around my country.
The images in the Romanian cave are very similar to the drawings that adorn the walls of the much more famous Lascaux cave in France, which nevertheless is not as old, as it was painted only some 17,000 ago.

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_{[source](https://www.google.com/search?q=cave+paintings&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjIzcvjwNDjAhVjU98KHUGvAQ0Q_AUIESgB&biw=1366&bih=632)}</center>

And speaking of ancient animal images, another example comes to mind, the Altamira Cave in Spain, whose drawings are 20,000 years old. The incredible discovery, one of the first of its kind, was made in 1879 by Marcelino de Sautuola, whose daughter noticed the bison drawings on the cave’s ceiling. Actually, this is quite a sad story as nobody believed Sautuola at the time. He was accused of being a fraud as the claim that those drawings were made by some primitive brutes seemed ridiculous. (If you find the subject interesting, I highly recommend the 2016 ‘Altamira’ movie, which tells the story of this discovery and has Antonio Banderas playing the protagonist!)

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_{[source](https://www.google.com/search?biw=1366&bih=632&tbm=isch&sa=1&ei=6do5XYCUMKm0ggfyxamQBw&q=cave+of+swimmers&oq=cave+of+swimmers&gs_l=img.3..0l3j0i24l4.1363011.1366442..1366739...0.0..0.243.2086.0j10j1......0....1..gws-wiz-img.1RgdeWBPtSM&ved=0ahUKEwjArOfkwNDjAhUpmuAKHfJiCnIQ4dUDCAY&uact=5#imgrc=QuA_H6eJyIsT_M:)}</center>

Perhaps one of the most intriguing examples of primitive art can be found in the Cave of Swimmers, located in the Sahara desert in Egypt. Exactly, swimmers painted on the walls of a cave in the desert! According to scientists, some 10,000 years ago when the images were painted, there was a huge lake in that area, called Mega Chad, which covered some 139,000 square miles. The arid desert that is Sahara today was green and humid at the time of those paintings.
One theory regarding the numerous animal images found around the world is that it was a ritual meant to ensure sufficient prey for the tribe. Undeniably, drawing bisons to attract bisons denotes the mental capacity for symbolic thinking. If we go one step further and imagine it was a religious ritual, we’re even closer to modern concepts. Even today we still have isolated communities who believe in animal spirits. We might find such notions ‘primitive’, but we do recognize the members of those communities to be as human as us.
The Homo Sapiens with his stone tools might seem very remote to us, but if we look at the art he left behind we realize his way of thinking was not so different to ours. And, he did not go to art classes. Those crude drawings on the walls are pure talent.
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**Post authored by @ladyrebecca.**
**References:** [1](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/sep/12/earliest-known-drawing-found-on-rock-in-south-african-cave), [2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehistoric_art).</center>