Shemales are just men... don't take my word for it

Yes. Indeed I have. The only way the general public will ever set these ancient drawings will be through documentaries like this one.

The paintings were made by different artists over a several hundred year period. You have to wonder what the painters felt and thought. Was it just graffiti? Was it a gallery? Was it ceremony, religion and superstition? Why did they paint only animals (with the exception of one fertility figure). Did the artist admire the work of his predecessors? Would they think it strange that their modern counterparts refrain from adding to their testimony? Would they be disappointed in us?

For me the film evoked a tide of unanswerable questions which have since ebbed, yet remain. I recommend it.

(Gotta work tomorrow so we won't hijack the thread for long...I'm off to bed. Good night runningdownthatdream. Good night HungAngels. Good night laptop. And good night Moon)

I love this girl Trish. Or woman. Or electric shadow on my cave wall. Good morning sun and frost. Good morning desktop. Wine - whine - one day maybe.

Cave of unknown descendents.

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Originally Posted by trish

Yes. Indeed I have. The only way the general public will ever set these ancient drawings will be through documentaries like this one.

The paintings were made by different artists over a several hundred year period. You have to wonder what the painters felt and thought. Was it just graffiti? Was it a gallery? Was it ceremony, religion and superstition? Why did they paint only animals (with the exception of one fertility figure). Did the artist admire the work of his predecessors? Would they think it strange that their modern counterparts refrain from adding to their testimony? Would they be disappointed in us?

For me the film evoked a tide of unanswerable questions which have since ebbed, yet remain. I recommend it.

(Gotta work tomorrow so we won't hijack the thread for long...I'm off to bed. Good night runningdownthatdream. Good night HungAngels. Good night laptop. And good night Moon)

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The caves do pose questions that are unanswerable, yes, but when you look at them in conjunction with other cave discoveries such as at Lascaux, you can begin to develop a picture of the life that was being led by the people. Personally I think the paintings at Chauvet and Lascaux (despite the separation in origin date, though there is question over that) were shamanic in nature. I think groups of hunters came together at these sites in the winter to exchange and barter, to shelter from the worst weather, to socialise and to celebrate the past season's hunting and to carry out rituals that would ensure a good hunting season in the year to come. I think the paintings were part of that. (Indeed I think it is from this that we inherit the tradition of celebrating midwinter, and that it greatly predates the agrarian celebrations of spring and autumn.)

We will never know precisely how people lived in Europe durng the last Ice Age, but what should be most striking about the paintings, and the discovered art objects such as the Venus of Willendorf, is the enormous sophistication of the work. This was not 'primitive man'. These were people like us.

Anyway, better get back to letting people fight about the thread topic....:)

LOL MacShreach.... I think you are spot on regafding the probable meaning of those cave illustrations. What I have found puxxling is the creation of work deep deep in the furthest reaches of some cave systems - long walks into the most inaccessible parts of the caves. They would have to have carried or created light down there, hours inside the sytem. Why so remote? Safety? They would know also that no-one would see their work except a chosen few - led there by the creators. Primitive is surely an ill used and rather throwaway term really i. The early work of great artists is, perhaps, well described as primitive in the light of their later development. But I don't think early art - from cave paintings forward - should be described that way. Nor should the use or purpose of created art in one era trump the value of its use in another. But unlike the torrent of explanation about art once language was developed, we can ony ever surmise about its place in human affairs before language was born.
Finally though - we are the only species that makes art. Is there even any evidence of our predecessors -Neanderthal etc - having made "art."

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Originally Posted by runningdownthatdream

have you seen Cave of Forgotten Dreams yet?

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oh god
ive tried that but his accent is just too cringeworthy for 2 hours

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Originally Posted by Prospero

LOL MacShreach.... I think you are spot on regafding the probable meaning of those cave illustrations. What I have found puxxling is the creation of work deep deep in the furthest reaches of some cave systems - long walks into the most inaccessible parts of the caves. They would have to have carried or created light down there, hours inside the sytem. Why so remote? Safety? They would know also that no-one would see their work except a chosen few - led there by the creators. Primitive is surely an ill used and rather throwaway term really i. The early work of great artists is, perhaps, well described as primitive in the light of their later development. But I don't think early art - from cave paintings forward - should be described that way. Nor should the use or purpose of created art in one era trump the value of its use in another. But unlike the torrent of explanation about art once language was developed, we can ony ever surmise about its place in human affairs before language was born.
Finally though - we are the only species that makes art. Is there even any evidence of our predecessors -Neanderthal etc - having made "art."

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I think the cave represents the womb of the Earth Mother. We have thousands of artefacts from this era (admitttedly it was a very long era) which strongly suggest that the Mother was the principle deity, possibly the only one. We also have found, in France, cave entrances which are vulva-shaped, but which have also been daubed with ochre. (Menstrual blood being taboo is a Judeo-Christian thing--we know that it was celebrated in Goddess cultures.) So I think that these caves were a kind of temple, a metaphorical womb deep within the earth, within the body of the Mother herself, where (and this is my opinion because it can't be proved) a priesthood of probably female shamans honoured the animals who had been killed to feed the tribe by painting their images, and carried out rituals to ensure the success of the next season. Again it's my opinion that men would not have been allowed into the inner spaces of the cave/temple, and that the votive paintings and the ceremony surrounding them, were kept secret. Although there are many examples of a male shaman caste, there are also many of female ones and this, with the very widespread evidence for Goddess worship is what inclines me to this view.

Part of the problem with your second question is that we really don't know who made the paleolithic art we have discovered. It has always been attributed to modern humans but I think most people would be hard put to come up with any real evidence of that, other than that much of the work, to my eye at least, has a definitively 'human' feel. I know that someone like me could have made these things.

Also, it's often forgotten that the Stone Age was just as much the Wood Age, and we have lost by far the greater part of all the artefacts that once existed because wood is not durable. Because of this there isn't really enough material to discern the likely stylistic differences that there would be between modern human and Neanderthal art. All I can say is 'what I would give for a time machine'.

I entirely agree with you about the notions of 'primitive' and so on; these are part of a mindset prevalent up till the late 20th century when it was assumed that modern European people were more 'advanced' than anyone else, and that cultural history was a long hill that we had climbed up, so that we could look down on others. And that was the same mindset that gave us colonialism and the slave trade. Modern science has absolutely proved that we are not more 'advanced' in the way that this holds, either over people who came before us or people who live somewhere else...unfortunately however, there are some who still cling to those outdated ideas.

There's nothing even slightly unsophisticated in the drawing, for example, of the cave paintings; these artists were really good at what they did, they had practised and they had looked at nature and understood its shapes and forms. Their line is fluid yet definitive, economical yet lyrical. They were trained.

I'm pretty sure language had been developed a long time before these cave paintings, by the way.

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Originally Posted by trish

Yes. Indeed I have. The only way the general public will ever set these ancient drawings will be through documentaries like this one.

The paintings were made by different artists over a several hundred year period. You have to wonder what the painters felt and thought. Was it just graffiti? Was it a gallery? Was it ceremony, religion and superstition? Why did they paint only animals (with the exception of one fertility figure). Did the artist admire the work of his predecessors? Would they think it strange that their modern counterparts refrain from adding to their testimony? Would they be disappointed in us?

For me the film evoked a tide of unanswerable questions which have since ebbed, yet remain. I recommend it.

(Gotta work tomorrow so we won't hijack the thread for long...I'm off to bed. Good night runningdownthatdream. Good night HungAngels. Good night laptop. And good night Moon)

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.........speculation is that the paintings were done thousands of years apart with the earliest being around 24,000 BC. Whatever their purpose, they are stunning and inspired more primal feelings in me than anything else I've seen before. Made me feel sad too.......while we live longer lives they have become more complicated and too, I feel our 'lives' have been subsumed by material wants.........goodnight Moon should have far more mystical connotations for us than it does :)

Home Work: compare and contrast the Cave of Forgotten Dreams with http://www.vatican.va/various/cappel..._vr/index.html

Wednesday morning (a day before we got into this conversation) I was almost late to lecture gawking at this link (thinking deep thoughts like "Wow! This is incredible!"). Now I'm reminded of it again. Complexity vs Simplicity ( a theme to which MacShreach alludes ) comes to mind. Both may or may not be religious, but the earlier work seems positively innocent by comparison. The obsessions within the Christian work now strike me almost sick!?

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Originally Posted by trish

Home Work: compare and contrast the Cave of Forgotten Dreams with http://www.vatican.va/various/cappel..._vr/index.html

Wednesday morning (a day before we got into this conversation) I was almost late to lecture gawking at this link (thinking deep thoughts like "Wow! This is incredible!"). Now I'm reminded of it again. Complexity vs Simplicity ( a theme to which MacShreach alludes ) comes to mind. Both may or may not be religious, but the earlier work seems positively innocent by comparison. The obsessions within the Christian work now strike me almost sick!?

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Innocent, simple but more evocative IMO. Later religious art was inspired by religion seeking to control man rather whereas more primitive religion paid homage to a deity in the hopes that deity would influence the natural elements. Later religion had to become more convoluted and so its images, iconography had to become more so to better confuse and discombobulate!

.................again just my opinion :)

i think were missing the much simpler expanation that those were drawn by a kid that probably got into a lot of toruble for paiting the walls of his room