Why did they only paint animals?

The theory I like best is that they believed that spirits lived behind the walls of the cave, and the paintings were a way of petitioning the spirits for a successful hunt.

It does make me wonder, could you imagine finding a cave full of 30K-year-old paintings that detailed, but of humans? It would be revolutionary!

Le soleil est rare, et le bonheur aussi. Mais tout bouge au bras de Melody.

The cave men in this region were bound together as a tribe. They may have traded with neighbouring regions for flint tools and arrow heads. But uppermost in the minds of the males must have been the search for food which involved the hunt as a group.

Another preoccupation must have been to get the females pregnant. Many infants would die young and losses due to injury in the course of the hunt must have been frequent. Life was short and brutal.

What is surprising is that occasionally someone had time to draw with a sure hand in the depths of a dark cave, the beasts upon which their society depended. Even more laborious was the making of a musical pipe from bone. Surely they used plant stems as well?

Another amusing thought is that one happy day someone brought back to the cave some wild honey which in due course fermented. Upon drinking down this liquor cave man discovered that the world outside the cave mouth looked much brighter. Thus was beer first made.

All these abstract preoccupations probably prompted them to paint the beasts upon which their society depended for survival. If the sun was worshipped, this was probably done at dawn, but the beasts of the forest had to be worshipped in a different way in the dark recesses of the cave.

If the ownership of a cave changed hands (a useful metaphor) perhaps this was the reason the hand prints were made, by way of demonstrating that they passed the place and all the creatures within it, to the new tribe.

One could speculate endlessly, but where else could you hope to find the spirits of the hunt but in the dark recesses of a cave?

I was pondering about the same question last night after i watched the movie.
The only plausible answer I could come up with for myself was that the cave people or tribes people did not consider themselves as important as the animals which provided with vital supplies of nourishment and clothes.

I'd even to as far claiming that the cave drawings and the flute were like a glimpse of what they could be capable of for them, while they probably did not even fully understand what exactly they were doing.
Add to that their overboarding propensity towards mistery and the connection to spirits to explain the things they just could not explain to themselves and you may be dealing with a speck of society that had capabilities of art yet did not really understand it.
their mindset surely must have been a thousand times less sophisticated than ours, focussed only on survival and trying to stay out of the influence of events and things around them which they did not understand.
I doubt very much like a fore-poster implied, that they were capable of things like "egos" or making a difference between looking out for themselves or for the group since from day one they probably were raised in the conscoiusnes of keeping the group alive, nothing but the group counts, an individual cannot survive on its own, etc.
the hint of another poster is quite plausible tho, saying that who ever painted the pictures prayed to the spirits for a good hunting result, in which a human picture is off no value whatever since it were animals they were hunting.
considering the sexual implication of the drawing that resembles the most outstanding human implication, the woman and the bear having sexual intercourse, this really could imply that they were solely concentrating on getting a successful breed while any other depictions of human life did not matter.

the various hand "printings" though make for a riddle, for i doubt that the person with the crooked little finger had kind of selfish feelings.
maybe some sort of ritual, a sign for someone or something to stay out of whatever area of the cave, like when you raise your hand, implying to someone to stop and not come any closer...who knows.

I often wonder if cavemen might have seen the world in some sort of one-dimensional manner, very basic, very limited, while in our time we see it as two-dimensional and a generation way forward into the future may develop senses so they can see the world in its true 3rd-dimension?
think that's weird to read? well, it's just a thought...and that is what i loved about this movie - it prompts a load of questions...

Maybe they were drawn by intelligent animals? We evolved from them.

Lots of possibilities:

* The paintings were meant as part of a religious ceremony focused on animals, or on the hunt. The paintings were specifically designed to bring animals to the hunt.

* The cave was somehow related to animal or hunting magic, ritual, or worship, and depictions of humans were elsewhere. A part-human in the deepest recesses of the cave suggests that humans and animals were perhaps placed in different locations.

* This group of humans considered animals to embody their gods and so only the animals were worthy of painting.

* This group of humans considered it taboo or profane to paint humans. It's kind of opposite of the previous idea: Humans were too sacred to portray so only animals are shown.



I should be able to love my country and still love justice. —Camus

I have think the same...!

There are a lot of scientific explanation for this...but.. is a pity that there are not human draw.

It would be INCREDIBLE WONDERFUL to have a portrait of a human face from 30.000 year ago.

Specially because the painter(s) is (are) really a MASTER...!!!

Oscar
Hablo mejor español :)

[deleted]

cavemen were ugly