What Is Paleolithic Art?: Cave Paintings and the Dawn of Human Creativity

by Jean Clottes

For quite some time, I also yielded to such skepticism, which is shared by most of my colleagues. The embarrassing question “Why?” is seemingly insoluble. But surely all problems remain insoluble as long as nobody tackles them?

The alternative proposed by the pessimists would therefore be to limit oneself to an objective description of the facts, or even of the structures, and to compose immediate explanations that are as simple as possible. But this position is unsatisfactory not only because of its lack of ambition but above all because its deceptive empiricism is actually dangerous. In effect, empiricists claim to be objective and celebrate their freedom from any preexisting hypotheses. But they are clearly deluding themselves, albeit unwittingly, as philosophers of sciences have abundantly demonstrated: “Utterly unbiased observation must rank as a primary myth and shibboleth of science, for we can only see what fits into our mental space, and all description includes interpretation.”4 Confronted with the infinite scope of material reality, we are manifestly quite unable to choose among the countless alternatives that present themselves without previously accepting or deciding that one parameter will be important and another not.

Empiricism hence presents a double danger: On one hand, the apparent objectivity that is claimed is in fact nothing more than the implicit application of hypotheses and theories that are generally accepted in the contemporary context, often without debate or even formulation, as if they were self-evident. On the other hand, it carries in its wake a kind of sterilization of research, which is reduced to description while ignoring the context in which the art was created.

Art was hence magical and utilitarian. Objects decorated with images of animals could serve as amulets or talismans. And as for depictions in the depths of caves, they were not intended to be seen: they were created to influence reality through its representation. Creation of the artwork therefore took precedence over the result and over its visibility to the mortal community. This explained multiple superpositions of images on a given cave wall, where each magical ceremony added representations that ended up in an inextricable tangle, rendering the panels concerned virtually unreadable. “Once this act had been accomplished . . . the image was no longer important.”14

So the expectation would be that the authors of the artwork, Magdalenian people of the nearby La Vache cave, were bison hunters and not that their prey would be essentially ibex, as is actually the case.15 This observed discordance between animals hunted and animals depicted is too consistent to be a chance outcome. This brings to mind an observation made by Claude Lévi-Strauss in a different context: “It is not sufficient that a food is good to eat; it also has to be good to think.”

The content of visions, which is very variable, depends on three principal factors: the personality and life of the person perceiving them; the cultural context, which can determine the hallucination when the trance is the outcome of a long apprenticeship, as is the case with shamanic societies; and finally neurophysiological constants.

Ice Age people resembled us, with the same brain and nervous system. It was therefore logical to think that they must also have had visions responding to the same constants and that this could translate into the depictions that they left. Accordingly, many geometric signs, such as clouds of points, zigzags, and so forth present on the walls of caves could correspond to entoptic signs that often accompany trances.

Prudent use of the ethnographic analogy, especially with respect to practices of hunting societies, provides another major support for the shamanic hypothesis. For example, throughout the entire world, deep caves are considered to be supernatural places—the domain of spirits, the dead, or deities—and their dangers can only be braved if there is a well-defined and exceptional intent.

As has often been remarked, a tracing is in fact not just a simple facsimile of an image. It is a form of research entailing fine analysis, and as such it is irreplaceable. An investigator tracing an image reproduces the motions of the artist.

The process of analysis that takes place after the image has been recorded, that is to say its scientific exploitation,

Spirituality can be regarded as the awakening of a thought that goes beyond the circumstances of everyday life, the mere adjustment to material necessities demanded by foraging, reproduction, and survival. Humans begin to pose questions about the world around them, and that is the essential point. They will often seek a reality other than that perceived by their senses, to which—like the animals from which they are descended—they have always responded instinctively. Here, we are not very far removed from art.

Another stage is reached with religion. Strictly speaking, this is the organization, or an organization, of spirituality.

Art, too, can be founded on detachment from the real world. Multiple forms and modes of application can doubtless occur, but the foundation will remain the same, namely, projection onto the world surrounding humans of a strong mental image that colors reality before taking shape and transfiguring or recreating it.47 In this sense, art is incontestably an indicator of spirituality. As André Leroi-Gourhan wrote, “if perception of the extraordinary by Paleolithic people is an essential stage, symbolic representation is the decisive sign of attainment of abstract values.”

Instead of Homo faber, which is now of historical interest only, and Homo sapiens, a label that is really too optimistic, I would propose the substitution of Homo spiritualis, the being for whom the world reveals itself to be more complex than it seems and who attempts to understand and to adapt as well as possible to this novel complexity by calling upon nonmaterial forces.

In order to leave, there has to be an “elsewhere.”

Did language create the afterlife?

Human beings, on the other hand, have the unique capacity to recall their dreams and to refer to them because they possess language. It seems logical that this would have spawned the idea that there is an “other” world through which a person travels while asleep and encounters individuals who have departed but are very much alive.

With modern humans, originally called Homo sapiens sapiens and then just Homo sapiens—although Homo spiritualis artifex might be more appropriate—the problem is posed in quite a different way. In fact, it is no longer a question of wondering about the possible existence of spirituality and art, which is accepted by all, but of studying it and establishing its nature, modalities, chronology, and evolution.

Now it is known that belief in the existence of composite beings—that is to say gods, spirits, or heroes—simultaneously possessing human and animal characteristics is common to many religions, in numerous cultures, in all ages, and on every continent. One only needs to think of various divinities in Egypt, such as the woman with a lion’s head (Sekhmet) or men with the head of a jackal (Anubis), a ram (Amon-Ra), or a crocodile (Sobek). Other examples are the monkey-headed Hanuman of India or the devil and angels of Christian religion.

What I have aimed to report in this book is the contribution of the experiences that I have had that have nourished my reflection and my analysis. This approach is more logical than that consisting of “letting the facts speak for themselves,” which they clearly will never do, or to interpret them in a “literal” or “objective” fashion. In this case, as we have seen, interpretation is necessarily the fruit of concepts or hypotheses, be they formulated or not, that prevail in the society or environment, scientific or not, in which we live.

Research is not conducted uniquely through lectures and learned references. Sensitivity to personal experiences also intervenes to play a part, whether it be through impressions or in the ideas and hypotheses that we devise and develop. To take account of this and, where necessary, to bring these processes to light, is surely more “scientific” than claiming absolute objectivity, which is always a futile undertaking.

A moment like this, when a casual comment explains a piece of rock art and allows us to penetrate to the very heart of beliefs that we thought had disappeared forever, is a rare privilege and an instant of pure joy. Abruptly, we understand what happened.

identification of an animal present as the spirit of the site illustrates the difference in attitude between our own materialist culture and a traditional one in which every event is a sign and where there is no boundary between the natural domain and that of the powers and creatures that we would call supernatural.

I was reassured with the comment that the puma is a territorial animal and only attacks if a certain virtual boundary is crossed. I waited for our guides to examine the traces to determine whether the puma was present or not. In fact, they began to sniff the air all around and jointly decided that the animal was not there and that we could approach without fear. In our own civilization, we have somewhat forgotten to use our sense of smell as a source of information and of defense.

Algaigho, the Fire-Woman, one of the First People who created the world, associated with Namargon, is represented there (fig. 8). She planted yellow banksia in the woods and used its burning flowers to carry fire. She hunted rock-haunting possums with the aid of dingoes (wild dogs). People were afraid of her because she could burn them and even kill them.

The town of Katherine, between Arnhem Land and the Kimberley, is something of a must, in one sense or another. I spent a day climbing through the gorges, and I remember seeing high up on cliffs paintings representing, among other things, an upside-down person and a big snake that appeared to be emerging from a hole in the rock, an eternal and universal myth. The snake, like the bird and the lizard, is a spiritually powerful animal because it moves between two worlds, the one in which we live and subterranean spirit worlds.

These few examples of relatively recent art show just how complex the meaning of the images may be and how deprived and impoverished we are when it is lost and we are confronted—as is commonly the case around the world and always for the decorated caves of Europe—with images that have become fossils.

Just imagine the worldwide outcry that would ensue if the pope had the Sistine Chapel covered with the modern daubings of subsidized unemployed youngsters in order to provide them with work and to reacquaint them with Christian practices. Why consider Aborigines any differently from other people? Does their art have less universal value than European art?

“shamanism, according to the shaman’s own words, is the cult of nature. Shamanism is a conception of existence; a human is not in nature but ‘is’ nature. The essence of shamanism is that everything in nature is animate, deified but also bound, interconnected.

He walked up to a large anthill and struck the top of it forcefully two or three times with his hand held flat. He then held one hand quite level about an inch above the anthill and waited. I was wondering what was happening, and then I understood: under attack, the ants exuded formic acid with which Lazo covered his hand. He then rubbed his hand over his arms, over his other hand and over his face, which were thus protected. The others followed suit. To show me the effectiveness of this action, Lazo held up his bare hand, with a cloud of insects swirling around it and not one of them landing on his skin.

Traces of deliberate destruction that bear witness to an attitude of refusal or a desire to desecrate, reflecting a completely different state of mind, are rare but do exist.

This all suggests that the creators wanted to produce tracings at the limits of the possible.

The persistence of these gestures throughout the entire Upper Paleolithic reinforces the deep sentiment of unity that inspired European parietal art.

“animals . . . were integral to the evolution of the human brain to the extent that the encoding of animal forms seems to have become a dedicated domain of the visual cortex.”

“No gift can exist without a countergift.”

We have seen that some of the fundamental beliefs documented throughout the entire world, particularly in shamanic cultures, imply an interconnection of species, including between humans and animals, because of the deep affinity that unites them. Thus, with reference to the shamanic vocabulary of the peoples of Greenland, Joëlle Robert-Lamblin indicates that “The child of man is described with the same term as the offspring of the dog or of the bearded seal, thus recalling the existence of a sameness of the human and animal worlds in mythology and in beliefs.”

Let it be reiterated that traditional peoples do not dominate nature, like modern Western culture. They constitute one of its elements, like their fellow animals. They are aware of their weakness and vulnerability within a complex and dangerous world, but do not resign themselves to this. They think that in this universe, where everything is connected—the past with the present, humans with the spirits, animals, and, more generally, the whole of nature—it is possible to act to resolve problems and improve their condition.