Decoding the Meaning
Scholars have put forward the following explanations for the art described above. All of these theories have followers, but no single one has been generally accepted. They are listed in chronological order, starting with the earliest.
• Theory 1: Art for art’s sake. People of the paleolithic era were excellent big-game hunters, who consistently brought home large amounts of food. So they did not need to work very hard and had plenty of leisure time. They spent some of this time producing artistic decorations for pleasure.
• Theory 2: Sympathetic magic. The idea that making an image of something gives the maker power over that which is imaged and that what is done to an image affects whatever the image represents has been characteristic of a number of societies. Depicting wounded or incomplete animals or drawing lines over or obliterating pictures of animals was a way actually to create wounded, dead, or weakened animals, thereby helping to feed the band. Showing animals in their prime may help produce and give power over such animals. Statues of women with exaggerated breasts, buttocks, and bellies may be intended to represent pregnancy, thereby helping to create pregnant women and add new members to the band.
• Theory 3: Handbook of information about hunting. Abstract figures and shapes show tracks, droppings, and marks made by deer rubbing their antlers on trees. Details of the animal images sometimes show which prey were desirable and which were dangerous. Art during this time may have been a teaching tool. Exposing young people to it taught them lessons about the hunt. Painting may also have been a kind of information storage system—a remote forerunner of CD-ROMS!
• Theory 4: Vision quest for spirit-animals. Paleolithic people may have thought of walls and floors of caves as boundaries between this world and the spirit-world, which many spirit-animals inhabited. A shaman, or specialist in communicating and interpreting supernatural phenomena, could, according to belief, get in touch with spirit-animals while under the influence of sensory deprivation (dark, silence, isolation), hallucinogenic drugs, or pain (handprints on cave walls sometimes show mutilated hand prints). Geometric images may be interpreted as similar to what we know of the early stages of trance. Most features of cave art can be related to altered states of consciousness known from various societies in later historical periods.
Scholars have also given radically different explanations for specific kinds of art. For example, female or “Venus” figurines have been variously interpreted as:
• Fertility magic—showing figures of women as pregnant to help make women pregnant. • Erotic objects for men. • Forerunners of the mother-goddesses of later times.
http://worldhistoryforusall.sdsu.edu/ Page 26
World History for Us All Big Era 2 - Panorama Unit
• Female ancestor figures in societies where descent and inheritance were reckoned through women.
• Objects by which women communicated ideas and messages to one another. Stencils of handprints, which have appeared in large numbers cave walls or rocks in Europe,
Australia, and the Americas, have been interpreted as:
• An effort to seal the hand to the world of spirits that lies behind the wall or to reach through the wall to enter that world.
• The artist’s signature. • The message, “I was here!” (Like carving one’s initials into a surface or painting graffiti.) • A territorial claim on the part of a group.
Scholars have put forward the following explanations for the art described above. All of these theories have followers, but no single one has been generally accepted. They are listed in chronological order, starting with the earliest.
• Theory 1: Art for art’s sake. People of the paleolithic era were excellent big-game hunters, who consistently brought home large amounts of food. So they did not need to work very hard and had plenty of leisure time. They spent some of this time producing artistic decorations for pleasure.
• Theory 2: Sympathetic magic. The idea that making an image of something gives the maker power over that which is imaged and that what is done to an image affects whatever the image represents has been characteristic of a number of societies. Depicting wounded or incomplete animals or drawing lines over or obliterating pictures of animals was a way actually to create wounded, dead, or weakened animals, thereby helping to feed the band. Showing animals in their prime may help produce and give power over such animals. Statues of women with exaggerated breasts, buttocks, and bellies may be intended to represent pregnancy, thereby helping to create pregnant women and add new members to the band.
• Theory 3: Handbook of information about hunting. Abstract figures and shapes show tracks, droppings, and marks made by deer rubbing their antlers on trees. Details of the animal images sometimes show which prey were desirable and which were dangerous. Art during this time may have been a teaching tool. Exposing young people to it taught them lessons about the hunt. Painting may also have been a kind of information storage system—a remote forerunner of CD-ROMS!
• Theory 4: Vision quest for spirit-animals. Paleolithic people may have thought of walls and floors of caves as boundaries between this world and the spirit-world, which many spirit-animals inhabited. A shaman, or specialist in communicating and interpreting supernatural phenomena, could, according to belief, get in touch with spirit-animals while under the influence of sensory deprivation (dark, silence, isolation), hallucinogenic drugs, or pain (handprints on cave walls sometimes show mutilated hand prints). Geometric images may be interpreted as similar to what we know of the early stages of trance. Most features of cave art can be related to altered states of consciousness known from various societies in later historical periods.
Scholars have also given radically different explanations for specific kinds of art. For example, female or “Venus” figurines have been variously interpreted as:
• Fertility magic—showing figures of women as pregnant to help make women pregnant. • Erotic objects for men. • Forerunners of the mother-goddesses of later times.
http://worldhistoryforusall.sdsu.edu/ Page 26
World History for Us All Big Era 2 - Panorama Unit
• Female ancestor figures in societies where descent and inheritance were reckoned through women.
• Objects by which women communicated ideas and messages to one another. Stencils of handprints, which have appeared in large numbers cave walls or rocks in Europe,
Australia, and the Americas, have been interpreted as:
• An effort to seal the hand to the world of spirits that lies behind the wall or to reach through the wall to enter that world.
• The artist’s signature. • The message, “I was here!” (Like carving one’s initials into a surface or painting graffiti.) • A territorial claim on the part of a group.
