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The Cave Painters: Probing the Mysteries of the World's First Artists

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They are among the most familiar paintings in the world, and they are also among the oldest. Within caves that are still being discovered in France and Spain are paintings and engravings on the rocks, some of them 30,000 years old. There are some 350 such caves, a vast amount of art that is simultaneously evocative of an older time and also immediate in its appeal. After touring one of the most famous such caves, Lascaux, Picasso himself was humbled, and said, "We have learned nothing in twelve thousand years." One of the things we have learned, however, is that the paintings are far older than that, and we have learned such facts because of improvements in basic research. In _The Cave Painters: Probing the Mysteries of the World's First Artists_ (Knopf), Gregory Curtis has given an overview of much else we know about these strange and beautiful works, and also how much people have speculated about them. There is so much we cannot know about the people who made them that the cave paintings are sort of like a Rorschach test for each era that views them.

One thing that experts in prehistory and art novices alike agree on is that the paintings are impressive and beautiful. Most people are familiar with the animals depicted in the paintings, and overwhelmingly, animals are the subjects the painters favored. It is interesting what they do not show, and it is impossible to say why they didn't think parts of their world should not be commemorated on the walls. They show no stars nor sun nor moon, for instance, but we know that prehistoric people watched the sky closely. They show no landscapes, and the animals float untethered by trees, bushes, or flowers. The inexplicable concentration on bison and cows, as well as animals that are long gone from the area like lions and hyenas, is so puzzling that although there have been many explanations for the subject matter of the works, there is still no grand theory of what the paintings mean. The most recent interpretation has been that the paintings were done by tribal shamans who were reproducing their visions from some sort of magical trance state. A critic declared the interpretation "shamaniacery" and huffed, "If we believe that the Paleolithic art in the caves is based on the trance, we should pack our bags and go home." That sort of backbiting is typical in interpretation controversies.

We are, however, getting better about seeing the paintings and doing fundamental interpretation, even if we don't get the big picture. It is amazing that André Leroi-Gourhan, a giant of post-war French archaeology, used punch cards to code the figures as to type, proximity to other figures, location, and so on, in order to find patterns for the work. (He was also the first to insist that if a site had to be dug up, it made little sense to dig shafts downward rather than to skim successive broad layers all the way down.) He came up with a now minor hypothesis that the figures showed a religious system of male and female animal figures and abstract signs, but his punch cards were a step into how the research is done today. Nowadays, artists take clear plastic into the cave and use one to reproduce just the red sections, one for just the black, one for the rock colors, and so on; these can be manipulated in a program like Photoshop, and the results allow thoughtful speculation about how many artists worked on a figure, which strokes were made first, and so on. That's just the most recent way to look at these fabulous works. We are bound to get better at seeing them, since we have been trying for only 200 years, and Curtis's admiring book makes it clear that for good reasons, we are never going to stop trying.

Although the earliest recognised Palaeolithic cave art was found in northern Spain, it is France where the greatest attention has been given to these enigmatic images. Gregory Curtis has visited many of the caves, and the impression he's taken away from those stygian galleries is expressively imparted in this book. Retaining a sense of wonder over time is one sign of a good science writer. Add to that sense a desire to explain both his feelings and the science struggling to understand how and why those graphics came to be and you have the makings of a fine book. Curtis is both expressive and informative in his presentation.

Curtis lines out the history of the Altamira find in northern Spain and the subsequent discoveries in France carefully and clearly. He has a nice feeling for the people who discovered Lascaux, Chauvet and the many other sites. Ancient caves being what they are, hidden by rockfalls, shrubbery or forests, children play a significant role in these accounts. Altamira, he reminds us, was entered by a father and daughter, but the parent sought artefacts on the floor, while the daughter was inquisitive enough to glance at the ceiling: "Look, Papa! Oxen!". Her "Papa", Sr de Sautuola, would prove the first of many to be embroiled in lengthy disputes over his daughter's discovery.

Disputes are the norm in archaeology, and those surrounding cave art may be among the most acrimonious. Altamira's cave paintings were first considered modern fakes and the exchanges grew so heated that de Sautuola was worn to death by the struggle. As more examples of hidden art came into view, a figure rose in France who was beset by problems of his own. The Abbe Henri Breuil, whose long career in the field would lead to him being dubbed "The Pope of Prehistory", established many standard practices for how to deal with the paintings and engravings on rocks and cave walls. He's now known for conceiving the idea that the paintings were a form of "hunting magic". Later scholars, chiefly for lack of visible evidence have dismissed that idea. Few of the painted animals are wounded.
The objections to Breuil's concept led archaeologists to turn away from "interpreting" cave art, and attention was given instead to classifying the images. Any number of assessments of image type, positioning and other relationships were developed. Curtis relates the efforts of a man little heard of today, Max Rafferty, who conceived a "structural" thesis into which cave images might be fit. "Structuralism" led to some bizarre arrangement ideas, but it boosted interest in the minds of those making the paintings. If the painters went to such pains to arrange the images, Curtis asks, what was their motive in doing so? What did the arrangements mean to the artists? Is it possible to derive what impelled them at all?

The author is careful throughout the book to show that evidence for motive behind the paintings is impossible to determine. However, he uses the career of cave painting investigator Jean Clottes to explain how far science has come since the discovery of Altamira in 1879. Clottes, collaborating with South African archaeologist David Lewis Williams, a specialist in San rock art, co-authored a work proposing shamans were the instigators or actual artists of the cave images. As Curtis notes, the theory generated a storm of controversy. For one thing, "interpretation" had fallen into disrepute. For another, the idea of "art" as the product of drug or exertion-inspired imagery seemed to "demean" the art in some fashion. Curtis is hesitant about accepting the thesis, but notes that it has the virtue of relying on recent studies of consciousness. He withholds his blanket approval, but recognises it both for the scientific underpinning and Clottes' reputation as a careful scholar. Such a figure wouldn't take up such a concept without good reason.

There's a final element in Curtis' explanations and history - the enigmatic scratchings and engravings scattered about the caves' walls. The one element lacking in all the serious conjectures and disputes about the cave paintings is humour. Even the earliest humans with enough mental capacity to conceive and execute the cave images must have had idle moments and off-beat thoughts. Some of that, he proposes, have found form in some of the less serious imagery on the rocks. More significantly, he concludes, is that the images reflect a stable social order. Whether that society was forming the basis for later, strongly hierarchical societies we developed will likely never be known. The evidence, however, does point to communities holding values and standards. Clearly, the cultures creating the paintings endured. The stretches of millennia and distances across which the themes and particular animals were repeated are testimony to that persistence. Was cave art, as a portrayal of the relationship of the human and spiritual worlds the forerunner of today's religion-based societies? Maria de Sautuola's upward glance began a new chapter in the history book of humanity. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

THE CAVE PAINTERS: PROBING THE MYSTERIES OF THE WORLD'S FIRST ARTISTS BY GREGORY CURTIS: It was a special day when Gregory Curtis was vacationing in France with his family and entered some famous caves. When he gazed upon the unique cave paintings for the first time, this book was born. The Cave Painters is a two-part story: one small part the story of the rise of Cro-Magnon, modern humans, and their painting abilities; the rest the history of those people who first discovered the paintings and how they proved their finds to the world.

In the first chapter, Curtis starts right at the beginning with the first non-ape hominid to evolve and make their way across Africa as a being that would one day be known as human. He then takes the reader on a journey evolving through different generations of the Homo genus up to Cro-Magnon, better known as Homo sapiens. Curtis also discusses the merits of whether the Neanderthals were "wiped out" by the arrival of Cro-Magnon, leaning more towards no, since the population numbers that are being discussed here are in little more than the thousands. These two different groups of people would rarely have had any contact with each other at all. Nevertheless, it is clear that Curtis has gone all out with the research, making sure that it is clear and up to date, and to put forth multiple ideas that are currently supported, and not just the one he supports.

While the reader is left wanting much more in this area, this is sadly where Curtis essentially leaves it, now taking up the history of those special people who discovered the cave paintings of Western Europe. Though in some ways this is just as moving and tumultuous a story as that of the Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals. These people, for the most part French since the largest number of caves with paintings are located in France, have their story told starting in the nineteenth century. Some were shunned and mocked and even had their careers ruined by others when they told the world of these cave paintings that were over ten thousand years old. Curtis takes the research right up to the present day with what is currently being done with the cave paintings; how probably the most famous caves at Lascaux have been recreated in a separate building due to the deterioration of the paintings by the large number of visitors.

The Cave Painters is an incredible story where the reader first learns a detailed evolutionary history of humanity, and then a detailed biographical history of the famous discoveries of specific cave paintings throughout Europe. Recently released in paperback, the book features numerous copies and illustrations of the cave paintings to aid Curtis's discussion, as well as a selection of colored plates. It is a short book that will educate the reader greatly.

[...]

Above the often boring facts of who attempted to trump whom in the world of Cave Art Studies in the last 120-odd years that this volume offers us--albeit told in as interesting a manner as possible--float the two golden points that this writer found worth the price of the book and then some.

One is an affirmation that I have always suspected: that the oh-so-serious writers who go on about the ritualistic aspects of Cave Art citing the Beast Dancer, Sorcerer, Great Cow, bird-headed man knocked down by a Lascaux bison,etc. fail to see what has been apparent to me and no doubt scores of doodlers since the first reproductions of these masterworks appeared--THEY ARE FUNNY! As Curtis says: They present..."a comic, rather than a tragic view of life." (Pg. 229). "The mysterious Unicorn in Lascaux that looks like a man in an animal suit has inspired many bewildering interpretations, but it is far less bewildering to think of it as comic, as some concoction that made Stone Age people smile..." (Pg. 232). He even applies the word "playful"--particularly to the engravings of people! How wonderful! Of course the images resonate, and perhaps were part and parcel of all the forgotten myths and religious feelings of that long-ago time, but to be given permission to SMILE at these images (as I smile at Jomon pottery at the Tokyo National Museum) is a rare gift.

The second golden point is to remind us yet again, that the images are not separate, framed in space, but the bisons and horses and other beasts are painted (in a clear sequential ordering of strokes that appears to have been handed down for thousands of years) and engraved over and against each other, inviting us to see pictorial space in a novel way. Also, that the natural contours of the cave walls suggested to those early artists the curves and shapes of the animals they painted. Curtis' book brought this home to me emphatically and inspired me to seek out one Internet site that allows one to move "through" some of these caves to get a feeling of the natural spaces that they occupy. This is no substitute for visiting the caves themselves--a trip I hope to accomplish some day before I die.

Of course, there are more riches in this volume, but these are the two BIG TICKET ITEMS that I took away from reading it. Curtis re-introduced me to the cave artists and allowed me to see them and their work in a new way. I'm sure he'll do the same for most non-specialists who pick up this book. Because he makes me want to learn more about this subject I give it my highest recommendation.

"The Cave Painters" by Gregory Curtis is no ordinary book on the great cave paintings of Southern France and Spain. This book takes the reader into not just the dark recesses of the cave, but perhaps the dark recesses of a 40,000 year old mind set.

The author also narrates the findings of these caves by early spelunkers in a style comparable to some of the best novels I have read. Mr. Curtis merges hard core fact, scientific findings, and human drama that would make any writer or investigative journalist envious.

These magnificent paintings of which Curtis writes, were evidently not something haphazardly etched upon a limestone cave wall, but "more likely than not", specialized compositions of artistic arrangements for...very specific reasons.

This cave art exudes learned and specialized artistic style. This style is not a one time epiphany from a specific Paleolithic artist but... a "virtual school" developed in time. It also appears that there were numerous artists working under the tutelage of a master artist at any given time, much like Michael Angelo thousands of years later!

Were these pictures simply a tribute to the animals themselves, or did they symbolically represent something more than ...just the animal? Was their size in comparison with each other symbolic as well? The author's extensive research and introduction of such astute individuals as Max Raphael (Chapter 5) slowly began to lead the reader into new realms and possibilities that help to illuminate the pitch darkness of prior archaeological theories, and assumed "troglodyte-mentality."

The book examines all aspects and additional theories for these cave paintings, especially in some of the deeper rooms wherein bear skulls were found positioned in an apparent altar. This find of obvious religious significance quickly lead one specialist, Jean Clottes to surmise that at least, some of the paintings were done to reproduce the images and their symbolic meaning from hallucinogenic trances as interpreted by the Paleolithic Shaman. His premise (while not very popular), may have some merit, but like most theories, it is only speculation and, as the book points out, Mr. Clottes has always been heavily influenced by the subject of Shamanism anyway.

This is a valuable book for the artist, the art-historian, the archaeologist, the historian, the symbolist, the psychologist, the parapsychologist, and... for anyone who enjoys reading.

This book is interesting and thought-provoking, so much so that I made it the next selection in my book club and even ordered another book on Lascaux with photos of the caves. Gregory Curtis does not approach paleolithic art academically. He makes it more accessible. A great introduction to this fascinating subject.

This is much more than a simple account of some cave paintings from as long as 32,000 years ago; it is also a story of how they were discovered, the nature and condition of the caves and some speculation on "Why?" they were done.

Modern paintings challenge the tenets of society; cave paintings reflect a society that lasted 20,000 years without significant change. To add to the mystery, the paintings were finished and left without further viewing. Only in modern times did they become galleries, in ancient times people did not ritually gather and see this artwork to restore their faith in their society.

"Either way, a prehistoric symbol or figure can mean anything one wants it to mean," Curtis writes. It's not a book for the fantastists or romantics; stick with 'Clan of the Cave Bear' by Jean Auel for fiction set in prehistoric times. Instead, it's a careful readable account of current knowledge about cave art most know from the examples of Altamira and Lascaux; it provides a good general foundation for new information constantly coming to light.

Cave art is magnificent; the great difficulty is understanding it began 30,000 years ago in a small region on the border between France and Spain, and was done when the population of all France was about 5,000 people. Yet, it manages to fit and astound our modern world.

Chaucer, from 800 years ago, needs a translator; Shakespeare from 500 years ago is difficult and needs explanation. Cave art combines abstract, impressionist and pictorial elements; even after 30,000 years the images are outstanding, although the social meaning may be forever lost.

Curtis begins with the entry of modern humans into Europe about 40,000 years ago, to provide a setting to underrstand the people and their surroundings. Climate change? For one thing, the Mediterranean was then about 300 feet lower than today. Cave artists painted before the last great era of climate change, before the mammoths and cave lions vanished.

His one speculation is these paintings may be "shamanistic" in meaning; shamans typically deal with three levels of the world, the heavens, everyday life, and the depths of the underworld. It's an idea that has been roundly and soundly ridiculed; but then, so was the idea of 30,000-year-old paintings when they were first discovered.

One constant element is the Mediterranean theme of bulls; Curtis writes gingerly when discussing such speculation, and he leaves it to readers to judge. The legend of the Minotaur: Is this its origins? Newgrange and related structures may also be elaborate portrayals of the underworld; even the Pharaohs wanted to be entombed under man-made "mountains."

In short, it's a fascinating book about some known unknowns.



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Having been familiar with the briefest of facts regarding the cave art in France, I was not sure what to expect when I read this book. Let's face it - this is not a frequent part of conversation today.

But what a wonderful book this is. There have been many discoveries now, and the time is right for a well-informed introduction to this subject. Sometimes the questions that are provoked by observation of the art and history is just as rich and revealing as the discoveries themselves.

Were these people of 30,000 years ago merely scribbling on the wall, or are there indications of a higher purpose and underlying structure? The answer is subjective, but the well-written narratives of Mr. Curtis allow your mind to consider questions such as who were these people? Did they dream, have friendships, travel beyond their usual territory? Why did they draw some of the things the way they did? What happened in the huge gaps of time when no-one visited the caves?

If a person 32,000 years ago created art in Chauvet, when another person came along 10,000 years later, were they shocked? Did they suspect intruders, or did they eventually realize that the art before them may be from their ancestors? There weren't that many other people around, so that conclusion is possible. Art was rarely defaced or overlapped. And how did these sites survive, in some cases, tens of thousands of years without being destroyed by later people or the elements?

The writing style of this book is easy to follow, and very well done. It is at the same time well-grounded in the facts and personalities of the subject, while frequently asking the right questions and not afraid to journey into unexplored territory.

Enjoy!

It has been many years since I have studied this period of archaeology/history. In preparing for a trip to Southwest France and vists to some of the caves or pseudo caves in the case of Lascaus II, I decided on this book. It is a very accurate and readable summary of the painted caves. It weaves the discovery, excavation and art into a very readable and enjoyable story. Would be good for someone who has no background in archaeology or prehistory of this part of present day Europe.

I read this book on the way to visit the cave paintings of France. It's an excellent introduction to the subject - accessible, interesting, full of anecdotes and vivid writing. As well, there are many avenues for further reading and research. I enjoyed seeing the cave paintings of Font-de-Gaume and Lascaux II very much more because I had read this book. Several good illustrations.