Which of the Following Is Not a Theory About the Reasons Palaeolithic People Created Cave Art?
Rock art (as well known as parietal fine art) is an umbrella term which refers to several types of creations including finger markings left on soft surfaces, bas-relief sculptures, engraved figures and symbols, and paintings onto a rock surface. Cave paintings, above all forms of prehistoric art, have received more attention from the academic research community.
Paleolithic Cavern Painting in Altamira Cavern
Rock fine art has been recorded in Africa, the Americas, Asia, Commonwealth of australia, and Europe. The earliest examples of European stone fine art are dated to nigh 36,000 years agone, but it was not until effectually xviii,000 years ago that European stone art actually flourished. This was the time post-obit the finish of the Terminal Glacial Maximum (22,000-19,000 years ago) when climatic conditions were beginning to improve subsequently reaching their most critical point of the Ice Age. Upper Paleolithic rock art disappeared suddenly during the Paleolithic-Mesolithic transition period, effectually 12,000 years ago, when the Ice Historic period environmental conditions were fading.
It has been suggested that at that place is a correlation between demographic and social patterns and the flourishing of rock art: In Europe, the rock art located in the Franco-Cantabrian region (from southeastern France to the Cantabrian Mountains in northern Spain) has been studied in great item. During the late Upper Paleolithic, this area was an platonic setting for prolific populations of several herbivorous species and, consequently, a high level of human being population could exist supported, which is reflected in the affluence of the archaeological material found in the region. Still, in recent years the geographic region in which Upper Paleolithic rock art is known has increased significantly.
After over a century of discussion almost the 'meaning' of rock art, no complete scholarship consensus exists, and several explanations accept been proposed to account for the proliferation of this prehistoric art. What follows is a brief summary of some of the explanations that accept been put forwards to account for the meaning of European Upper Paleolithic rock art.
ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES WORLDWIDE Unremarkably EMPHASIZE THE RELIGIOUS/SPIRITUAL ORIGIN OF Rock Art.
Art for Art's Sake
This is maybe the simplest of all theories almost Upper Paleolithic rock art. This view holds that there is no real meaning behind this type of art, that it is nothing but the product of an idle activity with no deep motivation behind it, a "mindless decoration" in the words of Paul Bahn. As elementary and innocent equally this view may sound, information technology has some of import implications. Some belatedly 19th- and early on 20th-century scholars saw people in the Upper Paleolithic communities as brute savages incapable of being driven by deep psychological motivations, and they even rejected the thought that rock art could have any connection with religion/spiritual concerns or any other subtle motivation. This approach is not accepted today, but it was an influential one in the early years of archæology.
Cavern Painting in the Altamira Cavern
Purlieus Markers
Some scholars have claimed that rock art was produced equally boundary markers past different communities during the time when climatic conditions increased the competition for territory between Upper Paleolithic hunter-gatherer communities. Cave art, according to this view, is seen as a sign of the indigenous or territorial divisions within the different Upper Paleolithic human groups coexisting in a given area. Cave art was used as a marker past hunting-gathering communities in order to bespeak to other groups their 'right' to exploit a specific expanse and avert potential conflicts. Michael Jochim and Clive Adventure have fabricated very similar arguments: they proposed the idea that the Franco-Cantabrian region was a glacial refugium with such a high population density during the Upper Paleolithic that art was used as a social-cultural device to promote social cohesion in the face of the otherwise inevitable social conflict.
This argument is in line with demographic and social patterns during the Upper Paleolithic. More population density meant more than competition and territorial awareness. Notwithstanding, this model has some flaws. Hatfield and Pittman note that this arroyo is not consequent with the stylistic unity displayed by some rock art traditions. David Whitley has observed that this argument is non merely filled with a dose of 'western bias.' simply it also contradicts the fact that no ethnographic study provides support for this claim. It could also be said that if Upper Paleolithic groups increased their awareness of territoriality, it is reasonable to wait some sort of indication of this in the archaeological record, such equally an increase of signs of injuries inflicted with sharp or blunt weapons in homo remains, or other signs of trauma that could be linked to inter-group conflicts. Although in this case it is possible that if the art actually helped to avoid conflict, no such signs would be detected.
Structuralist Hyphothesis
By analyzing the distribution of the images in different caves, André Leroi-Gourhan suggested that the distribution of the cave paintings is non random: he claimed there is a construction or design in its distribution, sometimes referred to as a 'blueprint'. Nigh horses and bison figures were, according to Leroi-Gourhan'due south studies, located in cardinal sections of the caves and were also the nigh abundant animals, about sixty% of the total. Leroi-Gourhan added that bisons represented female and horse male person identity. He argued that some unchanging concepts relating to male and female identity were the basis of rock art. In the words of Paul Mellars:
Paleolithic art might be seen as reflecting some primal "binary opposition" in Upper Paleolithic society, structured (perchance predictably) around the oppositions betwixt male and female components of gild (Mellars, in Cunliffe 2001: 72).
In addition to studying the figurative art, Leroi-Gourhan also paid attention to the abstract motifs and tried to explain them within the context of the structuralist idea that was dominant during his time in linguistics, literary criticism, cultural studies, and anthropology, especially in French republic. Structuralist thought claims that human cultures are systems that can be analyzed in terms of the structural relations amid their elements. Cultural systems contain universal patterns that are products of the invariant structure of the human mind: proof of this can be detected in the patterns displayed in mythology, art, religion, ritual, and other cultural traditions.
Cave Paintings in the Chauvet Cave
Initially, this caption was very pop and widely accepted past scholars. However, when André Leroi-Gourhan attempted to fit the evidence into his standard layout scheme, a correlation could not be proven. It also became axiomatic, every bit more rock art was discovered, that each site had a unique layout and information technology was not possible to apply a general scheme that would fit all of them.
Although unsuccessful, the arroyo of André Leroi-Gourhan was influential. He likewise has some other important merit: at the fourth dimension, structuralist thought was ascendant in many bookish disciplines: by attempting a structuralist caption of rock art, Leroi-Gourhan was seeking to show that Upper Paleolithic people were not ignorant savages merely were people with cerebral capacity, simply like people today.
Hunting Magic
Some other suggestion is that Upper Paleolithic rock art is a manifestation of sympathetic magic, designed equally an help for hunting, in the words of Paul Mellars, to "secure command over particular species of animals which were crucially important human food supply". Some supporting show of this view includes the fact that sometimes the animals were apparently depicted with inflicted wounds, coupled with ethnographic analogy based on supposed similarities between Upper Paleolithic art and Australian Ancient rock art. Magic rituals may not have a direct textile consequence, only this blazon of practice surely boosts the conviction and has a direct psychological benefit (a form of placebo upshot), increasing the success of hunting activities. In this context, Upper Paleolithic rock fine art is seen every bit a tool to magically benefit the groups' subsistence, encouraging the success of the hunters.
The ethnographic data indicating that magic plays a significant role in tribal life does not only come from Australian Ancient groups. Other examples are found among the native Kiriwina people who alive in Papua New Republic of guinea, where the levels of superstition and magic ceremonies rise with the levels of incertitude: when it comes to canoe building, for example, we read that magic
is used only in the example of the larger body of water-going canoes. The small canoes, used on the calm lagoon or near the shore, where at that place is no danger, are quite ignored by the magician (Malinowski 1948: 166, emphasis added).
This emphasizes the idea that magic can exist a psychological response to conditions where dubiety grows, which is what we would look in the case of hunters affected by increasing population pressure.
Shamanism
In this explanation, Upper Paleolithic art is the event of drug-inducing trance-similar states of the artists. This is based on ethnographic information linked to San rock art in Southern Africa, which has some common elements with European Upper Paleolithic art.
San rock fine art
Lewis-Williams has argued that some of the abstract symbols are actually depictions of hallucinations and dreams. The San religious specialists, or Shamans, perform their religious functions under a drug-induced state: going into trance allows them to enter into the 'spirit realm', and it is during this states that shamans claim to see 'threads of lights' which are used to enter and go out the spirit realm. When the human brain enters into certain altered states, bright lines are part of the visual hallucinations experienced by the individuals: this pattern is not linked to the cultural background but rather a default response of the encephalon. Long, thin red lines interacting with other images are present in San rock paintings and are considered to be the 'threads of light' reported by the shamans, while the spirit realm is believed to exist behind the rock walls: some of the lines and other images appear to enter or exit from cracks or steps in the rock walls, and the paintings are 'veils' between this world and the spirit globe.
This is another solid statement. Even so, there is no basis to generalize the idea of shamanism as the cause of European rock art as a whole. Shamanic practices could exist, at all-time, considered a specific variation of the religious and magical traditions. Shamans do not create magic and organized religion; instead, it is the propensity for believing in magic and religion present in virtually every society that is the origin of shamans. Ultimately, this argument rests on magic and religious practices, not far from the argument that sees fine art as a course of hunting magic.
Conclusion
Since nearly all cultural developments have multiple causes, information technology seems reasonable to suppose that the development of the Upper Paleolithic has a multi-causal explanation rather than a single crusade. None of the arguments presented above can business relationship fully for the development of Upper Paleolithic rock art in Europe.
Anthropological studies worldwide commonly emphasize the religious/spiritual origin of rock art. This is not the only origin detected through ethnographic studies; there are examples of secular use, simply it is plainly the almost frequent. However, it could besides be the case that art in the European Upper Paleolithic had a different meaning from the communities that ethnographers have been able to study. Archæology has been able to find caves that may have been connected to rituals and magic at to the lowest degree in some Upper Paleolithic communities of Europe. Human burials were found in the Cussac cavern associated with Paleolithic fine art: according to some authors, this stresses the religious/spiritual character of the rock art found in some caves.
Cave Painting in Lascaux
If the assumption that at least some European rock was created for religious reasons tin be accustomed, and then it is rubber to suppose that rock art is only the near archaeologically visible evidence of prehistoric ritual and belief, and unless rock fine art was the only and sectional material expression of the religious life of prehistoric communities, we tin can presume that in that location is an entire range of religious material that has not survived. Some of the Upper Paleolithic portable art could too be connected to religious aspects and exist part of the 'material bundle' of prehistoric ritual.
Our knowledge about the pregnant of Upper Paleolithic rock and portable art should not exist considered either correct or wrong, just fragmentary. The element of doubt, which involves the rejection of any grade of dogmatic or simplistic explanation, is likely to always exist present in this subject area. This should pb to flexible models complementing each other and the willingness to accept that, equally more evidence is revealed, arguments volition have to exist adjusted.
This commodity has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to bookish standards prior to publication.
Source: https://www.worldhistory.org/article/787/the-meaning-of-european-upper-paleolithic-rock-art/
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