'They take you out of life, out of time': a journey into Spain's cave paintings

Posted by NaOH 2 days ago

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Comment by dominictorresmo 27 seconds ago

Amazing that some of those paintings have a very good quality. They really trained for a long time before making some of those drawings, so they are much more intelligent than I think they were

Comment by ljf 1 hour ago

Stunning, and amazing to consider that these were painted by firelight/flaming torch.

If you've not watched the Herzog classic "Cave of Forgotten Dreams" - I highly highly recommend it - the paintings are amazing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_of_Forgotten_Dreams

I was recently remembering my son's obsession with trains, buses and dustbin lorries when he was 2 to 5 - a friend tried to explain it as akin the the passion people would have felt for mega-fauna of the past. Did children of the cave-ages obsess over mammoths in the way he did over our local bus?

Comment by petargyurov 1 hour ago

I've been to the Altamira cave reproduction and I was skeptical at first on whether I'd feel immersed but they've done an incredible job of it. You quickly forget it's "fake" and sink back into time... It's marvellous.

It makes me wonder how much palaeolithic art has been lost because it wasn't done inside a cave.

Comment by embedding-shape 5 minutes ago

My first reaction upon seeing the article, was to figure out how I can see these paintings in person, and seems you cannot anymore, they don't accept visitor requests unless you have a scientific/research purpose which I don't :/

So this reproduction you're talking about, it's the "Neocueva" from Museo Nacional y Centro de Investigación de Altamira I suppose? I guess it'll serve as a better than nothing, but similar to you, I'm really skeptical it'd be the same for me. Just being aware it's a reproduction I feel like kind of defeats the purpose. I want to feel the spirits of my ancestors when I'm there.

Seems there are more caves with paintings though, another one is Cueva de El Castillo at Monte Castillo, Puente Viesgo, Cantabria. Anyone here from HN that visited those caves before and could share their experience?

Comment by hilariously 3 minutes ago

Most of it. Probably 99.99999% type of thing - when I was in Grotte de Cussac there was external markings and it was clear that weathering was to blame for only having what's in the caves.

Comment by ilamont 1 hour ago

What's really amazing is that they still don't know the "why" other than some interesting speculation: religious purposes, places for psychadelic trips, "the creation of surpluses in some kind of hierarchy."

Coincidentally, last week the local public television station was replaying a very old program of Bill Moyers interviewing Joseph Campbell, who died in the late 80s and was known for studies of mythology. He had visited Lascaux, and believed that it was used for coming of age ceremonies:

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: The message of the cave is of a relationship of time to eternal powers that is somehow to be experienced in that place. Now, I tell you, when you’re down in those caves, it’s a strange transformation of consciousness you have. You feel this is the womb, this is the place from which life comes, and that world up there in the sun with all those … that’s a secondary world: this is primary. I mean, this just overcomes you. ...

Now, what were these caves used for? The speculations that are most common of scholars interested in this, is that they had to do with the initiation of boys into the hunt. You go in there, it’s dangerous, it’s very dangerous. It’s completely dark. It’s cold and dank. You’re banging your head on projections all the time, and it was a place of fear. And the boys were to overcome all that, and go into the womb of the earth. And the shaman, or whoever it was that would be helping you through, would not be making it easy.

BILL MOYERS: And then there was a release, once you got into that vast, torchlit chamber down there. What was the tribe, what was the tradition trying to say to the boy?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: That is the womb land from which all the animals come.

BILL MOYERS: I see.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: And the rituals down there have to do with the generation of a situation that will be propitious for the hunt. And the boys were to learn not only to hunt, but how to respect the animals and what rituals to perform, and how in their own lives no longer to be little boys but to be men. Because those hunts were very, very dangerous hunts, believe me, and these are the Original men’s rile sanctuaries, when: the boys became no longer their mothers’ sons, but their fathers’ sons.

https://billmoyers.com/content/ep-3-joseph-campbell-and-the-...

Comment by dieselgate 8 minutes ago

There's no way to determine a "why" and there probably wasn't a single purpose in my opinion. The most interesting part to me, though, is how a lot of the hand "prints" include children.

Comment by TFNA 31 minutes ago

Joseph Campbell is not regarded within anthropology and paleontology as a serious scholar. He is a purely pop-sci phenomenon, boosted by his association with Star Wars and friendship with Bill Moyers. Maybe not exactly a crackpot Graham Hancock kind of figure, but more comparable to that instead of anyone authoritative.