Discovering the Reasons Behind Cave Art

Annette Laming-Emperaire divides the archaeological was of studying primitive art into two ways: the first is by laying out artifacts in chronological order, dividing them by size, or age. The second way to look at the art is by taking at the artifacts in the order that they are found, and creating a story behind each artifact found, how it was made, what it was for, and how it was used.

The first school seems much more logical to use. I think that the approach of finding facts about the artifacts is most reliable, but I would find it close to impossible to find a handful of artifacts and not make up images in my head of how they were being used. I think that both types for research are important and will prove to be beneficial. With the first school finding facts about the artifact (or at least somewhat close estimates about age and how long it has been in the cave), the second form of studying focuses more on the culture that the tool came from and whoever was making paintings in the cave. By trying to predict what these early people were doing, we may eventually stumble on a hypothesis that is likely.

Laming-Emperaire explains different theories have about why people created these cave paintings. She gives examples about how there may be important to what species and sex of an animal is in each cave. No one is sure if the sex and species of each cave painted animal was thoroughly thought out of if it was just a coincidence that we are looking too far into.

I agree with Laming-Emperaire when she writes about cave art possibly having religious reasons behind them, and that they were created by people trying to understand the world in which they were living. Laming-Emperaire writes, “They could be mythic and recount for example the origins and history of a certain human group in its rapport with the animal species; they could solidify a very ancient metaphysics and express a system of existence where each species, animal or human, has it role, and where the sexual division among beings plays a primordial role; they could be religious and bring supernatural beings onto the scene.”