OK one more musing about human pre-history. We have many cave paintings from all around the world and they almost always show animals, the accuracy and beauty of these drawings of the fauna are such that we can tell the sex, age and exact species in many cases. There is a wall of animal footprints carved in stone and you can tell the age and sex of the animals *from the prints* our ancestors knew the natural world intimately and made careful records of this knowledge. 1/
https://sauropods.win/@futurebird/113537839712838040
@futurebird
Great thread!
@futurebird
Just to emphasize the question, which is an excellent one: a thread with some pictures and context
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@futurebird Marvelous thread!
I'm thinking a couple things:
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@futurebird
If my memory serves, and it doesn’t always, one of the explanations for cave art is that it was a spiritual/magical work.
Imagine crawling into a cave, perhaps even very deep […]
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Thank you for this collective thread of thoughtful theorising. 🙏
2024-11-24 noplasticshower ┃ 1🔗
@futurebird you might enjoy reading this ...
@futurebird There were a lot fewer faces back then, and a lot more animals. And while it was helpful to be familiar with the faces of your kin, it would have been more immediately important to […]
@futurebird
There are theories that point to cave paintings being animated with the aid of flickering light sources. Maybe to enact the hunt in symbolic form almost as a video game. In that […]
2024-11-24 NuanceRhymesWithOrange
@futurebird perhaps it is related to our notions of time.
Paintings of antelope on a cave wall were always useful and relevant, because the antelope were always around in that […]
@futurebird and what about a cultural learning explanation? Like, what you needed to learn was about animals, recognize them, learn to hunt them, etc. And just as when you draw a technical […]
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