Prehistoric art language

In December 1994, Jean-Marie Chauvet and two friends discovered the cave system in the Ardèche region of France. Fortunately, they found vivid frescoes about horses, lions, bulls, rhinos as well as mammoths. Some pictures are drawn, others are ' touching ' the cave walls.

Chauvet's discovery is one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of the twentieth century. But like other discoveries, while answering many problems, it also raises many new questions.

When did the primitive man show the mud in the mud and entered the cave? Why did they go deep into the ground to paint? Is that mysterious behavior the source of what we call 'art' today? How do these images relate to bone carvings, ivory and figurines found in Neolithic sites? These questions have been asked before, but now they need to be answered as soon as possible.

A vivid painting about horses in the Ardèche cave
(Photo: renminbao)

Chauvet in the cave is easily identified by Chauvet. The technique of radioactive carbon showed that they were 32,410 years old, with an error of 720 years. Those are the most sophisticated paintings that we have ever known. They appear almost simultaneously with the presence of modern people in Western Europe. They pose a completely new question, can ' art ' appear completely from the beginning, but not through a process of development from low to high? And why painting deep in the ground?

Why the great question?

In 1860, when the first ' artworks ' were discovered, researchers assumed that their only motive was aesthetics. In other words, Neolithic paintings are simply ' art of art ' and painting is a pastime of prehistoric people. But it is difficult to imagine the primitive man crawling down to the deep cave just to paint the animals they see around him on the ground.

Even the phrase ' art of art ' needs to be set correctly, because many art historians believe that there is no such thing as an ' artistic taste '. Studying the role of art in societies outside the West - especially in the East - shows that art is always placed in a social network and has many purposes.

The famous historian Abbé Henri Breuil studied the mural on the cliff (Photo: culture.gouv) The explanation for the dangerous roads deep in the earth appeared almost without delay. French researcher Salomon Reinach (1902) argued that ' using magic to manipulate ' is the reason. People draw pictures to control the animals they still hunt. That behavior is often covered under mysterious veil and must be made far from residence is understandable. Then when discovering the drawings of lions, the famous historian Abbé Henri Breuil (1952) said that people draw for their health . According to Reinach, through ' art ', the Neolithic people hope to hunt many animals for the hunt to succeed.

Gradually, the researchers realized that it was a very simple explanation. It cannot be true for many types of art and does not explain the features not yet discovered. For example, it does not take into account the fact that the shape of the cliffs and walls is often used as the outline of the figure.

In the 60s of the last century, Leroi-Gourhan, Breuil's former student, offered a completely new explanation. It is based on the essay structure, a philosophical viewpoint developed by ethnologist Claude Lévi-Strauss. The essay structure suggests that everyone thinks in a dualistic way, because the brain is connected like that (two hemispheres have complementary functions). So our thinking is often different: natural / cultural, hot / cold, bright / dark, we / them, male / female .

It is male / female that Leroi-Gourhan wants to theorize . He believed that in all 20,000 years of the Neolithic period, caves were structured according to the male / female principle. Some animals, like horses, symbolize masculinity, while others, like bulls, symbolize femininity.

' Female ' species gather in the middle of the cave, while ' male ' species are dispersed everywhere. Lions, bears and other dangerous animals are located deep in the cave. Unfortunately, the evidence does not support this interesting hypothesis: the drawings are quite random in the cave.

In 1972, Marshach assumed that some of the 'ivory or ivory' works , dating back to 32,000 years, could be a kind of calendar. In 1983, Pfeiffer provided an additional explanation for Leroi-Gourhan's conception, focusing on the impact of the deep environment on the senses and the human spirit.

Today we explore the cave system with modern light and know many people who used to be there before. Pfeiffer said that with the Neolithic people, the situation was completely different. Under the flickering torchlight, the animal images seemed to move and breathe. It is impossible to understand the motive of primitive people if they ignore that important detail

Bullock painting in the Ardèche cave (Photo: lehmpfuhl.org)

The world of souls

Currently, researchers are debating an explanation based on the brain's neural connection, but not with the above duality. It comes from the fact that most of the hunting and gathering societies in the world have a common belief system that is magical, even though it has many different metamorphosis. The magical community always believes that, in addition to the world in which they live, there is a world of spirits.

The mission of a mage is to penetrate that world to communicate with the souls, heal diseases, control the animal environment and change the weather . In doing so, they must undergo ' a state of change of consciousness ', from mild separation to strong hallucination or dreaming. At that time, they can meet an animal soul to receive its power and help.

In this explanation, the cave of the Neolithic period is the path to the afterlife . Physical efforts when you have to crawl deep into the cave will help further the sense of isolation, because then the body releases chemicals that facilitate meditation. In that kingdom, magicians search for animal spirits in the role of helpers and other images. By looking and contacting, it is like burning torches and then rubbing them off again, they see the walls of the cave as a membrane separating them and the world of spirits.

David Lewis-Williams is based on rock paintings in South Africa that say: they are often created in self-meditation (Photo: gradnet.wits.ac)

When believing that an animal soul has been captured, they ' pull ' it through the diaphragm and use their artistic skills to ' fix ' what they ' see ' on the cave wall. That is why many images seem to come from the shape of the stone surface, or part of the stone slab. On the other hand, some images are so big and complex that they seem to be made by a group of people. With the stone slabs available, humans can prepare images that will come to them deep in the cave.

Vu Arts is a dynamic system of beliefs and thoughts that people can handle and change depending on each social situation. Some of its basic characteristics, such as belief in the afterlife, do not seem to change during the Neolithic period, but other characteristics may change after every millennium.

Based on South African rock paintings, David Lewis-Williams and Thomas Dowson (1988) recently proposed an unexpected hypothesis. They think that they are often created in self-promotion . Psychology states that, in the state of changing consciousness that appears due to meditation, due to the use of hallucinogens or sensory isolation, the brain and the eyes will coordinate to create unusual images. They also said that such images not only appear in South African ' art ' rock, but also in France's Lascaux, as well as in many parts of the world.

Some important questions related to ' art museums ' at Ardethe and other caves can be answered by the concept of magic. Other numbers are not yet. For example, what does a bull image mean differently from a horse image? Does the horse carved on the bone carry people with other horses painted in the cave? We simply don't know. The only thing that is completely clear is that these murky frescoes show that, at Chauvet and in many other places, we have been fortunate to touch the long-lost world of the first real person.

When exploring the content, meaning and motives of prehistoric ' art ', we need to avoid the unipolar view, as Ucko and Rosenfeld point out from 1967. Because above all, it is a complex person. , with the ability to perfectly integrate cosmic concepts, magic and functional objectives in the same work.

Do Kien Cuong