4

Art for art's sake

Prior to discovering the painted caves, archeologists in Europe had frequently been digging up portable art from Paleolithic shelters. The objects were usually small carved bone or ivory. Primitive man had no religion, it was thought, and could not conceive of God. The artifacts were mere decoration (Bahn 149). Humans have an inherent trait for appreciation of beauty. Paleolithic people must have hunted abundant animals with relative ease to have time left over to carve designs into their spear throwers (Bahn-Fagan 597) (Lewis-Williams 42). The decorated objects themselves had no deep or symbolic meaning, they were "art for art's sake."

With the discovery of the first painted caves, however, the idea that Paleolithic art had no meaning other than aesthetic was no longer sufficient. Altamira, the first cave discovered, was so surprising in its execution that the archeological establishment thought for 20 years it was a hoax. With further discoveries it became clear, as Bahn says, this was not idle doodling: "the restricted range of species depicted, their frequent inaccessibility and their association in caves, the palimpsets (paintings on top of other paintings) and undecorated objects or panels, the enigmatic signs, the many figures which are purposely incomplete, ambiguous or broken, and the caves which were decorated but apparently not inhabited, all combine to suggest that there is complex meaning behind both the subject matter and the location of Palaeolithic figures" (Bahn 150).