Andre Leroi-Gourhan's dualism
Andre Leroi-Gourhan brought an attitude of scientific analysis to the
study of Paleolithic cave art that had been missing. He began amassing
statistical data on the animals depicted, and tried to analyze the cave
as a complete manuscript, not as a collection of single images. Breuil,
his predecessor, was an illustrator and explainer who tended to see each
image in isolation. In fact, there are not many obvious scenes or groups.
Animals are placed right next to each other at different scales and there
is never a groundline or background. Leroi-Gourhan though began to see
some patterns. He became convinced that there was often a main gallery
showing a pair of animals, usually a horse and a bison, but a horse and
a bull (a male auroch - an extinct ancestor of modern cattle) was also
common. The animals were symbols, not to be read with intuitive explanations
of "magic" or with reference to the beliefs of modern tribes,
but with literal analysis of species, number and location.
"Leroi-Gourhan eventually divided animal figures into four groups.
Group A was the horse, which consitutes about 30% of all parietal (permanent
- cave wall as opposed to portable) animals; B was the bison and aurochs,
also 30%; C was animals such as deer, ibex and mammoth, another 30%; D,
the final 10%, comprised the rarer animals such as bears, felines and
rhinos...He also divided caves into entrance zones, central zones, and
side chambers and dark ends. About 90% of A and B were concentrated on
the main panels in the central areas, the majority of C figures were near
the entrance... while D animals clusered in the more remote zones"
(Bahn 167).
Leroi-Gourhan saw the central pair as a "mythogram" - an unknown but definite message implicitly stating a world-view of duality - and extended this to the even more enigmatic signs. His most ambitious theory was to divide all animals and the abundant signs into two classifications, male and female. He saw signs as either being wide, a vulva, or being thin, a penis.
Modern archeologists believe he went too far. The theory that all animals
and signs somehow represented a male-female duality has been almost entirely
rejected. Paleolithic cave art encompasses 20,000 years, too long for
a single canon to hold. The caves themselves are unique. They do not always
have a known entrance and an obvious central area. There are regional
differences in animals shown and style. In the end, his theories were
contradicted by actual data. Nevertheless, caves do have some remarkable
similarities in the style and limited number of species. His ambitious
approach to catalog all known caves suggests to many the beginning of
real science. "His results are too erroneous to be fully accepted,
but also too revelatory to be dismissed. He found order and repeated associations,
but not a universally applicable formula"(Bahn 173).
Prehistoric Painting: Lascaux - or the Birth of Art, text by Georges Bataille, photos by Hans Hinz, Claudio Emmer. Albert Skira publisher, Switzerland, 1955.