Paleolithic Art

What beautiful work was laid out on the canvas of our world many years ago by our ancestors. With this beautiful part of history come questions: What inspired this Paleolithic art? What did the numerous cave paintings mean? Where they creditable? Many ideas may race through one’s head. R. Dale Guthrie says that the work in Eurasia is the only representational art work that is unquestionable. The fact that it was preserved so well attests to the importance it may have had to the people. Guthrie states that his goal for the book as a whole is to combine the view of ourselves as evolved organisms that have a core adaptive nature, and the forensic evidence incorporated with Paleolithic art. With assumptions about the thought process of these people, one can agree that a magico-religious paradigm is a good explanation for the purpose and inspiration of the works. But, with many contradicting facts explained by our author, one could easily disagree. There are many factors that make up the human ability to create art. Hunters were explained as possibly having drawn these paintings of mammoths and other beast. This would make sense to me because they could have seen the animals as majestic, beautiful, powerful, and so-on, thus motivating them to honor, or document them in art work –expressiveness.
I like the way the author explains the inability for us to assume any universal rules of human belief. If the peoples that formed the art work were indeed adapting and evolving, not being at the level we are in our current state, then one cannot assume anything to be intuitive according to our own biology and cognitive ability. Meanings to them could have as much of a difference in context as individual cultures of our day.
Although we find these differences to be quite likely, the one constant, or universal that might have been missed is motive. What universal drives do all living things share? This brings us to a question of necessity. The author has established that art is representational and expressive, and that there are many factors to be sifted through before coming to an answer about the reason for its creation, but if given the motive it narrows the array of possibilities. For instance, painting an animal that is considered a good kill, the best to hunt, could give insight to future tribe members—very essential. Having knowledge of the mysterious could be believed to give insight to future tribe members that might save their life from the evil spirits. The author speaks of the common ability to reason objectively. This ability to is shown in the art as the author states. In art of social settings, this ability to perceive reality in a way that will be beneficial is essential to human survival.

Neanderthals

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I think that its rather interesting that the Neanderthals were said to possibly be a mix of two species that had interbred. Its facinating how their structure is so different from ours, and yet similar as a whole. They are said to have had larger brains then us, yet they were more primitive. All these interesting findings, but I found the most compelling information, relevant to this class, in the rituals, and in the song reading. A commonly noticed ritual found at the sites were burial grounds. Within these tombs lay valuables insisting that there primitive beings sensed the idea of an after life, and possibly some higher being to pay homage to. Where did this belief come from, and how did it develope in such a short time frame? Maybe all homo sapiens, if these Neandarthals are indeed sapien in any way, are hard-wired to believe in a higher being. One cannot assume the like of such a being, or the character, purpose, or power they believed it had, but non-the-less, it meant enough to them to take time and energy to acknowledge. On the contrary, there are no symbolic artefacts. This would cause one to assume that no ritual ceremonies similar to communion, or others so forth that involve symbolic cups, chests, stafs, and so on, were performed. What then do the items placed in tombs imply? Maybe they thought it would bring them back to life, or maybe like the egyptians, they thought their riches would go with them into the afterlife. I found it interesting, the portion on metaphors as a prospect of religious belief. Why would such a primitive, simple culture, with no use of nonsense (essentially, if evolution worked as it should, nothing would be useless about any living organism) engage in metaphorical cognition--it would waste valuable time, and energy presumably. I also found the flute rather perplexing, yet only for a moment, for it is rather intuitive to believe, with the evidence provided, that a cave bear or other animal did indeed make the holes with its canines. What things a musical instrument would have eluded to?!