We went to some ancient caves in the country. We witnessed what few have seen, paintings that were over 12,000 years old, charcoal and iron oxide drawings of horses, deer, bear, fish, goats, and cows. They were so remarkable because they signify that humans have been living in this area for... well a very long time. This particular cave was basically in someone's back yard, protected by an iron gate. Years ago it may have been the summer hunting home of our human ancestors as they sought game and enjoyed the valley of plenty.
Some of the drawings were simple outlines, themselves sophisticated abstractions of the 3d world. Others were fully colored with rust and have withstood over 120 centuries in that still cave. I stood there before those simple scratches on the caves trying to imagine this person there, with stick in hand, under torchlight, depicting something. Why did they do it? I tried hard to see that person. I squinted through the battery powered halogen lights until I swear I could see it, there in the dark, an arm reaching out with a stick rendering immortality.
They may have believed that by drawing these animals they might render them more vulnerable, perhaps they would be able to hunt easier, like capturing their soul, their spirit.
And then a thought popped into my head, something that Tom had said to me while we were playing basketball the day before. "Visualize your shot." I swear I could sometimes see that ball make the arch and drop, swish, before I shot it.
Maybe that's it, perhaps what I could begin to see through the dark was something familiar, something that even through 12,000 years of separation, felt close, felt familiar, more than just an old scribble that invokes more questions than answers. Archaeologists and scientists study those drawings wondering why most of them point to the back of the cave (or was it out), why they drew so many horses, but really only ate deer. What did they signify? Why did they do them?
Maybe they were visualizing their shots, learning more about these animals that lived with them. An art teacher once told me that drawing was 99% observation. I fully believe that, and I think that intuitively ancient man without written language to communicate, realized that rendering by drawing was the beginning to understanding better the world they lived in. By recreating creation in abstracted forms, we can begin to make sense, grasp the truth from a different perspective, understand it in a new way. The ancient humans were no different then we, they were not as unsophisticated as we would like to believe, silly, superstitious people who thought that by drawing animals they would be able to hunt them better. What is that? Magic? How silly.
Maybe what's silly is how quickly we dismiss those old lessons, the first lessons. "My God, that really captured the spirit of the moment!" we exclaim. "How well you've captured her spirit in that photo!" "That song really takes me back." "I cried during Titanic." "She has her mother's spirit." "I feel the anguish in Picasso's 'Gernika'."
We've been learning that lesson throughout the centuries as artists seek out new abstractions, new ways of looking at reality.
Isn't if funny how we're still drawing on walls? Why do we do it, what does it mean? In the end I can only say that I believe it is representative of our struggle to understand ourselves and to communicate what we understand to others. If my trip from some of the newest to some of the oldest has taught me anything, it has only let me know that we share more in common with our ancestors than I thought. Rather than primitive savages running around in a fog of barely conscious sentience, scared of everything, and fearful of their surroundings, struggling to separate themselves from the animal kingdom, I see them as sophisticated, intelligent, aware, emotional human beings who knew there were things they did not know and sought them out.