Egyptian PhD candidate, Mohammed Elrazzaz makes the reader consider the origins of art in light of the refined dating techniques that indicate cave art is much older than previously thought:

"Do you understand the sadness of geography?" was posited in Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient. Most assuredly we do! There is almost no uncharted territory on the planet, no brave new world and no last frontier to conquer. Or maybe there is?

In the dark depths of ancient caves: a world of bison, horses, red deer and mammoths. Or a world where painted people swim on cave walls as far from water as ever imaginable! Such was the world that the Hungarian explorer László Almásy (aka the English Patient) discovered in the Cave of Swimmers in Egypt’s Gilf Kebir back in 1933.

The painted swimmers are some 10,000 years old, but tens of millennia earlier, something incredible happened in another cave in another place in the world – something that revolutionised our understanding of art and its earliest birth pangs.

New discovery proves art predates modern man

"The rock engravings and paintings that are found throughout the world could be said to constitute the greatest art museum on the planet, a vast gallery representing the more than 40,000 years during which humanity has attempted to express an inner vision of life…" -Jean Clottes, prominent French prehistoric art expert, wrote in his book World Rock Art

The story is not a new one. The story is old…older than recorded history: the story is prehistoric; its plot unfolds in caves and rock shelves from the Americas through the continents of the old world and all the way to Australia.

The story, it seems, predates modern man (Homo sapiens sapiens).

Remarkably, the application of refined rock-dating techniques to El Castillo Cave (Spain) suggests that art was invented by our predecessors, the Neanderthals – not homo sapiens – over 40,000 years ago.

Rock engravings (petroglyphs) and paintings (pictographs) are only two forms of rock art created during the Stone Age. Other forms include huge stone structures, like Stonehenge (megaliths) as well as carved bones, antlers, statuettes, figurines and other mobile objects (portables).

Of all these forms, cave paintings are the most fascinating due to the sophistication of the technique and the refinement of the execution. They are, lamentably, the most fragile, as well.

Prehistoric art studio

1879: A little girl accidently discovered what her father (an archaeologist) had always been looking for: Palaeolithic art. "Look papa! Oxen!" she exclaimed. They were actually coloured depictions of bison inside the Cave of Altamira.

The discovery was the first of its kind, and it eventually gave way to the discovery of other legendary Prehistoric art sites collectively known as the Franco-Cantabrian region (in Northern Spain and Southern France).

Altamira, Lascaux and Chauvet are among the most famous caves worldwide; the paintings on their walls and ceilings feature the first uniform sort of Prehistoric art style: the Magdalenian (15,000 BC – 10,000 BC), which remains to inspire one generation after another.

What is it about this style that fascinates us so much? Apart from its age, the realism of this style is mesmerising. The animals depicted show a sophisticated technique that incorporates the utilisation of natural contours and protrusions to lend a 3-D quality to the figures.

Evidence suggests the presence of prehistoric workshops where minerals and plants were ground up and mixed with the available binders: blood, urine, fat, or whatever was available.

Professor of art Dr. Concepció Peig spots an important characteristic: "What seems to apply for any Palaeolithic art ensemble is the fact that the graphic representation responds to a prior scheme, consequence of a process of reflection in which it is decided what to paint, where to paint it and how to lay out the figures, lines, points and geometric shapes."

"Moreover, the design possesses an aesthetic value because through the form it is possible to alter the meaning and the feeling for the observer. The visual and aesthetic impact goes as far as the XX century, with Picasso -following a visit to Altamira- exclaiming, 'After Altamira, all art is decadence'."

Lascaux responds to the 'scheme' mentioned by Dr. Peig: Inside the cave, over 150 mineral fragments were discovered, together with mortars for grinding them. Flat bones served as palettes, skulls as paint containers, animal hair as brushes, and animal fat as fuel for lighting the dark depths of the caves where they painted.

Animal fat, it should be remembered, was too precious a resource to waste, and this leads to an important question: why did they paint at all? Why was it important? Although there is no singular answer, the replies that experts have come up with are as surprising as the art itself.

Prehistoric question mark

Apart from the classical explanations about cave paintings serving as entertainment or as part of shamanistic or magical rituals, some experts attach more utilitarian purposes to this art, like marking territory and borders, recording successive seasons as some sort of visual calendar, preserving knowledge and experiences, etc.

These purpose-conscious explanations fail to decipher the weird paintings of Tassili n’Ajjer (Algeria), where depictions of aliens and demons defy any logic, leaving shamanism as the only explanation – unless you believe in aliens.

An interesting perspective comes from Esteve Botey. Through his experience as an anthropologist, he holds that, simply: "Prehistoric Art was art for art’s sake!"

He continues: "As modern as this notion might sound, I believe we are making much ado about nothing. When human creativity reached critical mass, it exploded! Art was the outcome, and cave paintings were the first testimony of this artistic expression, the dawn of art if you may. Of course the only problem now following the recent discoveries is that maybe art was not a human invention at all!"

Dr. Peig sees it differently: "It is plausible that they are vestiges of that universal belief in the power of image creation; perhaps the primitive hunters believed that just painting their prey would cause the real animals to succumb to their power."

She goes on to remind us that "in Palaeolithic art it is difficult to go beyond the formal meaning of the figures, or to put it differently, we can formally comprehend a figure and classify it in line with certain types, but having access to the symbolic meaning that it conceals is problematic."

Egypt's cave paintings

Egypt's "sadness of geography," in the case of the Cave of Swimmers, the Foggini-Mestekawi Cave and other Egyptian caves with important rock art is that they are too far out in the desert to be properly conserved and safeguarded.

This is a mixed blessing: on one hand, their remoteness protects them from excessive tourism, but on the other hand, it makes them subject to a wide range of vandalism, from graffiti to people chipping away and taking fragments as souvenirs.

Egypt's "sadness of history" is that this heritage is neither professionally interpreted nor taught at schools. Only the pharaohs and 7,000 years of history seem to get the attention, ignoring the existing cave art dating back tens of thousands of years that is not seen as part of Egypt’s cultural heritage.

-------------

Mohammed Elrazzaz holds an MA in Cultural Management (Universitat Internacional de Catalunya, Barcelona) and is currently a PhD candidate and professor of 'Tools for Managing Culture' at the same university. He also collaborates with the Andalusi Legacy Foundation (Granada) as a writer/researcher on history and culture.