Cave paintings of the Early Stone Age: The early writings of modern man

✍ Scribed by Droste, Flip G.

• Book ID: 127383518
• Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG
• Year: 2014
• Tongue: French
• Weight: 502 KB
• Volume: 2014
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0037-1998
• DOI: 10.1515/sem-2014-0035

✦ Synopsis

That the wall paintings of the Early Stone Age, more particularly Upper Paleolithic, are more than mere forms of artistry has been widely acknowledged by now. Investigations into their background have resulted in interpretations as diverse as hunting scenes and metaphysical connotations. From a technical point of view the paintings appear to be more than a picture gallery. The animals painted, rather than being images are carriers of messages, language-like in nature. As vehicles of thought they combine a subject and a predicate: the depicted animal and a property attributed to it. Each message comprised in one symbolic image has been transferred from a spoken sentence to a pictured representation. On the painted cave walls we are confronted with the earliest writings of mankind.