{"id":617,"date":"2006-02-19T00:06:00","date_gmt":"2006-02-19T00:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=617"},"modified":"2006-02-19T00:06:00","modified_gmt":"2006-02-19T00:06:00","slug":"617","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=617","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Giggles in the caves<\/strong><\/p>\n

A respected expert on prehistoric art suggests that many of the Paleolithic cave paintings were made by teenagers<\/a>, not the mature male shamans usually assumed to be their authors.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis assumption may be true of a few of the best known and better-drawn images, but these are a small proportion of preserved Paleolithic art,\u201d said R. Dale Guthrie of the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.<\/p>\n

Using new forensic techniques on fossil handprints of the artists and examining thousands of images, \u201cI found that all ages and both sexes were making art, not just the senior male shamans,\u201d Guthrie said. These included hundreds of prints made as ocher, manganese, or clay negatives and a few positive prints made with pigments or mud applied to hands that were then placed on cave surfaces.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe possibility that adolescent giggles and snickers may have echoed in dark cave passages as often as the rhythm of a shaman\u2019s chant demeans neither artists nor art,\u201d writes Guthrie.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was using Paleolithic art both to appreciate the colorful renditions and to find useful and interesting details about Pleistocene animal anatomy,\u201d said Guthrie, professor emeritus of the Institute of Arctic Biology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. A symposium of Paleolithic art scholars in 1979 \u201c… set me on a new course of trying to place Paleolithic art in a larger dimension of natural history and linking artistic behavior to our evolutionary past,\u201d writes Guthrie. <\/em><\/p>\n

When I was in high school, some friends and I started an “underground” newspaper. Maybe some of the cave art was “underground” in both senses of the word as well. Or were the kids just slapping down handprints–“I was here!”–and the accomplished artists doing the heart-stopping lovely bison and horses? It seems like you would have to pay your artistic dues even in the Paleolithic.<\/p>\n

(Via Dienekes’ Anthropology Blog<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Tag: Cave art<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Giggles in the caves A respected expert on prehistoric art suggests that many of the Paleolithic cave paintings were made by teenagers, not the mature male shamans usually assumed to be their authors. \u201cThis assumption may be true of a few of the best known and better-drawn images, but these are a small proportion of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6xQTg-617","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3994,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3994","url_meta":{"origin":617,"position":0},"title":"Introduction to Mongolian Shamanism","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 16, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Introductory ten-minute video about Mongolian shamanism, revived in the post-Communist decades. Just enjoy the visuals, unless you understand the language. Jenghiz Khan shows up, of course, as does Buddhism. This well-made video shows the drumming and trance dancing of both male and female shamans. Some of the drums seem to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Mongolia\"","block_context":{"text":"Mongolia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=mongolia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9662,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9662","url_meta":{"origin":617,"position":1},"title":"Pentagram Pizza: It Resembles the Shaman’s Drum","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 9, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"\u2022 Once again, magic and sports don't mix. According to Siberian Times (July 1), shamans invoked the ancestors to aid Russia's team in their World Cup match against Spain. As a result (?), Russia won 4\u20133. But then they lost to Croatia a few days later and are now out\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"occultism\"","block_context":{"text":"occultism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=occultism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Tuvan-shaman-ST.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5752,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5752","url_meta":{"origin":617,"position":2},"title":"Sacred Geography in the Cumberland Plateau","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 26, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Interpreting prehistoric rock art is a challenge, and I suspect that some of Professor Simek's colleagues may well challenge his interpretation, but he has been looking at petroglyphs from the Mississippian culture and thinks that they describe a three-tier cosmology (Upper, Middle, and Lower Worlds), already attested elsewhere. The Mississippian\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/1\/15\/Chromesun_mississippian_priest_digital_painting.jpg\/200px-Chromesun_mississippian_priest_digital_painting.jpg","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6561,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6561","url_meta":{"origin":617,"position":3},"title":"The “Horse Boy” and the Shamans","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 6, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"If you saw the 2009\u00a0 documentary The Horse Boy, about Rowan, the autistic boy who is helped somewhat by horseback riding and by Mongolian shamans, there is more to the story. (There is also a book, The Horse Boy: A Memoir of Healing, published in 2010.) Before it was released\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"childhood\"","block_context":{"text":"childhood","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=childhood"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9017,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9017","url_meta":{"origin":617,"position":4},"title":"On Michael Harner (1929\u20132018)","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 6, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"The news of Michael Harner's passing has been going around, and of course some magical practitioners have to react by disrespecting him. You might well have heard the usual string of insults: he is an academic poser, he's a fake . . . a cultural imperialist . . . from\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"shamanism\"","block_context":{"text":"shamanism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=shamanism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/michael_drum.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1191,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1191","url_meta":{"origin":617,"position":5},"title":"Mazes and Labyrinths","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 15, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"A web page of mazes and labyrinths, from the Paleolithic forward.","rel":"","context":"In \"archaeology\"","block_context":{"text":"archaeology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=archaeology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}