Why Did Prehistoric People Draw in the Caves?

On the other hand, most of the parietal representations found are located in caves (those that may have existed outside may have been destroyed). And so why represent beauty if it is not shared and is hidden in the darkness of deep caves?

This assumption of art for art's sake was inspired by the myth of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's "noble savage." It was also used to convey anticlerical ideas.

If this hypothesis were universally applicable, we would see disparities in Europe. However, European Paleolithic parietal art exhibits a certain symbolic homogeneity with persistence of the same animal species represented. In fact, there are few animal species that were shared and reproduced for thousands of years in very diverse geographical areas. Reindeer, bison, and horses were animals that were very often depicted.

Finally, animals are represented pierced with arrows, a symbol that cannot be reconciled with the 'worship' that was to be given to them if these effigies were well and truly adored by our ancestors.

For Abbé Breuil it was more acceptable to allude to magical practice rather than spirituality, which could have steered the discussion towards religious issues.

However, the correlation between animal species pierced by arrows and archeological excavations is tenuous. The representations of these animals symbolized with arrows piercing them, besides being few in number in all of European parietal art, has little correspondence to the archeological remains found. The hypothesis of sympathetic magic has been abandoned.

This statistical approach has never been scientifically demonstrated despite the influence it had on university education.

In particular, this hypothesis is based on ethnological observations made with groups of modern-day hunter-gatherers. It is also based on the perception of entoptic signs (points, lines, grids, etc.) whose source is the eye itself. These optical phenomena can be caused by the inhalation of products or substances contained in the materials used to make parietal figures (charcoal, ocher). These spontaneous entoptic signs can also be the symptoms of migraines (flashing lights and zig-zag patterns, for example).

Although not well received, this hypothesis is not intended to be a global and exclusive explanation but proposes an explanatory framework. Numerous testimonies by speleologists attest to the hallucinogenic character of the caves, where cold, humidity, darkness, and the absence of sensory cues facilitate optical and auditory hallucinations. Thus the caves could have a dual role with fundamentally related aspects: facilitating hallucinatory visions and coming into contact with spirits through the wall.

Jean Clottes clarifies his hypothesis (2004): "Paintings made in the middle of a large chamber will probably have a meaning quite different from those found in the depths of a narrow diverticulum where only one person could slip through. The latter can be related […] to either the search for visions or the desire to go as far as possible to the bottom of the earth. Spectacular paintings in large spaces could, however, have a didactic and educational role, and serve as the foundation of ceremonies and rituals."

The bestiary of the Chauvet Cave is distinguished by the abundance of animals at the top of the food chain: big cats (the most numerous), mammoths, and woolly rhinos, animals not hunted or infrequently hunted by men, except opportunistically.

For Jean Clottes, the Chauvet Cave is a space that fosters contact between the real world and spirit world. He even suggested that the cave bear played the role of the mediator. Indeed, the Chauvet Cave is a subterranean space heavily frequented by this animal. However, many recesses around the Chauvet Cave are equally large and accessible, and none of them was chosen by the Palaeolithic people. Only the Chauvet Cave, frequently visited by cave bears, was occupied and adorned by people.

In conclusion, there is still no way of translating rock art. Cave art is a symbolic representation of codes produced by Palaeolithic human thinking. Although this cannot be a definitive conclusion, we can say that parietal art symbolizes the fusion of the Palaeolithic human and animal worlds, whereas today we perceive these two entities as dissociated from each other. In parietal art, man is symbolically represented and present in animal representations.