Why Are We So Surprised

Here's an article from FOXNews.com headlined, "Acoustics Expert: Cavemen Must Have Loved to Sing." A Paleolithic researcher named Iegor Reznikoff walked around the pre‑historic caves singing and whistling after noting that amongst the artifacts found were 40,000 year old bone whistles. Reznikoff and a team used voice resonance to test acoustics in caves across France. They found a 90 percent correspondence between the paintings and the locations of good acoustics. Reznikoff further hypothesizes that the caves were explored using sound and echo-location to determine pathways. He is quoted thus: "Why would the Paleolithic tribes choose preferably resonant locations for painting," he said, "if it were not for making sounds and singing in some kind of ritual celebrations related with the pictures?"

An article by Barry Blesser and Linda‑Ruth Salter, "Questions and Answers about: Spaces Speak, Are You Listening? Experiencing Aural Architecture" [MIT Press 2006] conjectures as follows:

"Acoustic archeologists suggest that the Paleolithic art found in the caves of Lascaux and Font‑de‑Gaume were influenced by the acoustic character of the chambers in which they were drawn. Pictures of ungulates, bulls, bison, and deer were more likely to be found in chambers with strong echoes, spaces where acoustics created percussive sounds similar to the hoof beats of a stampeding herd. Cave art may well have incorporated echoes as a supernatural phenomenon that brought life into visual images. Archeologists speculate that multi-sensory art was part of the hunter's rituals to summon game. Extensive observations of ancient sites support the notion that wall art and acoustics were deliberately related rather than accidents."

Professor Steven J. Waller discusses this same hypothesis in an article "Quantitative acoustic measurements of Upper Paleolithic rock art sites," published in 1993, in Nature, in which he references Reznikoff's experiments. He states:

"These measurements and observations lead to the speculation that the Paleolithic artists produced the ungulate art in response to percussive sound reflections perceived as hoofbeats. The production of hoofbeats via sound reflection could have served quite usefully as a sympathetic magic ritual intended to summon up game. This new acoustic theory is therefore harmonious with previous speculations of Hunting Magic."

I object to these allusions to Hunting Magic, I object to the certainty that our Paleolithic ancestors needed to call up the spirits of their prey prior to going on the hunt. I have no problem with the notion that ritual was involved, after all there's a huge ritualistic aspect to attending a concert at a symphony hall, or going to an art opening.

From an article, "Building the Circle of Life: Creating the Community Experience from Concept to Application," by J. G. O'Boyle, Senior Analyst, The Center for Cultural Studies and Analysis, c. 2006:

"In light of these discoveries, it now appears that over 40,000 years ago our earliest human ancestors combined painting, music, the animation effects of flickering firelight and sound effects to create the first multi-media presentation—Cro Magnon virtual reality." p. 2.

"Aesthetics aside, there is little difference between ancient cave art, Disneyland, a museum exhibit, or the corporate multi-media program. All use stylized images and other sensory stimulation to create. . .'soft adventures.'" p. 3.

O'Boyle goes on to say that "we are working at the dawn of the twenty-first century with a brain that processes information in the same manner as that of our ancient ancestors." In the blink of an evolutionary eye we have gone from those smears of ochres, firelight, bone whistles to PowerPoint presentations and virtual meet-ups.

It is my strong suggestion that our Cro‑Magnon ancestors went to the cave not to conjure up hunting magic so that they might eat more and better, I am almost certain, as certain as I can be without them coming back to tell it to me with their own audible voices, that they went to the caves because they loved the music, they loved looking at the paintings, they went because they enjoyed themselves.

They weren't all that different from us, they are us, we are them. Several years ago I visited Stonehenge. I took this picture of a fellow tourist sending a picture of the monument out. Note that he's on one phone and using a second.

We don't need deep mysterious motives to understand our ancestors, we need only to look in the mirror and look at ourselves and how we operate in our own world. Thus to answer the question of why they painted pictures of their world, of wondrous deer and antelopes, bison, mammoths, is because they could and they wanted to. Same with Stonehenge, they could and they wanted to. We are the richer and better for it.