Researchers estimate: The extinction of large animals in the Levant is the reason why early man did not paint on cave walls in Israel
For many years, archaeologists have wondered why there are no cave paintings in the Levant in general and in Israel in particular. It is clear that the reason is not due to a lack of caves, knowledge, or talent. Now, a group of archaeologists from Tel Aviv University offers an original solution: Early man did not paint on caves in our region, because the large animals depicted in the cave paintings in Western Europe had already become extinct here, and therefore there was no reason to conduct shamanic rituals in the depths of caves aimed at preserving the large animals.
No less talented than the Europeans
The editorial in the Journal of the Israel Prehistoric Society was written by a team of researchers From the Department of Archaeology At Tel Aviv University: Prof. Ran Barkai, Dr. Ilan Dagoni, Dr. Mickey Ben-Dor and Dr. Yafit Keider.
"This is a mystery that has surrounded archaeological research in Israel for 100 years," says Prof. Barkai. "The first prehistoric cave was excavated in Israel in 1925, but frustratingly, not a single cave painting has been found since then. In other parts of the world, such as Spain and France, hundreds of spectacularly beautiful cave paintings have been found, and in Israel – nothing. There are caves in Israel too, and during the very same period of the cave paintings in Western Europe, 35,000 to 30,000 years before our era, people lived in them who, according to all the material data, were members of the same culture as the people there – the Aurignacian culture. Their tools are similar and their art, for example the beads and pendants, is also similar. There is no dispute that the people who lived here had the cognitive ability to draw, they were not inferior to the people in Europe."
The mystery surrounding the lack of cave paintings in the Levant has intensified in recent years, as numerous studies have indicated that the members of the Aurignacian culture in the Levant and Europe were not only biologically and culturally similar, but actually had connections with each other.
"We are talking about Homo sapiens, modern humans, who probably left Africa 60 to 70 thousand years ago," says Prof. Barkai. "They passed through the area of Israel 60 years ago, and reached Europe 45 years ago. But new archaeological evidence shows that some returned to the Land of Israel, meaning that there was no one-way migration route. It seems that humans here and there were in contact, migrating from here to there and back, and yet there are cave paintings there and there are none. To solve this mystery, we must first answer another question: Why did the humans there paint on cave walls at all? This is also a big question, on which there are strong differences of opinion. We support the approach according to which the cave paintings were performed as part of shamanic rituals that were linked to changing states of consciousness, rituals that were intended to convey a message to the beings beyond the cave wall, in the lower worlds that are the source of abundance, and to ask them for a solution to the extinction of the large animals on which humans depended for their existence."
According to the researchers, shortly after modern humans arrived in Europe, large animals began to become extinct, especially woolly mammoths and woolly rhinoceroses. These are large, fat-rich animals that early humans in Europe and elsewhere relied on as a primary source of nutrition. Their extinction caused distress, and throughout the years of the extinction of large animals in Western Europe, early humans penetrated deep into caves and painted large animals on cave walls, often in the depths of caves. Cave paintings more or less ceased at the point when the extinction of large animals in Europe was complete.
Art, beliefs and what's in between
"It must be understood that cave paintings are found deep in caves, in places that are difficult and even dangerous to reach. Today we also know from indigenous societies that the depths of caves are perceived as a kind of gateway to the underworld, a world of abundance and the source of all things, and therefore it is customary to turn to beings from the other side in times of distress, for example when there is an illness or internal struggle. We claim that humans in Europe penetrated deep into the caves and painted the disappearing animals to ask the beings to return them, to emphasize their need for survival in hunting large animals. In Israel we do not find such paintings because large animals became extinct in our region before Homo sapiens arrived here. Earlier types of man had already exterminated them. When Homo sapiens arrived in Israel, there were no longer elephants and rhinoceroses here, and he was forced to hunt smaller and faster animals. But those people who continued to Europe again encountered large animals – mammoths and woolly rhinoceroses. From their perspective, they had arrived in the garden Eden. Their extinction there, which occurred before the astonished eyes of the humans who had just arrived in Europe, led to a crisis, and the crisis led to the cave paintings. In Israel there was no crisis in those years but continuity, and therefore we do not see cave paintings here. In fact, this hypothesis strengthens our general thesis, according to which early humans were aware of the role they themselves played in the extinction of their food sources."
More of the topic in Hayadan:
