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A painting replica from the Spanish Cave of Altamira, which houses many paintings of contemporary local fauna and human hands created between 18,500 and 14,000 years ago during the Upper Paleolithic period.
Universal History Archive / Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Ancient cave painters sometimes created elaborate images in dark, narrow passages navigable only with artificial light. Not optimal conditions for an artist. So why would Picasso of the late Stone Age even attempt to draw in such dimly lit and hard-to-reach spaces? Because they knew the environments would deprive them of oxygen and provide relief, according to a new study.
They were “motivated by an understanding of the transformative nature of an oxygen-depleted underground space,” Tel Aviv University archaeologists say in the study, which appears in the latest issue of Time and Mind: The Journal of Archeology, Consciousness and Culture. Oxygen deprivation helped them harness their deepest, most visceral levels of creativity and connect to the cosmos, the research suggests.
In many indigenous societies, active connection with the cosmos and the environment is seen as the key to individual and collective well-being and adaptation. “It was not the decoration that made the caves meaningful,” the study said. “Rather, the significance of the chosen caves was the reason for their decoration.”
When the body’s obligatory blood-oxygen concentration falls below a certain level, hypoxia ensues. It is a potentially fatal condition that can cause a range of biological and cognitive changes, including increased dopamine, hallucinations, and euphoria. Researchers believe artists from 14,000 to 40,000 years ago forced their way through the interior depths of caves with glittering torches, knowing that fire would reduce oxygen levels in already poorly ventilated spaces. . Works of art were found in areas that involved climbing stairs, crossing narrow ledges, and even wells that went down several meters deep.
Researchers studied the decorated caves first discovered in Western Europe in the 19th century to better interpret the lingering mysteries of rock art and explore what motivated these very early artists. Many images were painted black and red, or etched on soft walls or hard surfaces. They mainly depict animals, but also hand stencils, hand prints and abstract geometric signs.
Not all rock art appears in deep, dark recesses – some decorate the walls near entrances or shelters. But it is the art in remote cave areas not used for daily household activities that has intrigued most scholars like Yafit Kedar, a Ph.D. candidate in the Archeology Department at Tel Aviv University.
It was she who theorized that artists deliberately induced hypoxia to achieve an altered state of consciousness.
To study his hypothesis, Kedar and his fellow scientists simulated the effect of torches on oxygen concentrations in closed spaces such as those in Upper Paleolithic caves. They found that oxygen levels in narrow passages or rooms with a single passage quickly decreased to less than 18%, the level known to induce hypoxia in humans.
It was a good year for cave art, which has a lot to tell us about the way our ancestors lived and thought. Earlier this year, researchers identified an image of a warty pig dating to 45,500 years ago that they believe is both the world’s oldest rock painting and the oldest known surviving depiction of the animal world. .
The past few years have brought other exciting discoveries of ancient, albeit non-figurative, drawings, including one found in South Africa 73,000 years ago that looks like a hashtag and another between 2100 and 4100 BC that may show the wonder of humans at a star explosion.
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