Hand Painted

'Panel of Hands', El Castillo Cave, Spain.  Includes Hand Images
At Least 37,300 Years Old.  Photo: Pedro Suara (AAAS).

A news article about Palaeolithic cave painting caught my eye recently.  Using refined mass spectrometry techniques, a team including researchers from the Universities of Bristol and Barcelona have dated paintings at eleven Spanish sites much earlier than previously thought.  They measured elemental proportions in tiny samples of rock deposits adjacent to the paintings as described in a paper in 'Science', magazine, co-lead authored by Alistair Pike and Joao Zilhao.  I won’t pretend to understand the science but it’s described as both accurate and non-damaging to the ancient pigments.

Alistair Pike of The University of Bristol.  Photo: Marcos Garcia Diez

'Panel of Hands', El Castillo Cave, Spain.  Including Images of
Bison and Sprayed Discs.  Photo: Pedro Suara (AAAS).

Their findings undermine previous assumptions about the age of the earliest European artworks.  The oldest examples appear to date back to around 40.800 years ago putting them close to the earliest known records of modern Homo sapiens in Europe.  Seemingly, the hot debate in anthropological circles is now whether modern humans brought artistic behaviour with them from Africa and the Middle East, whether that behaviour accelerated as they came into direct competition with Neanderthals or whether Neanderthals themselves were involved in art practice.  The latter interpretation would undermine many established preconceptions about the supposedly primitive Neanderthals.  Could it be even possible that we learned the habit of Art from Neanderthals I wonder?

Sprayed Red Discs, El Castillo Cave, Spain.  Discs Like This Are At Least
40,600 Years Old At This Site.  Photo: Pedro Suara (AAAS).

I admit I’m pleased by this validation of painting as one of the earliest forms of human activity.  I’m also interested in the way many of the earliest images were apparently produced by blowing pigment around their hands to create negative shapes.  Positive hand-prints exist too and it’s possible to distinguish between males and females and to deduce that, as now, most people were right handed, (most of the prints show the free left hand).  It seems that even then, people were moved to spray onto walls to mark their identity or territory.

West End, Leicester, 2012

While I was thinking about this I remembered a couple of charming blue handprints I saw recently on a local wall and snuck out with the camera to record them.  Some things never go out of fashion.

Sources:

'U- Series of Paleolithic Art in 11 Caves in Spain', A.W.G. Pike, D.L. Hoffmann, M Garcia-Diez, P.B. Pettitt, J. Alcolea, R. De Babin, C. Gonzalez-Sainz, C. De Las Heras, J.A. Lasheras, R. Montes, J. Zilhao, Science, 15.06.12

'Science: Cave Paintings From Paleolithic Spain Are Older Than Expected', Brandon Brynn, AAAS, June 2012