Modern Eyes and Prehistoric Art
Let’s talk a moment about Art and our prehistoric Artistic ancestors. I maintain that all humans are by innate nature prone to create some understandable order from disorder- this human tendency is called Simulacra. Without all the Psychological babble it means we as humans want to see something familiar in everything. Rocks and trees, and billowing creatures in cloud formations. The Man in the Moon. Human skulls in the bones of animals.
A sleeping rock Giant’s face or the NH Old Man in the Mountains
Virgin Mary in an oil stained window.
A beloved dead hero in the oozing sap of a local tree.
We love to fashion intentional recognizable some-things from something else-
In prehistoric times a piece of cast off unusually shaped wood is deliberately saved for later and chipped and fashioned by idle hands to make it in to a figure. Maybe to the primitive artist the scrap looks a bit like a fish so he chips here and there at it to make the image more recognizable. Does he think it becomes a real fish? No. Art is purely representational. It is never meant to replace or displace the actual elemental subject. Art is subjective. That means we each see what ever we want to see regardless of what the actual Artist intended. Artists are supremely BRAVE for this universal aspect, certainly not at all fair to the original creator, opens Art up to all and any observer’s interpretation from any Geographical, Geological, Time, Space or Psychological Profile. Art becomes what ever any individual sees in the creation. The Art answer is never right or wrong. All genuine Art leaves the creator’s hand and evolves with the exposure.
I have always been obsessed with the Neolithic Standing Stones of Great Briton. Stonehenge, Prehistoric Avebury (Eve’s-Bury?) Silbury Hill, Skara Brae, Callenish Circle, Boyne Valley. My mom rarely tells the tale about little Mary when she was about 5 years old looking up at the black and white TV news story about English Stonehenge saying “Oh Mummy, I remember when we lived there.” Since I was American born and bread She was suitable ’shivered’ out. Mary was always an odd Fey child. I started to carefully build little rock Cairns in my sandbox… immediately knocked about by my other ruffian siblings who were true Yankee Doodle’s.
My artwork was always strangely out worldly. I stared to look up photos and information on the ancient European standing stones and study them in my thoughts- These were huge monumental, cooperative undertakings, more massive than we modern civilizations can comprehend. These communities had to live and breathe these constructions! There had to be competition involved (Just to make it a fun game.) Each territorial ‘Building’ had to be the biggest and most impressive. Life, then, was not just a quiet bucolic existence. People get bored, then trouble starts. There has to be an organized activity that everyone wants to participate in.
‘Meaningful play’ Religious games..let’s make a freakin’ gamongous monument to our Gods
…way bigger than theirs down the coast. In fact let’s make ours the grandest ever built!” It will be a contest of strength and ingenuity. Man is naturally competitive. I’ll bet he liked that idea! The ‘Building’ was a unified, channeled aggression- A peaceful outlet for the hostility occurring from the unavoidable ‘elbow banging’ of the growing establishment of a permanent community.
They had to work at getting along…it was all so very new. There were no rules to go by. They existed in a ‘Watchful Harmony’ Making it all up as they got up each day. People had to willingly cooperate with others outside the immediate family unit. It was no longer ‘me and mine’ now it was ”us together”. What an exciting, intellectual…expanding idea! But there had to be flareups and conflicts-The rules (or laws) were formed to fit the situations and were worthless without the agreement of all involved. There had to be hard feelings and there was no where to get away to (They each need the protection of the new expanded Tribe) Just think of the frayed nerves and negative energy that had to be redirected. They had to find something fulfilling to work on together once the fields were planted and gathered.
Something that required personal strength and endurance and cooperative cleverness. But contests without the traditional bloodshed and destruction which would rob the new tribal community of their finest and strongest. That natural passion was harnessed to create impressive monuments to worship the local Gods and as warnings to invaders
…Proud Monuments that say “This place is taken. We live here! Look what we can do together! Look how strong and organized we are!
Think well, before you dare to attack us!”
And I bet newcomers wondering upon the occupied lands were impressed! Then as now! Hell, I’m impressed 2000 years later! Their prehistoric, cooperative accomplishments astound our modern minds. The tangibility of these, all our ancestors, just real human men and women not so genetically altered, so like each of us today, endures as ancient ruins all over the common landscape of today’s world.
We can’t presume to understand their rich, social reality, or rituals of life and death by examining the bits and pieces, and ancient artifacts left for our Scientists to Carbon date. But how can we feel anything but Global Pride and awe at our distant ancestors’ unconquerable determination to work together, somehow, to create a common civilization.