Archaeologist also believe that Ancient Artists were probably Children :
New research is shaking up our image of art-making in the Palaeolithic, arguing that children or even children may have been behind some of the world’s earliest known art. The findings suggest that ancient rock painting was indeed a family-oriented group activity, not a lone male pursuit.
For a study published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, Archaeologist from the University of Cambridge and the University of Cantabria in Spain examined 180 hand stencils painted in Spanish caves some 20,000 years ago. The study used 3-D models of hand paintings in the El Castillo, Maltraviso, Fuente de Salín, Fuente del Trucho and La Gama caves in Spain, created by the Handpass Project.
These prehistoric drawings would have been created by blowing pigment through a hollow reed or bone onto hands placed against the cave wall – a process that would have made the outlines slightly larger than the hands.
Archaeologist about the Handprints :
Taking that difference into account, the Archaeologist found that 25 percent of handprints were not large enough for adults or adolescents. They estimated that they came from children between the ages of two and 12, with the majority likely being made by three to 10-year-olds.
Lead author Veronica Fernandez-Navarogical told the Telegraph: “There were more children than we expected.” “It appears that artistic activity was not a closed activity associated with male individuals and group survival, as hitherto thought.”
Because young children would not have been able to blow off enough pigment to make a mark, we can safely assume that their parents or other adults were helping them. Painting may have been an important communal activity for Paleolithic people.
Fernandez-Navarogical is now working to further analyze the handprints to determine whether the gestures made in some of the images have any meaning. He suspects that the folded fingers, which appear to be in a recurring pattern in some photographs of the hand, could have been used as a form of non-verbal language.
“We want to find out whether it was a encode that they knew how to interpret, in the same way that we interpret a ‘stop’ sign today,” she said.
Read from other sources : A Study of Prehistoric Painting of handprints
