Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 30, 1995 TAG: 9503310001
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOEL ACHENBACH
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
A: One of the little-known facts about the cave drawings is that some of them are what you might call obscene. This is not to say that the caves were like Times Square. It's just that the cave people didn't have only zoology on the brain. The racier stuff doesn't tend to get reproduced in big color photos in fancy coffee-table books with titles like ``The Ascent of Man.''
``Love's larcenies demand darkness'' wrote Francois de Belle-Forest in 1575 after seeing some cave paintings in the Pyrenees. He cited ``innumerable figures of Priapus and other obscenities.''
(Priapus: Yet another terrific, underutilized baby name.)
Nonetheless, it is absolutely true that the great majority of the paintings in the caves depict animals, particularly large mammals, such as bison, mammoths, horses and reindeer. The focus on animals has puzzled scholars for more than a century, since the caves in southern Europe first captured widespread notice.
There are a few human figures here and there, and some silhouettes of human hands, but ``they appertain more to graffiti,'' wrote Thomas G.E. Powell in ``Prehistoric Art.''
``Man remains an incomplete, often grotesque figure, rendered in line, distorted willfully, it would seem, by masks, and always isolated, clandestine,'' wrote P.M. Grand in ``Prehistoric Art: Paleolithic Painting and Sculpture.'' (These are what you would call library books. As they say, ``Not available in stores!'')
The reigning theory has been that the paintings are connected to hunting magic. Paint them and they will come! There are even a few paintings with spear marks on them - the dang cave people were using their priceless masterpieces for target practice.
The caves weren't residences. They were more like sanctuaries, places where the Paleolithic people would go for special rituals. We don't know the nature of those rituals and can only guess.
But here's an interesting thought: The Paleolithic people might not have painted themselves because they weren't that interested in themselves. It's hard to fathom in our own self-obsessed society that human beings once could have viewed themselves as mundane creatures. They may even have viewed animals as superior beings. Animals were, after all, well-adapted to the cold climate of Ice Age Europe, while human beings, slow and weak and without fur, had to hack out a brutal existence.
``The blind and sure freedom of the powerful herds could appear a divine dispensation of nature to human beings left naked and feeble before forces set in motion by the very momentum of life,'' Grand wrote.
This is not to say that animals were gods. They aren't painted as divine.
Nor are they painted as mere meat. There are no paintings of steak up there. The caves weren't like those restaurants with the bad judgment of blowing up distressing photos of burgers and lasagna.
The Mailbag:
Paul W. of Washington, D.C., asks, ``Why do the `close door' buttons in elevators never work? Are they all fakes?''
Dear Paul: You are probably one of those people who gets antsy on elevators and starts pounding the ``door close'' button frenetically. We sympathize. (FYI, we think it's usually ``door close,'' rather than the more sensible ``close door;'' other opinions may apply.) But we have bad news. The button is not speaking to you. It is speaking to someone who has a special key, such as an elevator repair person, or a firefighter.
``Door close buttons really go back to the days of attendant operators,'' says Jim Christensen, spokesman for the Otis elevator company. ``It should only work when you service the elevator.''
It is most specifically not there to enable you to sever the arm of the annoying person who's trying to get on the elevator with you.
- Washington Post Writers Group
by CNB