Cavemen Were Much Better At Illustrating Animals Than Artists Today

[Pyrrho]

A new study finds that prehistoric humans correctly depicted the gait of four-legged animals much more frequently than modern artists


The iconic caveman in popular culture is Fred Flintstone: slow-witted and unskilled. In general, we think of the cave art produced by prehistoric people as crude and imprecise too—a mere glimmer of the artistic mastery that would blossom millenia later, during the Renaissance and beyond.

If this is your impression of prehistoric humans, a new study published today in PLOS ONE by researchers from Eotvos University in Budapest, Hungary, might surprise you. In analyzing dozens of examples of cave art from places such as Lascaux, the group, led by Gabor Horvath, determined that prehistoric artists were actually better at accurately depicting the way four-legged animals walk than artists from the 19th and 20th centuries.

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http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-na...153292919/

[Minimalist]

Wait.  Fred operated a dino-crane.  You know, the kind of thing that makes creatards cum in their pants.

[ignoramus]

And their pet "Dino" didn't shit in the house or lick his plums once!
So well trained for their time.

[Rahul]

Well understanding animals back then was really a life or death situation. I think the vast majority of humans today take animals for granted and even the ones that are really into animals today don't study them as closely as hunter/gatherer groups did in prehistory.

[KUSA]

Cavemen were probably smarter in general than most people these days.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Wait.  Fred operated a dino-crane.  You know, the kind of thing that makes creatards cum in their pants.

Pretty sure that's the original rock-crusher.

[ignoramus]

OOHHH! She can crush my rocks anyday!

[Pyrrho]

Well understanding animals back then was really a life or death situation.  I think the vast majority of humans today take animals for granted and even the ones that are really into animals today don't study them as closely as hunter/gatherer groups did in prehistory.

That is what is stated in the article:

For prehistoric humans, “the observation of animals was not merely a pastime, but a matter of survival,” the study’s authors write. “Compared to artists of latter eras, when people were not as directly connected to nature, the creators of such cave paintings and carvings observed their subjects better and thus they depicted the walk of the animals in a more life-like manner.”

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-na...153292919/

It is interesting, though, that someone would get the gait correct, as it was not something considered proven until photography from the 1880's established this definitively for horses (a sequence of photos was taken to do this), which has since been shown to be how most 4-legged animals walk (with subsequent photographic studies of them).

[downbeatplumb]

Apparently they used to paint animals with more than four legs so when lit by flickering fire they seemed to run.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/a...-move.html

A new study of cave art across France - in which animals appear to have multiple limbs, heads and tails - has found that the paintings are actually primitive attempts at animation.

When the images are viewed under the unsteady light of flickering flames the images can appear to move as the animals they represent do, the research claims.

[Secular Elf]

Apparently they used to paint animals with more than four legs so when lit by flickering fire they seemed to run.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/a...-move.html

A new study of cave art across France - in which animals appear to have multiple limbs, heads and tails - has found that the paintings are actually primitive attempts at animation.

When the images are viewed under the unsteady light of flickering flames the images can appear to move as the animals they represent do, the research claims.

I bet that was quite freaky for the paleolithic artists and their fellow cave dwellers. That would no doubt reinforce their feelings of spirituality and what they perceived as the transcendental nature of the animals they hunted.