Cave Paintings

While the whole evolution thing doesn’t click with me, I do believe in cavemen. Just not in the usual sense.

The stereotypical neanderthal is half-naked, staring in awe at a wheel. Most documentaries present them as uncivilized brutes, and pop-culture delights in dumbing them down. It’s so simple a caveman could do it! 

There were people living in the grottos, but they showed more intelligence than that. Just look at their paintings. They’re beautiful. Better than I could do, anyway, and I’m supposed to be more evolved.

Nobody knows why these masterpieces were created. Over the years, historians have thrown around different theories. Some think that they were part of cultish religions, drug-induced hallucinations or primitive calendars.

When people attribute these paintings to superstition and drugs, it sort of dims their beauty. We start to think that maybe the cavemen weren’t that smart after all. I mean, they thought the animals would bless their hunt... only an idiot would come to that conclusion, right?

Wrong. The very construction of religion implicates an advanced sense of self. These people were asking questions. They wanted to know where they came from. Nobody was giving them any answers, so they made up their own story and drew pictures to express their beliefs.

No matter how you look at it, cave paintings are proof of early man’s intelligence. Even if they were drug-induced, we could just call them the forerunners of the Beatles.

One of the most famous cave painting sites is the Lascaux Caves, located in southwestern France. Just look at those colors--doesn’t that take skill? Even Picasso declared the cavemen to be artists. “We have learned nothing in twelve thousand years,” he said.

In other words, a neanderthal is just as good as Picasso. I’d even argue that he was better.

A painting found in the Lascaux cave.