Cave Art Documentary (Spencer Mottley)

    For my first reading journal, I have decided to discuss and reflect on the flim we watched over zoom, 

called the "Cave of Dreams". In this film a cave in France called Shovi Cave was thourghly explored. The

cave amoungst other things like animal bones, animal footprints and unique ice sickle like formations

called stalactites, contains the oldest cave paintings discovered anywhere in the world. These paintings

have been dated to be 32,000 years old. It was explained that the paintings in Shori Cave remain in such

good condition due to the fact there was a massive rock slide around 20,000 years ago that sealed the

orginal entrance of the cave, thus protecting the paintings from the elements. The paintings remain so

pristine in fact, at one point scientist even questioned wether they were authentic pecies of cave art. The

subject matter of most of the paintings in the cave contains ice age animals like wolly rinos, wolly

mammoths, wild horses and cave lions with the occasional hand painting and a single picture illustrateing

a naked women. Dispite being amougst the first pepole to engage in art, these pepole displayed fairly

complex artistic skill in their works. One of these skills was useing the three dimensional walls of the cave

to position and cast shadows onto their paintings. Another impressive artistic skill these pepole possessed

was proto cinematography, this skill was utilized in some of the bision painted in the cave which had eight

legs to suggest movement. 

    It was evident in the film that being emersed within the cave was a profoundly spiritual and moveing 

experence. One of the scientist who regularly conducts research within the cave recalled haveing dreams

of lions, he expained that the dreams were not about being chased by lions like one might assume but were

about powerfull and deep things. Additionally one of the pepole touring the cave stated "With his sins of

wonder the cave, transforms into an enchanted world of the imaginary where time and space lose their

meaning". After watching this film I was left with a few questions and potental answers to those questions.

My first question is, how is this cave significant to the development of human culture? My second

question is, What do these paintings tell us about humanities relationship with nature at the time? My

answer to the first question is, this cave is significant to the development of human culture because it acted

as a womb to early man, in the sense it facilitated the birth of art and human culture more brodly. My

answer to the second question is these paintings tell us that people at the time revered nature, were closely

connected to the natural world/ in tone with their surroundings and were very knowledgeable about it's

rhythms and it's inhabitants. 

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