About the Film (Week 2)

Since I didn't visit anything nice this week i am going to discuss a bit about the film. Cave of Forgotten Dreams takes a wonderful discovery such as well drawn ancient cave paintings and presents them in a.... eccentric way. I, as a man of science, love speculation and thinking about the meaning behind phenomena and trying to deeper understand it. But I do have a problem of leaving it open ended as the film does. Lots of the theories are thrown around with out being able to be tested experimentally. However the subject matter is delicate and getting information about the culture of these primitive artist is darn near impossible. The following theories however have a good chance of being fairly accurate.
The primitive people obviously had an obsession with animals. Notice that there were no artist bothering with plants or landscapes and just a few people just the beefy, delicious animals that surrounded them. Its safe to say that their sense of place is defined by the animals that inhabit it. I don't blame them considering that's all the cavemen had going for them. Think about it. Those animals were their lively hood. They depended on those animals for food, clothing, and jewelry. Everyday men would go out and hunt, everyday they would track the herds movements, develop tricks and methods to get closer and kill the beasts. A man was defined by how many of these animals he can kill for his tribe and would be valued very highly. And when they got back to the cave what do you think they talked about? The new episode of How I Met Your Mother? No. Probably about the days hunt, the animals behavior, teaching the young how to hunt, and how they where planning on killing animals tomorrow. They had to do this in order to survive. The paintings where a by-product of their animal based lifestyle. They painted the beast to teach others about them, used them as communication when the word "lion" was yet to be invented. And when the nomadic cave people followed the herd the paintings could be used as signs to the next tribe that moved in on what sort of animals to expect in the area. The cave people painted animals because that is how they saw the land. As a breeding ground for their dinner.