Volume 53, Number 16 · October 19, 2006
Secrets of the Cave Paintings
By William H. McNeill
The Nature of Paleolithic Art
by R. Dale Guthrie
University of Chicago Press, 507 pp., $45.00
The Cave Painters: Probing the Mysteries of the World's First Artists
by Gregory Curtis
Knopf, 278 pp., $25.00
In 1879 a Spanish landowner named Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola was searching for prehistoric artifacts on the floor of a cave on his family property in northern Spain when his young daughter interrupted, calling out 'Look, Papa, oxen' as she looked up at the cave's ceiling and 'saw vivid yet delicate paintings of bison, almost fully life-sized, that appear to be tumbling across the sky.' Her discovery swiftly brought ancient cave paintings to widespread public attention, and set off a complex history of dispute about their origin and meaning. Since then, thousands of similar paintings have been discovered in more than two hundred caves scattered through southwestern France and northeastern Spain on either side of the Pyrenees. Argument still rages about them and the contrasting viewpoints of the two books under review carry the controversy forward.
Review, 4639 words
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