Rock Art Research

Vol. 25 No. 2 (2008)
Published : Nov 18, 2008

CHILDREN AS PLEISTOCENE ARTISTS

Robert G. Bednarik (1)

(1) Australia
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Abstract

Three types of Pleistocene palaeoart are considered which provide consistent evidence of having been made by children or adolescents: finger flutings, stencils or prints of body parts, and prints of fingertips. Combined with the observation that the known human foot prints found in caves frequented by Pleistocene humans of Europe also appear to be largely of young people, it is noted that there is currently very limited indication that western European Palaeolithic palaeoart could be substantially the work of fully adult people. The outstanding aspect of this corpus is its high content of figurative motifs, not apparent in the Pleistocene rock art of the rest of the world, which is almost exclusively non-figurative. The recent observation that children of a society with an otherwise purely non-figurative graphic art are perfectly capable of producing realistic figurative drawings when prompted could suggest that such art was regarded as children’s art by at least some early societies. If that were the case, it might explain the unusual figurative content of Franco-Cantabrian palaeoart. The falsifiable hypothesis is proposed that a significant part of this corpus is the work of young people.