They Were There

     Every once in a while, I'll come across this picture, this wonderful picture of a cave in, I think, France. Humans have always been a social species. Our very early survival depended upon it. But social structure wasn't a mere pragmatic necessity for early man. They shared in all their activities like hunting, gathering... and making art.

     Cave paintings with charred sticks and different-colored ochre, a clay earth pigment, was what they had in lieu of the internet. Across a vast ocean of time, in human terms, they showed us what their world was like and, like us, succumbed to the urge to tell future generations that "we were here."

     The Chauvet Cave in Southern France, subject of an incredible documentary by Werner Herzog entitled CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS, survives today because of a nearly unique geological event. It was sealed in time after an avalanche and shows today calcified footprints of humans and animals. Just as importantly, it presents us in vibrant colors what the fauna of their time looked like. Even more importantly, archeologists had discovered some of the paintings were made across a span of thousands of years. So, early man, 34,000 years ago, had a sense of posterity, to continue the work of their distant ancestors.

     At the entrance of the Chauvet Cave is a wall covered with hand prints and we know they were made by the same person because of the broken pinkie that never set properly. That was his way of letting us know he was there.

     This wall in another cave shows much the same thing except much if not all the community got involved. This was not a mere signing of their artwork but one suspects they took communal joy in putting their hand prints to ritualize their existence. The smaller ones even showed the adults got the children involved by lifting them up so they, too, could immortalize their hand prints. And, to this day, children still love to finger paint.

     On this particular wall, they reach across that ocean of time and showed us their commonalities with their distant and unimagined descendants. They, too, had five fingers and opposable thumbs and in this singular act of communion with the present and the future, they showed us that humanity hasn't fundamentally changed across tens of thousands of years. That is why I so dearly love this picture, this expression of humanity so peculiar to our species. "We were here", they said. "Learn about us."