Today I heard an intriguing story on the radio about the many prehistoric cave paintings that have been found in regions throughout the world. People have often speculated that these paintings may have had some ritual or religious function. But today, I heard of a French professor specializing in ancient art and music who found that these paintings, at least those in the European caves he was exploring, were placed in the most resonant parts of the caverns, where even a slight sound was magnified many times over by the acoustically sensitive walls. For this reason, he decided that the paintings must have been decorations in ancient cathedrals, where the people would gather and chant or sing their praise to the spirits of the animals they hunted or the deities that might make this hunting more successful.
Though we have no real way to prove this theory (no long-lost midi files or even sheet music will be found, for example, to turn hypothesis into certainty), it is a lovely idea, and it rings true for me, at least. For as long as there have been human beings, they have apparently turned their eyes to the spirit world, wanting to praise, appease, appeal, or merely wondering about where it all comes from.
2 comments:
Decorations on a cathedral's wall do serve ritual functions, don't they? I'm not sure where this fellow's conclusion is different from previous ideas about the art of prehistoric people, except for his finding about the acoustics of large caverns. Now that's interesting.
It was purely the acoustics that I was interested in; as you say, others have also speculated a religious purpose for the drawings. The music is the new wrinkle. And the cool thing was that they taped him in the caverns, and his tiny whisper just boomed out. You can probably go listen to it. I think it was on Airtalk on KPCC yesterday.
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