The extinction of large animals in the Levant may explain why prehistoric humans did not paint on cave walls in Israel, new research from Tel Aviv University published on Monday has suggested.
“When prehistoric humans in Western Europe depicted large game in cave paintings, many of these animals were already extinct in the Levant, so there was no need to try to portray them for shamanic rituals held deep within caves,” the team of archaeologists explained.
Archaeologists have long questioned the absence of cave art across the Levant, specifically in Israel, as opposed to the rest of the globe.
The study, published in an editorial article of the Journal of the Israel Prehistoric Society, was authored by Tel Aviv University’s Prof. Ran Barkai, Dr. Ilan Dagoni, Dr. Miki Ben-Dor, and Dr. Yafit Kedar.
“This is a century-old mystery in Israeli archaeological research. The first prehistoric cave excavation in Israel took place in 1925, but frustratingly, not a single cave painting has been found since,” said Barkai.
“Israel certainly has caves, and many of them were inhabited by humans during the same period when cave paintings were created in Western Europe – 35,000 to 30,000 years ago. Their tools were similar, and their artistic objects, beads, and pendants, for example, were also similar. There is no doubt that humans here had the cognitive ability to paint and were no less capable than their European contemporaries.”
According to the study, the mystery surrounding the absence of cave paintings in the Levant only grew with the revelation that these prehistoric humans were biologically and culturally similar and maintained contact with each other.
“These were Homo sapiens, modern humans, who probably left Africa 60,000 to 70,000 years ago,” Barkai said.“It seems that humans here and there kept in touch, migrating back and forth – and yet there are cave paintings in Europe and none here,” he said.
Why did European humans paint caves?
“We support the hypothesis that cave paintings were created as part of shamanic rituals involving altered states of consciousness, intended to convey messages to entities beyond the cave walls, in underworlds regarded as the source of abundance – asking for solutions to the extinction of large animals on which humans depended for survival,” Barkai explained.
According to the researchers, cave paintings in Europe ended more or less around the time when the region’s large animals became extinct – namely woolly mammoths and woolly rhinoceroses, which prehistoric humans in Europe and elsewhere relied on as their main food source.
“It’s important to understand that cave paintings are found in many cases deep within caves – in places that are difficult and even dangerous to access. We argue that humans in Europe went deep into caves and painted the vanishing large animals to ask [underworld] entities to bring them back, emphasizing their own dependence on large game for their survival,” Barkai continued.
“Here, with elephants and rhinoceroses all gone, Homo sapiens were forced to hunt smaller, faster animals. The people who migrated to Europe, on the other hand, found large game once again: woolly mammoths and woolly rhinoceroses.
“The newly arrived humans felt they had entered paradise, and the animals’ subsequent dwindling, in front of their very eyes, plunged them into a crisis that resulted in cave paintings,” he said. “Prehistoric humans in Israel experienced no such crisis, only continuity, which is why we don’t see cave paintings here.”
According to Barkai, this hypothesis supports the team’s larger thesis that prehistoric humans understood their role in the extinction of their food sources.