Children participated in cave paintings because they were perceived as mediators between the physical and spiritual worlds

 

 

Caption

Finger paintings made by children in Rouffignac Cave, 14,000 to 20,000 years ago.

 

Credit

Dr. Van Gelder

A team of Tel Aviv University researchers from the field of prehistoric archaeology has proposed an innovative hypothesis regarding an intriguing question: Why did ancient humans bring their young children to cave painting sites, deep underground — through dark, meandering, hazardous passages? The researchers explain: “Next to many cave paintings, there is clear evidence of the presence of children as young as two years old. So far, most hypotheses have focused on the educational aspect — learning the community's traditions and customs. However, we believe that children also played a unique cultural role in these caves: Young children were credited with special qualities in the spiritual world, enabling them to communicate with entities from the beyond – which were believed to be accessible from the depths of the cave.”

The study was conducted by Dr. Ella Assaf, Dr. Yafit Kedar, and Prof. Ran Barkai from the Jacob M. Alkow Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Cultures at Tel Aviv University. The paper was published in the journal Arts from MDPI.

Dr. Assaf explains: “Cave art created by early humans is a fascinating phenomenon that intrigues many researchers. To date, around 400 caves containing cave art have been discovered, mainly in France and Spain, with the artwork dated between 40,000 and 12,000 years ago. There is solid evidence of children's participation in the art work — handprints and finger paintings made by children aged two to twelve. In addition, footprints and handprints of children have been found in some caves, alongside those of adults. This naturally raises the question: Why were the children there? Why were very young children taken on exhausting and hazardous journeys deep into the dark, meandering caves with low oxygen levels — crawling through crevices, descending shafts, and climbing rocks to reach their destination?

Dr. Kedar elaborates: “Despite extensive research on cave art, few studies have focused on the presence of children. The prevailing hypothesis is that their participation served an educational purpose — passing down knowledge, traditions, and customs to the next generation. In our study, we argue that children's involvement had an additional meaning: In fact, they played an important, unique role of their own — direct communication with entities residing in the depths of the earth and otherworldly realms. This study follows our previous works, in which we presented cave art works as expressions of cosmological approaches, with emphasis on relationships between humans and various entities.”

Dr. Assaf adds: “Based on extensive studies about children in indigenous societies, along with new insights into rituals performed in caves with cave paintings, a new understanding is emerging regarding the role of children in the creation of cave art. By integrating data from these research fields, we were able, for the first time, to propose a novel and original explanation for the inclusion of children in creating cave paintings:  The world of childhood differs from that of adults, and children possess a range of unique mental and cognitive traits. For this reason, indigenous cultures worldwide, throughout history and prehistory, have viewed children as 'active agents' — mediators between this world and the entities inhabiting the natural world, the underworld, and the cosmos as a whole. In this way, children made a vital contribution to their communities - hunter-gatherers who lived in nature and sought to maintain continuous, respectful relationships with various entities: animals and plants that served as food sources, stones used for toolmaking, ancestral spirits, and more.”

Prof. Barkai: “Many of these societies regarded caves as gateways to the underworld - where, through shamanic rituals, they could communicate with cosmic entities and inhabitants of the underworld, to resolve existential problems. In this context, young children were perceived as liminal beings — belonging to both the realm they had left just recently (before birth) and the world they currently inhabit. Thus, small children were considered particularly suited to bridging the gap between the worlds and delivering messages to non-human entities. In this paper, we connect these insights and propose that children joined adults on journeys into the depths of caves and participated in painting and rituals as part of their role in the community—as ideal mediators with entities from the beyond.”

Link to the article:

https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0752/14/2/27

New study challenges the story of humanity’s shift from prehistoric hunting to farming

 

A new study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) has turned traditional thinking on its head by highlighting the role of human interactions during the shift from hunting and gathering to farming - one of the biggest changes in human history - rather than earlier ideas that focused on environmental factors.

The transition from a hunter-gatherer foraging lifestyle, which humanity had followed for hundreds of thousands of years, to a settled farming one about 12,000 years ago has been widely discussed in popular books like Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari.

Researchers from the University of Bath, the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, the University of Cambridge, UCL, and others have developed a new mathematical model that challenges the traditional view that this major transition was driven by external factors, such as climate warming, increased rainfall, or the development of fertile river valleys.

This research shows that humans were not just passive participants in this process; they played an active and crucial role in the transition. Factors such as varying population growth rates and mortality rates—driven by competition between hunter-gatherers and farmers—shaped the agricultural development of these regions.

Using a model originally designed to study predator-prey interactions, the researchers examined how early farmers and hunter-gatherers may have influenced each other. The results suggest that early farming societies spread through migration, competition, and cultural exchange, reshaping how hunter-gatherers lived and interacted with their environment.

Dr Javier Rivas, from the Department of Economics at the University of Bath, said:

"Our study provides a new perspective on prehistoric societies. By statistically fitting our theoretical predator-prey model to observed population dynamics inferred from radiocarbon dates, we explored how population growth shaped history and uncovered interesting patterns—such as how the spread of farming, whether by land or sea, influenced interactions between different groups. More importantly, our model also highlights the role of migration and cultural mixing in the rise of farming."

The team plans to build on this model by adding more details and testing it in larger regions.

Dr Javier Rivas added:

“We hope the methods we’ve developed will eventually become a standard tool for understanding how populations interacted in the past, offering fresh insight into other key moments in history, not just the shift to farming.”

Discovery of Quina technology challenges view of ancient human development in East Asia

 

While the Middle Paleolithic period is viewed as a dynamic time in European and African history, it is commonly considered a static period in East Asia. New research from the University of Washington challenges that perception.

Researchers discovered a complete Quina technological system — a method for making a set of tools — in the Longtan site in southwest China, which has been dated to about 50,000 to 60,000 years ago. Quina technology was found in Europe decades ago but has never before been found in East Asia.

The team published its findings March 31 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“This is a big upset to the way we think about that part of the world in that period of time,” said Ben Marwick, co-author and UW professor of archaeology. “It really raises the question of, what else were people doing during this period that we haven’t found yet? How is this going to change how we think about people and human evolution in this area?”

The Middle Paleolithic, or Middle Stone Age, occurred about 300,000 to 40,000 years ago and is considered a crucial time in human evolution. The period is associated with the origin and evolution of modern humans in Africa. In Eurasia, it’s linked to the development of several archaic human groups such as Neanderthals and Denisovans. However, there is a widely held belief that development in China was sluggish during most of the Paleolithic.

The Quina system identified in China has been dated to 55,000 years ago, which is in the same period as European finds. This disputes the idea that the Middle Paleolithic was stagnant in the region and deepens the understanding of Homo sapiens, Denisovans and possibly other hominins.

The most distinctive part of the Quina system is the scraper — a stone tool that is typically thick and asymmetrical with a broad and sharp working edge that has clear signs of use and resharpening. Researchers found several of these, as well as the byproducts of their manufacture. Tiny scratches and chips on the tools indicate they were used for scraping and scratching bones, antlers or wood.

Marwick said the question now becomes: how did this toolkit arrive in East Asia? Researchers will work to determine whether there is a direct connection — people moving gradually from west to east — or if the technology was invented independently with no direct contact between groups.

It will help if researchers can find an archaeological site with a deep set of layers, Marwick said, so they can see what tools developed before the appearance of Quina technology.

“We can try to see if they were doing something similar beforehand that Quina seemed to evolve out of,” Marwick said. “Then we might say that development seems to be more local — they were experimenting with different forms in previous generations, and they finally perfected it. Alternatively, if Quina appears without any sign of experimentation, that suggests this was transmitted from another group.”

There are likely several reasons why Quina technology has just now been found in East Asia. One factor, Marwick said, is that archaeologists working in China are learning more about archaeology in other parts of the world and how to recognize their findings. He said the pace of research is also increasing, which means archaeologists are more likely to find rarer artifacts.

“The idea that nothing has changed for such a long time in East Asia also has a tight grip on people,” Marwick said. “They haven’t been considering the possibility of finding things that challenge that. Now maybe there are some scholars who are interested in questioning those ideas.”

Much of archaeological discovery relies on luck, Marwick said, but one goal for the future is to uncover human remains in the area.

“That could answer the question of whether these tools are the product of a modern human like you and me,” Marwick said. “There have never been any Neanderthals found in East Asia, but could we find a Neanderthal? Or, more likely, could we find a Denisovan, which is another kind of human ancestor? If we can find the human remains associated with this period, we might find something surprising — maybe even a new human ancestor that we don't know about yet.”

Other co-authors were Qi-Jun Ruan, Hao L, Pei-Yuan Xiao, Ke-Liang Zhao, Zhen-Xiu Jia and Fa-Hu Chen of the Chinese Academy of Sciences; Bo Li of the University of Wollongong in Australia, Hélène Monod of the Universitat Rovira i Virgili in Spain; Alexander Sumner of DePaul University; Jian-Hui Liu of the Yunnan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology; Chun-Xin Wang and An-Chuan Fan of the University of Science and Technology of China; Marie-Hélène Moncel of the National Museum of Natural History in Paris; Marco Peresani and Davide Delpiano of the University of Ferrara in Italy; and You-Ping Wang of Peking University in Beijing.