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The psychological birth of art: A psychoanalyticapproach to prehistoric cave artHarold P. BlumPublished online: 07 Nov 2011.

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ORIGINAL ARTICLE

The psychological birth of art: A psychoanalytic approachto prehistoric cave art

HAROLD P. BLUM

AbstractThe prehistoric art discovered in Eurasian caves, created from 37,000 to 12,000 years ago, has fascinated and perplexedhistorians and scientists. These caves were uninhabited, devoted to art, the first art galleries. A psychoanalytic interpretationof these extraordinary works, this paper addresses the motives of the Paleolithic artists, the meanings of their art, and therelationship of the art and the artists to the cave. While nonanalytic formulations are considered, from a psychoanalyticperspective, the interpretation of the cave is symbolic of the womb, the birth canal, and the primal cavity of self-objectrelationship. Art was created in identification with pregnancy and birth; art endured as reassurance against permanentdarkness and death. Entering and leaving the cave could also represent coitus but, a on a deeper level, attachment andseparation. The cave had magical and developmental significance, a transitional space between internal and external,fantasy and reality, death and rebirth. The creation of art and music, and the invention of intentional, controlled fire,marked the arrival of Homo sapiens, differentiated from all preceding and parallel primates. The painted cave might also haverepresented a cephalic container with illuminated imagery suggestive of dreaming sleep.

Key words: creativity, representation, symbol, painting, evolution

Prehistoric art has fascinated and perplexed art

historians and paleo-anthropologists since the dis-

covery of the cave paintings and sculptures. Who were

these artists, and what were their motives to create art?

Why, when, and how did they paint and engrave in the

cave, on the walls? What did their art mean to them,

and what is the meaning of their art to contemporary

humans? This paper offers a psychoanalytic perspec-

tive on the overdetermined, enigmatic meanings of

prehistoric cave art and associated sculpture.

Hominid evolution stretches backward in time

some three million years. About 2.5 million years

ago, the fragments of bone and stone tools recovered

in fossil records were simple, non-symbolic, and

used for utilitarian tasks, such as cracking, cutting,

or digging. Over eons of time, fully upright innova-

tive toolmakers appeared. In the period from

300,000 to 75,000 years ago, there is still debated

evidence for symbolic expression. Between 75,000

and 100,000 years ago, a genetic variant most

probably appeared that was associated with a change

in brain structure and function, providing an adap-

tive survival advantage leading toward modern hu-

mans. The earliest known rock art was found in

Africa, dated to about 75,000 years ago, and this

capacity for symbolic representation seems to have

survived in some of the hominids who migrated to

Eurasia.

About 40,000 years ago, there was a major change

in the human condition. Some paleo-biologists

believe the changes leading to art and human

language were more gradual rather than being a

quantum leap. In a virtual explosion of creativity,

symbolic representation spread throughout a recent

hominid population. Incipient cultural development,

the collective exchange and trade of ideas and

innovation, would have interacted with the inferred

neurobiological alterations. Nature and nurture,

gene expression activated or inhibited by the envir-

onment, could have been co-determinants in the

combined genetic and cultural evolution of humans.

Adapting to the harsh climate and need for

protection, in their existential struggle, the Eurasian

ancestors of modern humans lived in small groups in

rock shelters and wood huts. The last Ice Age ended

about 11,000 years ago, followed by a change from

small groups of human hunter-gatherers to the dawn

of agriculture, domesticated animals, the first cities,

Correspondence: Harold Blum, 23 The Hemlocks, Roslyn Estates, New York, NY 11576, USA. E-mail: HaroldpBlum@cs.com

International Forum of Psychoanalysis. 2011; 20: 196�204

(Received 7 June 2011; accepted 12 June 2011)

ISSN 0803-706X print/ISSN 1651-2324 online # 2011 The International Federation of Psychoanalytic Societies

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0803706X.2011.597429

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and new forms of culture. Neanderthals, who dis-

appeared during the Aurignacian period about

30,000 years ago, buried their dead but did not

leave art or sophisticated decorated tools behind.

It is not known why they became extinct, but new

evidence indicates that a small fraction of Nean-

derthal DNA was absorbed into the Homo sapiens

population. The proposed genetic alterations that

produced modern humans may have taken thou-

sands of years to spread and multiply within a small

population. The close forebears of modern humans

are estimated to number only about 20,000 persons,

sometimes separated through population bottle-

necks. Homo sapiens was early an endangered species.

The capacity of early humans for self-conscious

awareness, anticipation, abstraction, affect regula-

tion, imagination, innovation, and communication

must have been vital to their survival and eventual

domination. Fully upright, with hands free to grasp

and explore, able to symbolize, recall, and anticipate,

humans were no longer bound rigidly to instinct.

Unlike the rest of the animal world, they could

reinvent themselves in novel ways, developing their

tools, shelter, habitat, clothing, and methods of

hunting, fishing, and gathering food.

The size and, more importantly, the complexity of

the brain of the ancestral line of Homo sapiens

enlarged through the ages. Australopithecus afarensis,

our remote ancestor of about 3.2 million years ago,

stood four feet tall, with a brain volume of about

400 cm3; Homo sapiens has a brain volume of about

1400 cm3. There are two other differential features of

the human brain. First, it develops slowly compared

to all other primates. Only 24% of the human brain

adult size is present at birth, whereas the chimpanzee

starts with a brain volume at birth of 60% of its adult

size at birth. Consequently, the chimpanzee has

much less extrauterine brain development. Second,

the human brain is more complex and is exposed to

more postnatal learning than any other primate.

The birth of art

Although they had primitive tools, ancestral homi-

nids were devoid of art for hundreds of thousands of

years before an extraordinary cultural development

occurred. In the Aurignacian era of 40,000�28,000

years ago, painting, sculpture, engraving, ceramics,

musical instruments, complicated tools, weapons,

and decorative personal adornments were created.

The art and new tools were highly sophisticated,

requiring remarkable technical mastery. Homo

sapiens had arrived. What form characterized the

earliest art? Body art would seem to be the most

likely beginning, whether for decorative, cosmetic,

protective, aggressive, or sexual selection functions.

The body-self was always available, and personal

adornments, jewelry, beads made of bone, antlers,

and ivory are among the earliest art products.

The first known prehistoric cave art dates back

less than 40,000 years. For some idealizing art

historians, the prehistoric art of the caves in France

and Spain, such as Chauvet, Lascaux, and Altamira,

has never been surpassed. (Homo sapiens are also

called Cro-Magnon, after a specific group of Homo

sapiens in the Cro-Magnon cave, Dordogne, France).

Prehistoric caves with paintings, engravings, and

carvings were the first art galleries, ‘‘the first

museums.’’

Both art and advanced language are based on the

capacity for symbolic representation, abstraction,

integration, and probably affect recognition and

regulation. The capacity for symbolic representation,

allowing for symbolic communication, is a unique

landmark in human evolution (Gibeault & Uhl,

1998). Most theories of art consider issues of

pleasure and unpleasure, and mastery of trauma, as

well as illusion, imagination, and creativity. Whether

language preceded art, art preceded language, or

they developed simultaneously in human evolution is

still debated. Prehistoric cave art was created many

thousands of years before the Egyptian pyramids and

Stonehenge. Later, written language appeared, long

after spoken language and derived from pictorial

script such as, hieroglyphics. The art of the late

Aurignacian period (40,000�28,000 BCE) and of the

Magdalenian period (18,000�11,000 BCE) required

symbolic processes, social communication, learning,

and honing of skills (Gibeault & Uhl, 1998). Both

works on high ceilings, which required scaffolds, and

works in the deep recesses of dark tunnels would

have required assistants or apprentices.

The human acquisition of fire was so important

that in the much later Greek myth, Prometheus stole

fire from the gods. In the Lascaux cave, decorated

torches and stone lamps were found, which the cave

artists would have required for light and heat.

Controlled light and heat indicated the incipient

development of science with art. These lamps, fueled

by animal fat and moss or pine wicks, have now been

scientifically studied; if the artists carried extra fuel,

they could produce several hours of dim light,

similar to that of a flickering candle. Some small

crafted fireplaces as well were found in the interior of

the cave. Mortars, pestles, and grinders for prepar-

ing pigment and paint have also been discovered.

Amazingly, some of the awesome paintings were

preserved through 33,000 years, but when the cave

paintings were first discovered, there was only

gradual and grudging acknowledgement of their

incredible age. The cave at Altamira in Santillana

del Mar, Spain, was excavated in 1871 by Count de

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Santola. His young daughter recognized a painted

bichrome bison on the ceiling. The announcement

of the discovery led to accusations of fraud and

fabrication. Scientists and art historians of that era

could not accept that Paleolithic cave artists could

produce such sophisticated painting or that the art

could be preserved through the ages. With the

discovery of caves in the Dordogne, France, in

1901 and a succession of other cave paintings,

Altamira was authenticated (White, 2003).

Lascaux was discovered by four adventuresome

youths following their dog into a cave in the

Dordogne in 1940. Opened to the public in 1948,

it was closed in 1963 when the cave art was

preserved from destruction by the invasion of hu-

mans and microbes. The fantastic paintings were

restored and placed under constant monitoring and

restricted entry to protect against black mold and

bacteria, which endangered the timeless art. The art

had survived through millennia because the caves

had been sealed from microorganisms, light, weather

extremes, human, animal, and plant intrusion.

In 1996, archeologists and art historians were

astounded by the discovery of the ‘‘Chauvet Cave’’

(Ardeche, France). Whereas Lascaux has been dated

to 16,000�18,000 years ago, the Chauvet cave art is

surprisingly much older, approximately 33,000 years

old by radiocarbon dating. Preserved in pristine

condition, stunning paintings were created fourteen

millennia before Lascaux. This cave contains the

oldest known prehistoric cave paintings in Europe,

and indicates that art was probably first created in

the early part of the Paleolithic Aurignacian period

(Clottes, 2010).

We do not know whether the cave art was public

or mainly private, perhaps varying from cave to cave.

Was it a special privilege to create as well as to view

the art? Was the art viewed only on special occa-

sions? Did the artists have a special social status?

Why were deep recesses and almost inaccessible

areas of the cave often selected by the artists? Such

questions abound without definitive answers. Some

of the remote imagery can only be viewed with very

great difficulty, even with modern equipment.

The precision of observation and memory of the

animals in the world outside the cave is evident in the

mastery of line, form, and color of the painted

polychrome figures. A painted ceiling of the Altamira

cave in Spain has been determined to be a master-

piece of a single artist. The large gallery of Lascaux,

with its beautifully engraved and painted ceiling, has

been referred to as the Sistine Chapel of prehistoric

art. The amazing virtuosity was beyond any art or

craft ever found earlier than the Aurignacian period

and indicated intense study, as well as exceptional

endowment and talent. No other hominid had ever

produced such ingenious, complex art. That the cave

art was superlative rather than amateurish is indica-

tive of the great training, talent, and social support of

the artists.

Although there are significant differences in the art

within the Lascaux and Chauvet caves, what is

striking are the overall similarities in cave sites, in

the general process of preparing, mixing pigments,

and painting the cave walls, as well as in the

composition of the paintings. Prehistoric caves with

paintings were apparently separate from venues of

habitation or communal meetings. The cave itself

was chosen and maintained, in a modern designa-

tion, as an art site. Most of the paintings are not at or

near the entrances to the cave; the art was invisible

without lamps or torches. The art close to the

entrance of the Lascaux cave complex is an excep-

tion to this rule, although the major art work is deep

within Lascaux and the other caves. A minority of

the more than 250 prehistoric caves with art are

shallow, but most are very long and deep.

Prehistoric artists worked in spaces of varying size

and shape, some in relatively large ‘‘rooms,’’ others

in tunnels accessible and usable only by crawling and

squeezing through tortuous defiles, squatting to

paint or engrave. Masterworks were created by

artists lying on their backs facing the ceiling, on

their abdomen facing the ground, using primitive

brushes made of animal hair or burrs, or painting

with their fingers. The pigments were derived from

the earth � red and yellow ocher of iron oxides.

Manganese dioxide and burned wood charcoal

provided black outlines, shading, and modeling.

White was obtained from kaolin and mica. The

passage into the caves and tunnels and the difficult

return through the near total darkness indicate that

the art was often produced under arduous if not

extreme conditions. The artists needed to be or have

expert guides and guidance systems, within internal

memory and perhaps external maps of the caves.

The first artists most likely observed potential

similarities between the shapes of natural objects, for

example rocks, shells, and branches, used as tools

and tools invented with these objects as original

models. As art evolved, the outline of an animal may

have been discerned or superimposed on the contour

of the cave rock. The cave artist used the cave

formations for bumps, humps, and horns in their

rich appreciation and imagination of form. Mem-

ories and internal images of animals were matched

with cave wall contours, with cracks and fissures

serving as lines shaping animal bodies. With study,

practice, and skill, the imagined shape was inscribed

with advanced tools and paint brushes, to the

wonder and awe of the spectator. Some cave

walls were scraped to prepare the surface, perhaps

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analogous to a blank canvas, for the painting. The

painted and engraved animal species were recogniz-

able, whether drawn in part or whole, usually with

identifiable features such as age, sex, attitude, and

movement (Clottes, 2010).

On rock surfaces, painting and engraving merged

almost imperceptibly; the cave walls provided

volume to the bichrome or polychrome animals.

Did some Paleolithic artists believe that animal

spirits were extant in the cave formations before

their inscribed art? Was the wall a boundary between

the animate and inanimate, human and animal?

What was behind the wall? Prehistoric artists may

have imagined that their art was co-created by spirits

in themselves and/or in the wall. A hypothesis of

shaman magic and primordial religious ritual is

suggested by a rare anthropomorphic image at Les

Trois Freres (Ariege, France):

An amazing masked figure with a long beard, the eye of

an owl, the antlers of a stage, the ears of a wolf, the claw

as of a lion, and the tail of a wild horse. It is engraved and

outlined in black paint, about ten feet from the ground in

a nook most difficult of access in a small round chamber

. . . It seems to dominate and preside over all the

hundreds of other creatures of thirteen different species

. . . Can it be some weird deity . . .? Perhaps rather it is the

Arch-Sorcerer. (White, 2003, p. 51)

The figure’s penis can be just discerned beneath the

tail, but an animal’s erect penis is rarely shown.

Human genitalia, especially of the female, appear

much more frequently during the Magdelanian

period. The genitalia may be disembodied.

This composite representation is representative of

the interpretations of Paleolithic art as shamanism,

hunting and fertility magic, and ritual. However, no

depiction of a shaman or hunting ceremony has ever

been found, and there is little correlation between

the animals that were eaten and the animals that

were painted. The proposition that shamanism

subserved cave art assumes that, in a trance, the

shaman made contact with a spirit cave world in

which supernatural powers were acquired. The

uncertain could be magically predictable of life or

death, food or famine, friend or foe, and so on. The

cave wall could be imagined as a membrane between

the real and the supernatural world (White, 2003;

Whitley, 2009).

But although this is a plausible hypothesis, it is not

in my opinion compelling. Such concentrated fine

art requiring intense concentration, coordination,

reflection, and skill could hardly have been produced

in a trance, or in a hallucinatory state due to ingested

biochemicals. Sensory deprivation is inconsistent

with the artist’s need for an assistant to hold a

lighted torch while engaged in polychrome painting

or engraving in the otherwise dark cave. Structural-

ism attempted to explain aspects of cave art by

grouping the patterning, distribution, and number of

animals by gender, age, and species, but did not

account for irregular distributions, and variation

among caves and over time.

The cave paintings were expressive of emotions

projected onto the animals with whom they were

identified. The shaman or sorcerer, perhaps a chosen

artist, could have been attempting to communicate

with the animals, attempting to placate or propitiate

them, attract them, or atone for killing them.

The artist’s capacity for empathy with their animals

implies empathic responses in their personal human

relationships. In empathic identification with the

animals, the shaman might magically acquire their

power and obtain their alliance. Yet the painted

animals in the oldest Chauvet cave were predators

rather than the hunted sources of meat. Rarely, if at

all, is an animal shown mortally wounded. Identifiable

spears and scenes of hunting are not present until the

end of the Ice Age and the end of Paleolithic art, when

wounded deer are depicted after a hunt. There are no

scenes of the land animals grazing, stalking, being

born, nursing, or caring for their young, or of eating,

drinking, urination, or defecation. A horse and other

animals emerging from cracks in the wall may suggest

vaginal birth. Copulation is not explicit, with a rare

image of a bison about to mount a cow.

Animals may lock horns, but the cave art does not

portray graphic, destructive violence. A speared,

wounded, or dying animal is virtually a lone image.

Compared to later violence in art and the images

shown in computer games, television programs, and

cinema, cave art is quite peaceful. Aggression

necessary for sustenance and survival, as well as

universal conflict, is conspicuous by its absence in

prehistoric cave painting. Either the cave artists were

capable of sublimating aggression in their art, or the

portrayal of aggression and violence was prohibited.

Evidence for the cave as a sanctuary, a sacred

space, and Paleolithic art as a religious ritual remains

debatable, if not overgeneralized. Art for art’s sake

has also been proposed to explain prehistoric dec-

oration, painting, and sculpture. But it does not

explain the choice of nearly inaccessible, or very

remote, concealed cave art and the role of the caves

and animals for their dedicated artists. Art was most

likely practiced, perfected, and produced outdoors,

but it would not have endured over time. The

coexistence of outdoor rock painting and engraving

with similar painted and engraved images of animals

in the prehistoric caves does not necessarily mean

that the external art had the same meaning and

function as the more elaborate, internal cave art.

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The choice of uninhabited caves, the near total

absence of humans in the cave art, and the frequent

location of the painted walls in the distant depths of

the cave all point to special meanings of the art and

the cave to the artists and their community.

The specialized, controlled content of the cave art

is further evident in the absence of plant life and the

absence of ground, sky, or sea. The painted animals

appear to exist in a world of their own, without the

boundaries or context of a defined place, space, or

time other than the wall and the enclosing cave. Rare

painted fish are literally fish out of water. Thus, free

expression in art for art’s sake, or as recreation seems

highly unlikely for the highly restricted composition

of prehistoric cave art. In the struggle of the first

humans for survival, basic needs had to be met for

art to flourish.

Psychoanalytic perspective

The subterranean dimension of the cave art invites

comparison with the tomb art of much later periods,

for example those of the Egyptians and Mayans. The

spirits of the dead, the magical contact and commu-

nication with ancestors, may have been an additional

meaning of deep cave art. The darkness, sights of

animal life appearing and disappearing back into the

invisible, sounds of a distant voice, eerie footsteps,

dripping water, and musty odors may all have had

magical meanings.

The finding of wind instruments in the Aurigna-

cian period of 30,000 years ago indicates that the

acoustics of the cave and music inside and outside

the cave were probably quite significant. Music and

visual art appear to have been created concurrently.

Primarily flutes (found in France and Germany),

these musical instruments were made from bird

bones, mainly those of large vultures. A vulture

bone flute with five regularly spaced finger holes and

a V-shaped mouthpiece found in a German cave has

been dated to 36,000 years ago. Bird sounds and

songs may have been models, in addition to the

human voice, for prehistoric human song and music;

the human mother’s voice and birds are natural

musical instruments. Blowing air through horns and

reeds could readily have produced different sounds,

a prelude to music. Music, song, and dance, then as

now, could serve emotional expression, familial

bonding, and group cohesion. The flutes would

have immeasurably added to the probable acoustic

effects and rhythm achieved by clapping hands and

the use of drums. Were there music, song, chants,

trance-like dances, associated with the cave art?

Music might summon or dismiss the ghosts of the

dead or enliven the living toward interaction.

Perhaps the first artists were given special recogni-

tion and relieved of other responsibilities in the

hunting, food-gathering group. If the magical as-

pects of art were used to ensure the availability of

animal fertility and food, art could also represent

life-giving and life-preserving functions for humans.

However, there are no complete human figures in

cave art; humans are rarely seen, and, for example,

appear as crude stick figures in Lascaux. Why did

Homo sapiens artists virtually exclude humans from

the content of their painting, composed almost

entirely of land animals? Probably, there was a

restriction, a taboo about depicting humans; art

could somehow endanger humans through the

magical control, possession, or destruction of hu-

mans (and animals). Possibly at the dawn of Homo

sapiens, humans may have needed to demarcate

themselves from all other forms of life while con-

currently living in an anthropomorphic world.

As in dreams, myth, and later art and literature,

the cave itself would likely have been symbolic of the

mother, her life-giving womb and genitalia, and the

fearful mysteries of pregnancy, birth, and death

(Freud, 1916). On a deeper level of the unconscious,

the cave art may be regarded as a communication, a

dialogue that began with mother�infant sensory and

affect�motor exchanges. In its primordial uncon-

scious meaning, the cave likely represented transi-

tional space for the emergence of self and object

boundaries (Winnicott, 1957), the primal cavity

(Spitz, 1965), the container for progressive parental

transformation of the infant’s affects and cognition

(Bion, 1970), and the development of intrapsychic,

interrelated self and object representations (Jacobson,

1964). In the bowels of the earth, art may also have

fostered the differentiation of animate and inanimate,

self and not-self, unconsciously related to incomple-

tely separated feces as ‘‘living shit,’’ and as a dis-

sociated, expelled alien.

I surmise that the cave artist was identified with

the life-creating pregnant female in the womb of

mother earth. A prehistoric female artist may have

wanted to insure pregnancy and the survival of

herself and her infant. A male artist may well have

envied, identified with, and unconsciously wanted to

magically acquire, possess, and surpass the creative

powers of women in pregnancy, birth, and life-

sustaining lactation and nurturance. The role of

the male in reproduction may well have been

unknown and later uncertain for eons of time.1

1 However, recent observations by contemporary art historians suggest that

gravid Venus statuettes can be viewed from another angle as erect penises,

possibly symbolizing some form of connection between pregnancy and

penis, as well as signifying human bisexuality.

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The artists’ cave could create enduring life-like

images.

Death, so frightening and incomprehensible,

could be surmounted as the art spirit was born and

reborn in the tunnels and room-wombs of the cave.

The cave itself was a birth canal and womb, a living

organism in which undying art was produced. Art

could then be associated with magic, omnipotence,

birth, death, rebirth, and immortality. Entering and

leaving the cave could be a wishful but dangerous

return to and separation from the womb and the

primary object. The cave artist or spectator could be

swallowed in the primal cavity of mother earth but,

in their sublimated and sublime art, could transcend

the anxiety of intrapsychic merger, separation, and

infantile regression (Mahler, Pine, & Bergman,

1975). The dialogue with the cave and with cave

art might unconsciously represent the primary and

evolving communication of mother�infant and then

parent�child. I further hypothesize that these first

Homo sapiens were not allowed to live in the cave or

the cave art because of a later developmental taboo,

the prohibition of incest found in all subsequent

societies and cultures (Freud, 1913).

There are many interpretations of prehistoric cave

art, indicative of the complexity, variety, and devel-

opmental modification of the art through millennia.

In many respects, the primordial artists anticipated

the creation of the arts and sciences by their modern

descendants. Perspective, relief, the use of color,

modeling, shading, and composition can all be

found early cave art. The prehistoric artists could

sculpt, paint, and engrave, and mastered both three-

and two-dimensional art. Dots could define struc-

ture and provide rhythm and vibrancy, strongly

suggestive of post-impressionist pointillism. Dots,

dashes, and incised lines may also have been a code

or signs that remain incomprehensible to contem-

porary art historians.

There is evidence of the presence of humans of all

ages in the prehistoric art galleries. Both genders

were present, and both men and women may have

contributed to the art. Given the expert guidance

and primitive lighting needed to navigate the tor-

tuous passages and tunnels, as well as the paucity of

footprints, it is questionable how often the artists

and their assistants revisited their art. The cave at

Pech Merle (Lot, France) has silhouettes of fingers

bent at the first joint, which most men cannot do.

Some of the hands on the wall appear to be those of

women. Paleolithic art may indicate the cooperation

of men and women so necessary to Ice Age survival.

The cave artists left their hand images and

fingerprints by direct finger painting, and by using

stencils while blowing as well as spitting paint. Some

clusters of red dots have recently been deciphered as

palm prints on the cave wall, and rare fingers with

missing digits may be related to the prohibition of

human depiction or to an unknown communication.

Perhaps analogous to a now traditional artist signa-

ture, the hands of cave artists may have proclaimed

their identity and handiwork, as well as a remaining

literally and figuratively in touch with the wall of

their art. The prehistoric artists left their handprints

and footprints to posterity, but not portraits of

themselves or other humans.

Humans are mainly symbols, stick or deformed

figures, disembodied vulvas, phalluses, and heads, a

hybrid or composite human�animals. These compo-

site figures suggest animism and identification with

selected animals, as found in later totemism. The

face is conspicuous by its absence, considering the

importance of the face to identity, affect recognition,

and expression, the mother�infant couple, and the

social smile. The human brain has evolved with

localization and specialization for facial recognition.

Animal faces are rare, and the animals are painted in

profile, a style that is associated with controlled and

disguised emotional expression (Sacco, 1998).

Palimpsests of the painted and engraved animals

obscure individuation and separate group categories

(Whitley, 2009). The Paleolithic cultural convention

is indicative of a lack or suppression or protection of

individual identity, or a taboo concerning facial

representation and the danger of loss or theft of

identity. Exclusive attachment as well as progressive

separation-�individuation may not have been desir-

able or even possible among those earliest peoples,

for whom survival was dependent on the group

(Blum, 2004).

The temperament and emotion of some of the

great cave images, the pose and realistic representa-

tion of the animals, for example horses with different

positions and gaits, would indicate that the prehis-

toric artists had a sense of movement, speed, and

direction. Horses in sequential advancing positions

imply that that these first humans had a sense of

time, of past, present, and future.

Homo sapiens projected their attitudes and feelings

onto or into the animals on the wall, imbued with

human qualities. The animals could have safely

represented different characteristics of humans with

the safety and neutrality of non-human representa-

tion, as in children’s stories. Pregnant animals are

present, but pregnant women appear only in sculp-

ture. The presence of babies in the art caves has been

established, but our ancestral family life and child-

rearing modalities are unknown. Humans are the

only animals that wear clothes, but the cultural

customs of clothing, nudity, or modesty of these

people is unknown. Clothing was also first manu-

factured about 30,000 years ago, with needles and

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eyed needles made from bone and ivory � the eyed

needle has been essentially unchanged since its first

invention.

In the biblical account, Adam and Eve were

ashamed and covered their naked selves after they

ate the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge.

Primordial Homo sapiens might have experienced

shame, guilt, or remorse, and strong inhibitions or

prohibitions seem to have definitely been present.

There are no literal or symbolic human primal

scenes, let alone couples or a social group. Object

loss, separation anxiety, castration anxiety, the uni-

versals of human experience and psychology, are not

depicted in the manifest content of cave art. The

‘‘rules of the game’’ in the cave paintings were that

what could be depicted was rigidly restricted.

The animals painted with such lifelike virtuosity

were those observed, hunted, feared, and perhaps

honored or worshipped by prehistoric humans. They

include the extinct mammoth, wooly rhinoceros,

auroch (a fierce oversized ox), giant elk, horse,

bison, reindeer, bear, unidentified herbivores, and

rarely fish, for example a salmon. Different sets of

geometric signs are found with more than 10% of the

animals, for example dots and dashes in a common

configuration, while rectangles are usually in isola-

tion. Some geometrics are also isolated from animal

images. The famed spotted horse of the Pech Merle

cave (Lot, France) required days of work and an

avoidance of breaching the boundaries of the ani-

mals or handprints when the spots were painted

(Whitley, 2009).

The caves display the human capacity to categor-

ize and connect covariant animal groups. Horses and

bison are typically found together, but horses are not

found with mammoths. Two clusters have been

identified as mammoth�bison�reindeer�bear, and

bison�red-deer�ibex. The DNA of the mammoth

and the auroch have been largely decoded, and

geneticists hope to resurrect the auroch through a

process of back-breeding. One day, we may even

have the DNA of prehistoric Homo sapiens for

evolutionary comparison with modern humans.

Modern humans do not possess the mindset of the

cave people and their artists. Based on current

knowledge and historical perspectives, we have to

conjecture, place ourselves in the cave, and ponder

the art in our inevitably contemporary framework.

The creation of the internal world of cave art, with

the painted walls akin to a fresco or a prepared

canvas, might have been associated not only with

human creativity, and the creation of humans, but

also with the creation of the caves and the creation of

their worlds. All peoples and cultures have sought

their origins in myths and historical legend. Was the

mysterious cave art linked to some quasi-religious

concept of origin and creation, similar to creation

myths (Mohen, 1998) and the story of creation in

the Bible? This would extend the symbolic meaning

of the cave as womb, birth, death, and rebirth to all

of creation. Courbet’s (1866) vividly realistic paint-

ing of the female genitals (Musee D’Orsay, Paris),

once owned by Lacan and considered outrageous

and concealed from view, was aptly titled, The origin

of the world.

Light and dark could allude to the appearance,

disappearance, and reappearance of the sun and

moon, the diurnal experience of day and night,

awake and asleep. The imagery on the wall could

refer to the projected imagery of the dream, and the

cave could be the container, the head. Peaceful

animal imagery would have transformed nightmares

into sublimated tranquility. Wakefulness and sleep

could have baffled, gratified, and worried the cave

people. The fetus was hidden in the womb and the

dark passage of the birth canal. There may have been

different day art and night art, as has been observed

in oceanic art (Corbin, 2008). Separation and

isolation in darkness could have fostered art that

was counterphobic against frightening nightmares

and other haunting imagery. In this connection, the

cave could also unconsciously represent the head,

the cranial cavity behind the eyes where imagery was

likely located. Evoking the supernatural world,

ancestral ghosts may have been imaginary spectators

of the relatively invisible art. The ghostly enduring

cave art may have reassured against the terror and

trauma of death, possibly related to funerary rites.

Many of the cultures of antiquity, from the

Stonehenge people to the Mayans, were deeply

concerned with astronomy and their interrelation-

ship to birth and death, the lunar cycle, the sun, and

the stars. Analogous to the painting on prehistoric

cave walls, the walls of Egyptian royal tombs were

painted with scenes of the journey from death to

rebirth in life after death. Utensils, foodstuffs, and

items for the afterlife were buried with the deceased,

and the body was transformed into a mummy to

evade decay and dissolution. Both the subterranean

earth below and the sky above could be imagined as

the abode of the living dead.

Sculpture was present outside and infrequently

inside the caves, but only those works made of

durable material have survived. Sculptures included

large polychrome friezes, statuettes of variable size,

and small objects and animals made of bone, horn,

ivory, and seashells. Sculpture began with the craft-

ing of tools when stones, bones, and antlers were

adapted from fortuitous natural shapes and refined

as useful tools. Such improvisation was the substrate

for the art and later science that followed. Humans

connected form with function, with later complexity

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and decoration. Dots and lines, incised and/or

painted on the stone or flint, developed over time

into more elaborate designs (Janson, 1996).

Affirming the importance of fertility and birth

in the small endangered Paleolithic Homo sapiens,

the earliest sculptures were mostly female gender-

specific. The statuettes represent obese or pregnant

women, with an emphasis on large breasts, buttocks,

and the pelvic and genital areas. One female

statue with her legs spread suggests voyeurism�exhibitionism and an invitation to coitus. Some of

the sculptures have enlarged open vulvas, as though

birth were impending or recent. That these images

represent fertility, pregnancy, birth, or rebirth seems

almost inescapable. The sculpture lends confirma-

tion to the hypothesis that the cave and its art had a

fundamental relationship to fantasies of origins, of

birth, death, and rebirth. Some of the sculptures

could well have represented a fertility goddess, and

could also proclaim the female power of creation.

Were these figures intended to facilitate pregnancy

and protect women during childbirth? Did they

sexually stimulate the male, invite the protection of

the male, or attempt to instill or assuage castration

anxiety? Possibly they alluded to cultural symbols of

matriarchal prestige and lineage. What female body

form was considered attractive to Paleolithic hu-

mans? What was the attraction and role of art in their

social structure? Why was a faceless, gravid female

represented in prehistoric sculpture but not in the

cave paintings? Perhaps there was greater magical

power attached to the painted images in the dark

cave, analogous to dreams, myths, and legends, than

to sculpture done with external models. Psycho-

analytic reconstruction is strengthened by internal

consistency and external support, but a reconstruc-

tion of archaic life and mentation is inevitably

dominated by mystery and conjecture (Blum, 1994).

Most of the statuettes of these obese fertility

figures date from about 22,000�25,000 years ago

(White, 2003). The so-called Venus statuettes, such

as the Venus of Willendorf, made of stone and

4 3/8 inches in height (Naturhistorische Museum,

Vienna), and the elaborate ivory Venus of Lespugue

(Musee de Homme, Paris) have been related to both

human and animal fertility. The oldest know statu-

ette is that of a woman, the Venus of Hohle Fels,

found in 2000 in a cave near the village of Hohe Fels,

Swabia, Germany. This statuette is 2.3 inches tall,

made of mammoth bone, and about 37,000 years

old. The term ‘‘Venus’’ is ambivalently one of

admiration and denigration. The arrival of Homo

sapiens about 40,000�50,000 years ago coincides

with the birth of art. Art has since been found across

the planet in all cultures and all subsequent times.

Conclusion

The human creation of the arts is an intrinsic universal

propensity of human nature. In an evolutionary

‘‘Darwinian’’ explanation of the motivation to create

art, Dutton (2009) has proposed an innate human art

instinct. In his view, similar to sexual selection in the

color and songs of birds or the tail of the peacock, the

attraction of painting is then the manifestation of the

art instinct. This paradigm in humans is modeled on

natural selection in evolutionary biology.

However, in my opinion, this does not account for

the expression of esthetic pleasure, innovation, the

search for perfection, and creativity that are so

different from innately determined instincts. Rather,

the human capacity for imagination, fantasy, pretend

play, and flexible adaptation to varying life situations

considerably extends animal instinct or drive. Func-

tional pleasure in being able to represent external and

internal images, to manipulate symbols, to express

ideas and emotions, to create novelty, and to recreate

what is absent or has had only a mental existence may

well have been an underlying contribution to the

origin of art. Human concern with birth and death,

attachment, separation and object loss, transitional

space, affectionate and aggressive relationships, in-

trapsychic conflict, and mastery of trauma all seem to

be powerful determinants of art. Paleolithic humans

were an extraordinary evolutionary and cultural

transformation leading to the modern brain, mind,

society, and the psychological birth of art.

Note

The prehistoric periods of cave art are named for the

sites in France in which the art was first discovered:

the Aurignacian period, named after the Aurignacian

site (Haute-Garonne) 40,0000�28,000 years ago; the

Gravettian period, from 28,000 to 20,000 years ago,

named after the rock shelter of La Gravette, Dor-

dogne; the Solutrean period, 22,000�18,000 years

ago, named after the site at Solutre (Saone-et-Loire);

the Magdelanian period, 18,000�11,000 years ago,

named after the rock shelter of la Madeleine at Les

Eyzies, Dordogne. The fossil and DNA patterns

indicate an east to west hominid movement out of

Africa to Eurasia.

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Author

Harold P. Blum, MD, is clinical professor of

psychiatry, New York University School of Medicine,

Executive Director of the Sigmund Freud Archives,

and former Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the

American Psychoanalytic Association. He is also former

vice-president of the International Psychoanalytical

Association. His publications cover the areas of

female psychology, defense and resistance, recon-

struction, and dreams.

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