Lidor Sultan*
For a century, archaeologists have wondered why there are no cave paintings in the Levant in general and Israel in particular. The answer has now been offered by researchers at Tel Aviv University: ancient humans did not paint in caves in this region, because the large animals depicted in Western European cave paintings had already become extinct in the area.
“This is a mystery that has surrounded archaeological research in Israel for 100 years,” says researcher Ran Barkai. «The first prehistoric cave was excavated in the country in 1925, but to date not a single cave painting has been found. In other regions of the world, such as Spain and France, hundreds of cave paintings of impressive beauty have been found, but nothing in this country.
Chauvet Cave in France dating from the Upper Paleolithic, a period spanning approximately 35,000 to 10,000 BC, before the rise of agriculture
(Photo: Jean Clottes)
According to Barkai, the key is understanding the purpose of the cave paintings. These works of art were created as part of shamanic rituals, performed in the depths of caves to communicate with supernatural entities about the crisis of disappearing megafauna. Europe, shortly after the arrival of modern humans, saw the extinction of crucial prey animals such as woolly mammoths and woolly rhinos. This crisis generated the creation of rock art as a ritualistic response.
However, the situation in the Levant was different. When the Homo sapiens reached what is now Israel, the large animals had already been hunted to extinction by previous human species such as Neanderthals. This absence of large animals meant that they did not experience an extinction crisis that would cause the creation of cave paintings.
«In Israel we do not find this type of paintings because large animals became extinct in our region before the arrival of the Homo sapiensso they were forced to hunt smaller, faster animals,” explains Barkai. “This hypothesis reinforces our general thesis that ancient humans were aware of the role they themselves played in the extinction of their food sources.”
*Journalist.
Fountain: Israel Hayom.
Translation Sami Rozenbaum / New Israelite World.
