Water Mythology and the distribution of Palaeolithic Parietal Art

Abstract

In recent years there has been a refreshing move away from simplistic interpretations of Palaeolithic art: few scholars still adhere to the view of ‘art for art's sake’ or ‘totemism’, although many are reluctant to abandon the formerly dominant theory of ‘hunting magic’. The approach of Laming-Emperaire (1962) and Leroi-Gourhan (1965) is undoubtedly more realistic, in view of what is now known about the highly complex thought-processes which lie behind present-day ‘primitive’ art; but interpretation of cave art's content is unlikely to advance very far, and is largely a waste of time.There has been a similar move away from the study of Palaeolithic art as a single line of continuous evolution, as this view ignores the factors of artistic ability and individuality; moreover, the stretching of the period by absolute dating has underlined the rarity of the phenomenon. I have argued elsewhere (Bahn 1977a, 251) that Palaeolithic art represents a large output by a relatively small number of individuals. It is obvious that no one single explanation will suffice to account for any aspect of an art which assumed a wide variety of forms and which lasted for tens of thousands of years.