Archaeologists from Tel Aviv University have proposed a compelling explanation for the absence of Upper Paleolithic cave art in Israel and the greater Levant.
They argue that the extinction of large animals in the region explains why prehistoric humans did not engage in cave painting there, a practice prevalent in Western Europe.
In their study, published in the Journal of the Israel Prehistoric Society, the researchers suggest that the large animals frequently depicted in European cave art, such as woolly mammoths and rhinoceroses, were already extinct in the Levant when modern humans arrived.
The team—Professor Ran Barkai, Ilan Dagoni, Miki Ben-Dor and Yafit Kedar from Tel Aviv University’s Department of Archaeology—propose that European cave paintings were part of shamanic rituals conducted in response to the dwindling populations of large game, a crisis that prehistoric humans in the Levant did not experience.
“This is a century-old mystery in Israeli archaeological research,” said Barkai. “The first prehistoric cave excavation in Israel took place in 1925, but frustratingly, not a single cave painting has been found since.
“Hundreds of spectacular cave paintings have been discovered in other parts of the world, such as Spain and France. Here, nothing,” he added.
This is despite the fact that humans inhabited caves in Israel during the same period in which cave paintings were created in Western Europe—35,000 to 30,000 years ago.
“Moreover, according to all material evidence, the people in both regions belonged to the same culture—the Aurignacian culture,” he said. “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,” he said.
