Blog #7: The First Humans view of their place in the world

In The Cave Painters, Curtis mentions how the paintings might not just be a reflection of how the Cro-Magnons saw the animals around them but how they see themselves, in regards to the rest of the world. According to the text the most common animals that appeared in the cave paintings were horses and bison, where as other animals such as fish and birds find no place, if not for some exceptions, on the walls on the caves. This raises the question, as Curtis mentions of why draw some animals and not others? Why are the animals they do choose to draw significant to them? It would be easy to assume they are drawing what they know, what animals are important to the way they live, yet if that were true fish would be a far more common occurrence than they are. Also aside from a lack of various animals on the cave walls, there is also a lack of any humans existing on the walls as well, apart from stick figures every one in a while. Curtis asserts in the first chapter how this may be a sign that the humans believed themselves to be insignificant to the world in comparison to animals. That the first humans truly believed it was an animals world and that they would just have to do what they could to survive in it. In this aspect I agree with Curtis, based on the knowledge gained of this art so far, I would have to say it does seem to show that the humans felt they were second to the animals. If they had seen themselves as equals or even as higher beings than the animals around them, than they would have depicted themselves in a more sophisticated manor. A manor of drawing that they had already proven they could achieve, through the very detailed depictions of the animals they had painted.