Research suggests: extinct animals explain Israel’s lack of cave art.

For over a century, archaeologists have puzzled over the absence of cave art in the Levant in general, and specifically in Israel. Clearly, the reason is not a lack of caves, knowledge, or artistic skill. Now, a team of archaeologists from Tel Aviv University proposes an original explanation: prehistoric humans in the Levant did not create cave paintings because many large animals, the subjects of cave art in Western Europe, were already extinct here – so there was no need to try to depict them for shamanic rituals held deep within caves.

The study was published in an editorial article of the Journal of the Israel Prehistoric Society, authored by a team of researchers from Tel Aviv University’s Jacob M. Alkow Department of Archaeology & Ancient Near Eastern Cultures: Prof. Ran Barkai, Dr. Ilan Dagoni, Dr. Miki Ben-Dor, and Dr. Yafit Kedar.

Prof. Ran Barkai.

The enigma of missing cave art in Israel

“This is a century-old mystery in Israeli archaeological research”, says Prof. Barkai. “The first prehistoric cave excavation in Israel took place in 1925, but frustratingly, not a single cave painting has been found since. In other parts of the world, such as Spain and France, hundreds of spectacular cave paintings have been discovered. Here, nothing. Israel certainly has caves, and many were inhabited by humans during the same period when 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. 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”. The mystery around the absence of cave paintings in the Levant grew in recent years, as numerous studies showed that Aurignacian humans in the Levant and Europe were not only biologically and culturally similar, but also maintained contact with each other.

“These were Homo sapiens, modern humans, who probably left Africa 60,000 to 70,000 years ago”, says Prof. Barkai.

Prof. Barkai continues: “They passed through the Levant around 60,000 years ago and arrived in Europe approximately 45,000 years ago. However, new archaeological evidence shows that some returned to Israel, meaning that the migration wasn’t one-way. It seems that humans here and there kept in touch, migrating back and forth – and yet there are cave paintings in Europe and none here. To solve this mystery, we must first answer another big and much-debated question:  Why did humans in Europe paint on cave walls in the first place? We support the hypothesis that cave paintings were created as part of shamanic rituals involving altered states of consciousness, intended to convey messages to entities beyond the cave walls, in underworlds regarded as the source of abundance – asking for solutions to the extinction of large animals on which humans depended for survival”.

Reconstruction of elephant hunting using spears.

What inspired cave art?

According to the researchers, soon after modern humans first came to Europe, large animals such as woolly mammoths and woolly rhinoceroses began to disappear. These were large, fat-rich animals that prehistoric humans in Europe and elsewhere relied on as their primary food source. Watching these populations diminish, worried prehistoric Europeans ventured deep into caves and painted large animals on their walls. The practice of cave painting came to an end more or less when Europe’s large animals became completely extinct.

“It’s important to understand that cave paintings are found in many cases deep within caves – in places that are difficult and even dangerous to access. We also know from indigenous societies living today that the depths of caves are perceived as gateways to the underworld – a realm of abundance and the source of all things. Therefore, it is customary to appeal to entities from the other side in times of trouble, such as illness or inner conflict. We argue that humans in Europe went deep into caves and painted the vanishing large animals to ask these entities to bring them back, emphasizing their own dependence on large game for their survival. In Israel, we do not find such paintings because when Homo sapiens arrived the large animals were already extinct – eradicated by earlier types of humans. Here, with elephants and rhinoceroses all gone, Homo sapiens were forced to hunt smaller, faster animals. The people who migrated to Europe, on the other hand, found large game once again – woolly mammoths and woolly rhinoceroses. The newly arrived humans felt they had entered paradise, and the animals’ subsequent dwindling, in front of their very eyes, plunged them into a crisis that resulted in cave paintings. Prehistoric humans in Israel experienced no such crisis, only continuity, which is why we don’t see cave paintings here. Their anxieties were different than those of their European counterparts, and so were their rituals. This hypothesis supports our broader thesis that prehistoric humans were aware of their role in the extinction of their food sources”.