Each week in\u00a0The Moviegoer<\/strong>, Nick Olson examines new and upcoming films.<\/em><\/p>\n Have you ever wondered \u2014 dreamed \u2014 about what prehistoric humanity was like? Our popular culture has had plenty of imaginative representations of the Paleolithic man, be it Fred Flintstone or, more recently, Year One<\/em>. In most cases, the running joke is the doltish ineptitude of the Neanderthals in comparison to evolved modern man (i.e., \u201cso easy a caveman can do it\u201d). But in acclaimed filmmaker Werner Herzog\u2019s latest breathtaking documentary, Cave of Forgotten Dreams<\/em>, we are invited to explore the Chauvet Cave in southern France, which contains what is believed to be the earliest known cave paintings yet to be discovered. Herzog becomes our winsome guide to the world\u2019s oldest known art display.<\/p>\n Scientists are saying that around 30,000 years ago, a man used some coloring of a sort to handprint the wall multiple times. The handprints are accompanied by countless drawings, though we\u2019re unsure if the handprints and the drawings are from the same artist. If the archaeological estimates are correct, then the images would be twice the age of the previous oldest artwork. The apparent age of the cave\u2019s art is stunning, adding an element of awe and mystery to our touristic interest in the documentary. It\u2019s as if given an even more ancient ancestral origin, we might better understand ourselves. Herzog\u2019s film, in this sense, is a kind of vehicle of discovery through ancient-historical anthropology.<\/p>\n What\u2019s most thrilling, then, about what we discover in Chauvet Cave is that uniquely and essentially human capacity for imaginative expression. Interestingly, the images in the cave \u2014 which consist of bears, horses, panthers, and other wild creatures \u2014 display plenty of elements that support specific forms of communication and interpretation. In other words, they are not merely replications of the animals themselves. There are depictions of aggression, allusions to movement and animation, and an awareness of sexuality and reproduction.<\/p>\n In short, our paleolithic ancestors were creators<\/strong>. There was some sense of artistic cultivation in the land before time.<\/p>\n In a compelling interview toward the end of the documentary, one of the professional researchers comments:<\/p>\n Humans have been described in many ways\u2026 for a while it was \u201chomo sapiens\u201d \u2014 \u201cthe man who knows\u201d \u2014 I don\u2019t think it\u2019s a good definition at all\u2026 we don\u2019t know much. I would think \u201chomo spiritualis.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Given the nature of Chauvet Cave\u2019s artifacts, it seems evident as to why he might say that humankind is more defined by spirituality. It is characteristic of sentient beings to have a perceiving self-awareness or self-consciousness. And, further, it seems equally evident that what we human creatures have been most aware of throughout the ages is that all surrounds us inspires a sense of awe, of worship.<\/p>\n In what seems like a follow up to this point, Herzog later asks the same scholar two penetrating questions: \u201cDo you think that the paintings in the Chauvet Cave were somehow the beginnings of the modern human soul? What constitutes humanness?\u201d The scholar responds:<\/p>\n Humanness is a very good adaptation within the world. Man\u2019s society\u2026 needs to [adapt] to the landscape, to the other beings, to the animals, to other human groups\u2026 and to communicate something. To communicate and inscribe [their memories] on very specific and odd things like walls, like pieces of wool, like bones\u2026 This is the invention of communion\u2026 but with the invention of the \u201cfiguration,\u201d\u2026 it is a way of communication between humans with the future, to advocate the past, to transmit information that is better than [basic oral communication].<\/p><\/blockquote>\n What of this \u201ccommunion\u201d among humanity through creative artifacts? If in the act of creation there is a signal of union, what could be the tie that binds humanity but a Creator?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Werner Herzog guides us through the world\u2019s oldest known art display.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1221,"featured_media":16074,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,8],"tags":[229,1303,1432],"class_list":["post-16071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asides","category-film","tag-cave-of-forgotten-dreams","tag-the-moviegoer","tag-werner-herzog"],"yoast_head":"\n