Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Chauvet Cave Paintings

And now for something completely different...  today's feature are the mystically beautiful cave paintings from Chauvet, France.

These paintings are in the neighborhood of 35,000 years old and represent the earliest surviving art made by any human being.  What on earth does this have to do with faith?

Well, the first human civilizations we see with any evidence of a religious or spiritual belief (burial of the dead, etc) are also the first people we see making art.  It has been suggested that a better name for us than homo sapiens (wise man) would be homo spiritualis (spiritual man).  All I can say is that the dawn of spiritual man also seems to be the dawn of artistic man.