The Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2011) is a movie that features the Chauvet Cave, which was discovered in 1994 in the south of France. It was a remarkable discovery as it contained the earliest known cave paintings and also showed evidence of Upper Paleolitihic life.
The cave drawings are relevant as they can teach us about the history of mankind or even the world. They can help us gain an understanding of how prehistoric men lived – what their beliefs were, what their lifestyles were, and what the conditions they lived in were. Through the cave drawings, we will be able to gain a better insight on their thought processes, their cultures, and how they perceived the world around them.
It is important to preserve these cave drawings as they’re one of the few links we have to the past. Since humans from prehistoric times didn’t have the knowledge for words and writing, they couldn’t document their lives in any print format. Instead, they used the drawings as a way to keep a record of their lives and the world they lived in at the time.
While it is also not possible for us to gain a complete and accurate understanding of how prehistoric men lived through the cave drawings alone, and that this would require a lot of imagination and assumption on our part, preserving them now would enable future generations to possibly learn more about them and get a better understanding of them than we do today. Moreover, it is possible for more advanced technologies to be developed in the future, which would enable scientists of the future to conduct a more thorough study of these drawings.
The cave drawings in Chauvet Cave can definitely be considered art. As defined by Dictionary.com, art is “the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance” (“Art”). For sure, the cave drawings are aesthetically appealing and of more than ordinary significance as they depict the history of man. Art is also defined as “the use of skill and imagination in the creation of aesthetic objects, environments, or experiences that can be shared with others" (What is Art? What is an Artist?”), and the cave drawings definitely involved a lot of skills. It’s amazing how prehistoric men were able to carve those drawings on the cave walls, given the limited tools they had, and yet making them still look as beautiful as they do.
Today, the contemporary equivalent of cave drawings would be murals. Just like cave drawings, murals are large pieces of art work or paintings and drawings that are applied on the floor, ceiling, or wall (WiseGeek). Although cave drawings look crude, considering that they were made using crude tools, while murals look more “polished” and are more colorful, they both serve the same purpose, which is to decorate the walls, in turn beautifying the surroundings. In addition, they both depict the culture and the kinds of lifestyles that the people in the place have.
30,000 years from now, I think that people will perceive our way of communication in much the same way that we now perceive the manner of communication that people from 30,000 years before us had. People of the future would probably think of our present manner of communication as crude, yet interesting and worthy of investigation or exploration. On the other hand, if the world turns out to be “damaged” by that time, as so often depicted in sci-fi movies, then they’ll probably think our manner of communication as more effective and humane than theirs.
Works Cited
“Art.” dictionary.com. Dictionary.com, LLC, 2012. Web. 21 Apr. 2012.
Cave of Forgotten Dreams. Dir. Werner Herzog. Perf. Werner Herzog, Jean Clottes. MPI Home Video, 2011. DVD.
“What is Art? What is an Artist?” arthistory.sbc.edu. Sweet Briar College, 1997. Web. 21 Apr. 2012.
WiseGeek. “What is a Mural?.” wisegeek.com. Conjecture Corporation, 2012. Web. 21 Apr. 2012.
