
Indonesian cave paintings show the dawn of imaginative art and spiritual belief - sohkamyung
https://theconversation.com/indonesian-cave-paintings-show-the-dawn-of-imaginative-art-and-human-spiritual-belief-128457
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all2
> The depiction of the part-human, part-animal hunters may also be the
> earliest evidence of our capacity to conceive of things that do not exist in
> the natural world. This ability is a cornerstone of religious thought and
> experience with origins long shrouded in mystery.

This irks me a little. The claim that the figures in the painting "do not
exist in the natural world" stinks of the "we already know all the things"
philosophical bent. Making this claim overlays a rather modern conception of a
strictly materialistic world onto a culture we have little to no knowledge of.
Our whole worldview mars our ability to conceive of a culture different than
ours. I suppose we must view the world within _some_ context, _some_
worldview, but I think more awareness of our preconceptions is necessary.

I think any analysis beyond "there are old paintings in this cave, and these
are the paints they used, and these are the things they painted" are almost
certainly pure speculation and should be relegated to publications that deal
in pure speculation.

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kaffeemitsahne
Are you saying we can't be reasonably sure there weren't actually "part-human,
part-animal hunters" at that place and time, or am I missing your point?

~~~
mc32
Maybe it wasn’t figurative. Maybe people wore parts of animals in some
circumstances (for a hunt “for magical power”, whatever) and that’s whats in
the paintings rather than a centaur type thing, although we don’t know and it
could be a centaur type thing.

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dang
An article about the paintings was recently discussed here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21773479](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21773479)

