Viewpoints 1.1: Paleolithic Hand Markings

Paleolithic finger and hand markings have been found all over the world. They were made in a variety of ways — running fingers over wet or soft stone, dipping a hand in pigment and pressing it onto a surface, or tracing around a hand. The most common pigment was made from red ochre, a naturally occurring mixture of clay and iron oxide that is plentiful and quite permanent. Humans have been using red ochre, which varies in color from yellow to red to brown to purple, for more than a hundred thousand years, burying pieces of it with bodies, sprinkling it on cave floors, and mixing it with liquids such as urine, animal fat, blood, egg whites, or water to make paint. In 2011 scientists in South Africa discovered abalone shells holding paint made from red ochre, charcoal, and liquid, along with specialized stone and bone tools, that date to about 100,000B.C.E., in what they dubbed the “world’s oldest art studio.”

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Handprints from Cueva de las Manos (Cave of the Hands) in Argentina, ca. 8000 B.C.E. These handprints, made by blowing paint made from red ochre around the hand through a bone pipe, are from different individuals. All are slightly smaller than adult hands, so they were most likely made by adolescents. Most are left hands, which indicates that even in the Paleolithic, most people were right-handed, since they would have held the pipe for blowing in the hand they normally used for tasks. (© Hubert Stadler/Corbis)
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Finger Marks from Rouffignac Cave in France, 18,000–9000 B.C.E. The finger marks of a young child are among those made by a group of adults and children who each left such finger flutings in the wet surfaces of the cave, far from the entrance, indicating that they would have used torches to see as they decorated the walls and ceiling. Through comparing these finger marks with those made by girls’ and boys’ fingers today, archaeologists judge them to have been made by a girl. She ran the three middle fingers of each hand down the wall of the cave at the same time, which meant someone else was holding the torch for her to see. (© Leslie Van Gelder)

QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS

  1. Why, in your opinion, was the human hand such a common image in Paleolithic art?
  2. Some scholars have suggested that because Paleolithic hand markings were often made by children or adolescents, they were done as part of coming-of-age ceremonies or other spiritual rituals. Others suggest that they were made as part of play or as adolescent rebellion akin to today’s graffiti. Which explanation seems most plausible to you?