Were ancient cave paintings the creation of young children?

The study of the ancient rock art across Spain, done during the Paleolithic times, suggests that children did almost a quarter of these 20,000-year-old art works

Experimental programme and documentation. A) Photogrammetry process. B) Experimental hand stencil. C) Experimental hand stencil 3D model. D) Modern sample of scanned hands

Contrary to the belief that prehistoric cave art was the creation of the adult males alone, a new research suggests that children and babies could also be responsible for these works of art. The study of the ancient rock art across Spain, done during the Paleolithic times, suggests that children did almost a quarter of these 20,000-year-old art works, and they were aged between three to 10 years. Researchers think it was often a family-oriented group activity rather than the work of the grown-up individuals.

Caves in the Iberian Peninsula, where the studies were done

The present study approaches the palaeodemography of artists in the decorated caves through the paleolithic rock art itself, said the researchers, Verónica Fernández-Navarroa, Edgard Camarós and Diego Garatea, who published the paper, ‘Visualizing childhood in Upper Palaeolithic societies: Experimental and archaeological approach to artists’ age estimation through cave art hand stencils’, in the latest edition of the journal. They chose five Spanish caves for their excellent preservation of hand motifs for this study.

Study measurement system and current sample measurement 1. Hand Length; 2. Hand Width; 3. Thumb Length; 4. Thumb Width; 5. Index finger Length; 6. Index finger Width; 7. Middle finger Length; 8. Miggle finger; 9. Ring finger Length; 10. Ring finger Width; 11. Little finger Length; 12. Little finger.

According to a study published in the ‘Journal of Archaeological Science’, researchers from Cambridge University and Spain’s University of Cantabria examined 180 hand stencils painted in the Spanish caves, using the 3-D models of hand paintings in Spain’s El Castillo, Maltravieso, Fuente de Salín, Fuente del Trucho, and La Gama caves, created by the project Handpas (Hand from the Past).

The results have been compared with a modern reference population in order to assign the Palaeolithic hands to certain age groups. It has been demonstrated the presence of hand stencil motifs belongs to infants, children and juveniles, revealing this stratum’s importance in the artistic activity.

“Many more children’s hands came out than we expected,” said lead author Verónica Fernández-Navarrogical in an interview. “It would appear that artistic activity was not a closed activity closely linked to male individuals and the survival of the group, as had been thought until now.”

Though extraordinarily realistic drawings of animals are the first thing to come to our mind when we think of cave art, hand stencils were very common, and these were made by blowing paint through a hollow tube-like a reed, forming what is known as ‘negative images’, said the study.

“Because the smaller children would not have been able to blow the pigment hard enough to create the markings, we can safely assume that their parents or other adults were helping them. Painting could have been an important communal activity for Paleolithic peoples,” according to the researchers.

Of the 56 European caves in which human hand images are known, 90 percent of the 769 hands observed are of this type. Just 9 percent follow the more obvious path of dipping a hand in pigment and pushing it against the wall, while 1 percent combines both approaches, they added. Of these, six belonged to babies aged between 2 and 36 months, 76 to children between 3 and 7 years old, 117 to youngsters aged 7 to 12, 199 to adolescents between 11 and 19 years, 119 to adults between 20 and 50 years old and 28 to those over 50.

Researchers said the approximate age of these individuals has been calculated through the biometric analysis of hand stencils in the caves of Fuente del Salín, Castillo, La Garma, Maltravieso and Fuente del Trucho, using 3D photogrammetric models as reference. Most previous studies in this field have been based on two-dimensional photographs or measurements of the motifs taken directly. These methods can lead to significant errors, mainly because of the transformation of the natural irregular surface of the cave wall into a flat representation that deforms the real measurements and results in a biometric distortion, said the paper.

“In contrast, our methodology approaches the sample by three-dimensional documentation which allows us to measure with high precision levels and no optical deformations. From that 3D models 2D orthoimages are created, which allows us to obtain a 2D image without conical deformations, typical of traditional 2D images, from which we can extract real orthogonal measurements,” they added. Moreover, this methodology can be applied and replicated for any kind of archaeological record, while it can also be completed and implemented with other types of analysis, such as geometric morphometry.

While they excluded the faint images and studied the clear ones, which came to nearly 155. They compared these with 3D scans of 545 left hands from current residents of the Iberian peninsula. Then it was found that up to 25 percent of the hand marks were not large enough to belong to adults or teenagers. In all probability they came from children between two and 12 years of age, with the majority of those likely made by three to 10-year-olds, said the study. A small proportion of the hands appear to have belonged to infants too, the study added.

Fernández-Navarrogical said now she is working to further analyze the hand markings to determine if the gestures made in some images carry any meaning. She suspects that bent fingers in some of the hand silhouettes, which seem to appear in recurring patterns, could have been used as a form of non-verbal language.

“We want to find out if it is a code that they knew how to interpret, in the same way that we today interpret a ‘stop’ sign,” she said.

Though earlier studies done in Tibet, and Dordogne cave art in France, showed that children were also responsible for what could be the world’s oldest art, the present study has more scientific evidence, which proves that the prehistoric society encouraged to develop the creative skills of the children, and their experiments are today part of the history.