Primitive Anthropology

The vast majority of early cave paintings were that of animals. Large herbivores — bison, aurochs, and horses. Or dangerous predators — lions, bears, and rhinoceros.

That which is hunted and deeply feared. Man both a predator (and prey).

Humans appear far less often. Narcissus not yet sprung. When shown, we are stick-like. Masked or half-animal.

Hand stencils (sprayed around the hand). Repeated and layered. Sometimes obsessively. Not “this is me,” but rather “we were here / I joined.” Identity expressed as membership and presence.

The image not only the “art.” But the act of adding to it.

He drank one evening from a spring beneath a cottonwood, leaning to bow his mouth and suck from the cold silk top of the water and watch the minnows drift and recover in the current beneath him. There was a tin cup on a stob and he took it down and sat holding it. He'd not seen a cup at a spring in years and he held it in both hands as had thousands before him unknown to him yet joined in sacrament.

— Cormac McCarthy