The animals in the cave paintings of the Basque Country are arranged according to a pattern and not randomly painted
According to a UPV/EHU study, the arrangement of animal figures was intentional: bison, horses and goats were in the middle of the composition, and the rest were on the periphery.
Photo: UPV
A study led by UPV/EHU doctor Iñaki Intxaurbe has shown that cave art in the Basque Country was not done randomly, but according to an organized pattern of structure and symbolic code .
How were the animals organized inside the cave?
Intxaurb has analyzed 500 graphic motifs in the nine caves in the Basque Country, applying network analysis and multivariate statistics. In the words of the researcher, the results show that "cave art was created in an orderly and not random manner."
Thus bison, horses, and goats were the centre of the compositions, and the rest of the animals were divided on the periphery. Besides, there is a clear rule of orientation: the horses looked chiefly to the right, and the bison looked to the left.
What message did they want to convey?
However, the study does not explain the reasons for this pattern, that is, it shows that there is an organized structure behind the drawings, although it is not yet possible to determine what message it intended to convey.
According to Intxaurbe, "cave paintings were not made for recreation. "" We know that they were important to them, because they drew in a few, not all, caves. They selected caves in certain areas. Now we know that the cave art of the end of the Palaeolithic had a syntactic structure, and that behind it is a graphic idea or a graphic code that we do not understand, but that would be important to them. "
Were the painters right-handed?
These discoveries call into question the theories formulated in the mid-20th century that, given animal orientation, most artists were right-wing.
Finding that horses were drawn in the opposite direction to other species, the study shows that this attitude was due to a deliberate symbolic language, and not to the physical comfort of painting.
Applications to decipher old languages
Intxaurb has released the open source methodology and database for application by the scientific community to other international sites.
In addition, this combinatory analysis opens the door to the study of the syntax of historical inscriptions that have not yet been deciphered, such as the Basque or Iberian inscriptions.
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