Expert: John Shea - 1/5/2010

Question
I've just finished reading "The Cave Painters"  I found the fact that the culture that produced them went on for thousands of years.  is there any reasoning as to why the paintings stopped, what happened to the artists?

thanks

Answer
Dear Ethel
This is a complex subject, but I'll give you the consensus view.
One of the reasons the paintings may have stopped after 12,000 years ago is that in a warmer world, people were less often living in and near the cave-sties
in which the art is located.  At the time much of the art was made, it was very cold in Europe.  People probably flocked to these cave sites seasonally
to renew social ties, alliances, find mates, meet people, share food, etc.  When Europe warmed up, there was more vegetation, more animal live, and less
need for people to attend these seasonal aggregations.  They probably still had some kind of aggregations, but they may have been focused on lower
elevations away from where most of the art sites are located.
Bear in mind, that most of the art that is preserved is deep in limestone caves.  People were probably painting and decorating the outer
parts of these caves, too, but changes in light, temperature, and humidity near the openings of caves cause the cave walls to deteriorate faster
than they do deeper underground, where the atmosphere is stable.
It is not really the case that the art stopped.  Mesolithic Europeans made art objects, including rock carvings, but these often have abstract, rather than
realistic style(like the Upper Paleolithic art).
The descendants of the Upper Paleolithic artists are still running around Europe.  OK, well, they're probaby not running.  More likley sitting in a café having
a cigarette and an espresso.
Best other books to read on this, in English, anything by Paul Bahn, Randall White, Jean Vertut, David Lewis-Williams.  Dale Guthrie's Nature of Paleolithic Art is
pretty interesting, but he has some ideas that are controversial among the mainstream paleolithic art crowd.  For more detailed scholarly papers, look for papers and/or books
by Margaret (Meg) Conkey.
Cheers
John Shea