Page 11 - ART AND NATURE IN PREHISTORY. THE COLLECTION OF TRACINGS OF CAVE ART OF THE MUSEO NACIONAL DE CIENCIAS NATURALES

the oldest blazons of the hispanic peoplethe natureof the environmentHumans paint what they see everyday around them. us, animals, and especially mammals, play a major role in rock art, either as isolated gures or as part of a larger scene. ere are two possible interpretations of these paintings, the rst one being more realistic and food-related:“... What were these people doing there all that time? ey lived o of hunting: they would think about it, about the means to get it and about the way to prepare them; their ambition and ideal would always revolve around the varied meat of mammoths and bisons and horses and deers, as well as wild goats, and I do not add reindeers because they could hardly be found in Spain, no matter how abundant they were in France and in the North.”Cabré, 1915 e second interpretation propounds a spiritual purpose:“ e purpose of these paintings was not decorative, but magical or religious.”Obermaier and Vega del Sella, 1919All mammals nd their place in the exhibition, especially horses, deers, bulls and goats, as there was a great number of them, but also the less numerous wild boars and rabbits and even the rare fallow deers, elephants, mammoths and camels. Canidae stand next to men in some of the paintings. Flocks of little birds, sh and the well-known honeycombs are the other animals depicted in the exhibition.art and nature in prehistory. the collection of rock art tracings of the mncn011