Were the Cave Paintings Painted by Women?

Art history (and all history, for that matter) has shortchanged women for a long time. A recent article about the authorship of the earliest cave paintings—the earliest images made by human beings—sets the discrimination clock back tens of thousands of years. Archaeologist Dean Snow studied the hand prints found in caves containing prehistoric artwork and found that 75% of the handprints were those of women. This theory, if true, shatters the idea of prehistoric men both hunting animals and exclusively documenting the hunt. With these simple handprints, such as those found in the Argentinian Cueva de las Manos (“Cave of the Hands”) (shown above), these first women artists reach into our time for recognition and question all the assumptions we’ve made (and sometimes still make) about artists based on gender. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Were the Cave Paintings Painted by Women?"


[Image: Cueva de las Manos (“Cave of the Hands”), ca. 7,000 BC. Located in the province of Santa Cruz, Argentina. Image source.]  
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