WASHINGTON: The life of our
prehistoric ancestors might not have been so drab after all.
Anthropologists have discovered numerous rock engravings across
Europe that appear to be a Copper Age version of animation and may have played a
key role in audiovisual performances.
The artwork, depicting fights,
dances or hunts, dating back to 4000 to 1000 BC, is more than mere images,
according to researchers from Cambridge University and Sankt Poelten's
university of applied sciences (FH) in Austria.
"The cliff
engravings... in our opinion are not just pictures but are part of an
audiovisual performance," Discovery News quoted Frederick Baker of Cambridge
University's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, as saying.
He
added: "There was still no moving image but (the pictures) created sequences
like in animation... this was not just a treat for the eyes but also for the
ears, as these rock engravings are especially found in locations with particular
echoes. In this sense, the rock engravings are not just static images but
pictures that created a story in the mind of the viewer — just like at the
cinema."
The ancient cinema often depicted fights, dances or hunts,
but never showed death and rarely portrayed women, the project's coordinators
said.
The researchers have now joined hands for a "Prehistoric
Picture Project" with Weimar's Bauhaus university in Germany to recreate these
films, using computer technology to establish the sequence of images and animate
them like in a cartoon. The project is being conducted in Valcamonica, in
Italy's northern Lombardy region, where the highest concentration of such
engravings — some 100,000 pictures — can be found.
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