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[bec_87rb]

Yesterday at lunch, we hustled down the Hill just before noon to the National Gallery of Art, where we met SH's friend in the rotunda area. The friend, whom we shall call KJ, is a docent trying out one of her future tours on us, cultural learning guinea pigs. Wheek, wheek

Comments

[chhinnamasta]

On the subject of "artwork so awesome it makes you feel something about someone who has not existed for hundreds of years," (well, in this case tens of thousands of years) a few days ago we watched Werner Hertzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams, which provides a peek into Chauvet Cave, the site of a paleolithic gallery radiocarbon dated at over 30K years. What were those humans doing in there all those years ago? I was especially intrigued by the curious fields of dots and handprints that looked, to me, like tallies.

[bec_87rb]

Pretty cool. A tally, as in, everytime I kill a buffalo, I put up a handprint?

Also, there were lions and rhinos in France 30,000 years ago? O.o

[chhinnamasta]

Could be... or a tally of dead hunters, or the number of humans in a group of some sort, or... the mind boggles. Just looked like counting to me. Or, perhaps an early attempt at pointillism? I have absolutely no idea how those humans viewed the world, which is why it's so intriguing to look at their marks and drawings.

Wooly rhinos

[bec_87rb]

They are so much more lovely with fur!

Yes, you can get a rough kind of counting that way, I agree.

[chhinnamasta]

They are so much more lovely with fur!

Indeed! Snuffleupagus had nothing on these guys... incidentally, what was he? A woolly elephant?! I'm surprised those weren't rendered on the walls of Chauvet Cave.