do you ever see paleolithic art and go “oh fuck that’s good” like they hadn’t developed agriculture or the wheel but god damn could they paint horses real good
look at this pretty accurate horse art. this is from chauvet cave and is between
31,000 to 28,000 years old.
fun fact! cave painters were mostly women*, according to newer research.
they were previously assumed male because… the historical narrative was controlled by prejudice. amazing discoveries come out when we stop assuming the ‘default’ is male! there are a lot of historical ‘facts’ that need to be re-examined**, as they won’t hold up without the (white) male lens that we previously allowed to dominate culture.
*which seems sort of obvious if we believe the narrative of ‘women stayed at home, men went out to hunt’. on a related note, ancient humans had a much more gender equal division of labor than you were taught in school. men providing child care was a big part of our success as a species.
**particularly relevant to non-white cultures with histories destroyed/re-written by colonizers. for instant, we’re now learning how accounts of human sacrifice and cannibalism in central american cultures pre-invasion were fabricated by european invaders.
