TEL AVIV, ISRAEL—There are around 400 caves in France and Spain that contain painted art made between 40,000 and 12,000 years ago. Many of these bear hand prints or paintings created by children between the ages of two and 12. Experts have long wondered why such young children were taken into some of the deepest and darkest caves in Europe on treks that would have been quite treacherous. A new study suggests that children may have played a special role as mediators between the physical and spiritual worlds, according to a statement released by Tel Aviv University. The prevailing hypothesis has been that toddlers and pre-teens were brought along for educational purposes so that knowledge and tradition could be passed down to the next generation. But the new research proposes that children were also considered to have unique mental and cognitive traits different from adults, which allowed them to communicate with entities from the beyond that were believed to be accessible from the cavern depths. “Many of these societies regarded caves as gateways to the underworld where, through shamanic rituals, they could communicate with cosmic entities and inhabitants of the underworld, to resolve existential problems,” said archaeologist Ran Barkai. “In this context, young children were perceived as liminal beings, belonging to both the realm they had left just recently (before birth) and the world they currently inhabit. Thus, small children were considered particularly suited to bridging the gap between the worlds and delivering messages to non-human entities.” Read the original scholarly article about this research in Arts. To read about Tibetan rock art that researchers believe children may have created as long as 226,000 years ago, go to "World's First Artists," one of ARCHAEOLOGY's Top 10 Discoveries of 2021.
