A new study from Tel Aviv University (TAU), published in the Journal of the Israel Prehistoric Society, postulates that the absence of cave paintings in Israel, unlike in Europe, could be explained by the extinction of large animals in the region.
This is a question that has puzzled archaeologists since 1925, when the first prehistoric excavation was carried out in Israel, where not a single cave painting has been found.
Researchers suggest that prehistoric humans in the Levant had no need to depict extinct animals in shamanic rituals, as they did in Europe.
The study, led by Ran Barkai, Ilan Dagoni, Miki Ben-Dor and Yafit Kedar, argues that cave paintings in Europe were likely part of shamanic rituals performed in altered states of consciousness, seeking to communicate with entities to ask for abundance and solutions to the disappearance of large animals such as woolly mammoths and woolly rhinoceroses, essential to their subsistence.
Barkai explained that “Israel has numerous caves that were inhabited by humans between 35.000 and 30.000 years ago, the same period when cave paintings were created in Europe. However, here we find no evidence of this type of art, even though humans had the same cognitive and cultural capacities.”
In the Levant, large animals such as elephants and rhinos had already disappeared by the time modern Homo sapiens arrived, forcing them to hunt smaller, faster animals, avoiding a crisis comparable to that in Europe.