The past present tense

As parents we have seen our children making hand stencils on a piece of paper. When my son was 3 or 4 years old he used to make them also, spreading his fingers on a piece of paper and drawing the outline of it. This is normally the first art the children make. This amazes the children seeing the replica of their hand that piece of paper. And then every few years we made him do it just as a remembrance and record of his growing up. Now he is gully grown up and reached his final size. Those stencils remind me that he is both growing up and also growing away from me, towards their own life.

This reminds me of a real story I read long time back.

Many years back in a place in India, 3 tribal villagers and their dog were roaming in the jungle looking for wild fruits. At a place the dog entered a narrow place within the rocks just like a cave. On shouting the dog came out, but they were curious as to what was inside. So the next day they returned to that place to explore and entered through the narrow entrance to what was a cave. And in that cave they saw walls covered with paintings of animals like deer, bison, elephants and tigers and some which are extinct now. These paintings were in great detail using red, yellow and black color made from some leaves and flowers. Also they found drawings of hand just like the one I mentioned earlier. These hand paintings were made in reverse stencil that is after placing the hand, color was sprayed over it to make an imprint. As the news spread, researchers came and established that these art works were at least 15000 years old.

I visited that cave once. I started thinking who these people were and why would they paint such animals and 'hand' paints. Also there were very few paintings of human forms. There were pictures on the ceilings and those could only be made if they had a scaffolding to reach to the top. Were these painting made for spiritual purpose as they were the primary source of food or were they just paintings what they saw outside or of animals which could harm them. 

Such paintings have been found all over the world. With no communication in those times, it proves that humans wherever they evolved and survived created art. It is like a common link between humans living isolated all around the world. It is as if art made them one and connected them. As if art is in the intrinsic nature of humans even in those hard times.

There is no doubt that life was tough those days. Food needed to be arranged by risking the life daily, and then there was constant threat of becoming food for the animals around. Communities must have been extremely small size and loss of able bodied men who could arrange for food daily must have been extremely important and loss of these men must have threatened the existence of that community. Also at least 25 percent of the females died during child birth and the 50 percent children survived till teen age. With so much hardship and improbabilities they still took out time and effort to make those paintings.

All the hand paints had their fingers spread just like what my son drew. It made me think that those children and adults were not any different from us today. The way of thinking is the same even after thousands of years. It is as if I was here then and I am here now, the same person. It is as if history is not what happened in the past but history is happening now and I will also be a part of the unknown history.

Are we really different from what they were? They also loved, feared, cared, lived and died. The emotions they experienced are the same that we experience now. But I think our emotions have got adulterated now, they had a purer form of emotions. If we were to live the life they lived then we would also do the same sort of things. That is what life demands from us. Those painting may not survive the next 15000 years may be due to natural reasons, but the future generations of those people who lived in those caves did not destroy those paintings. But what we as mankind are doing now, we are in the process of self destruction; we ourselves will destroy what we created.

We have a lot to learn from them.