Practice question · Multiple choice
The animals painted at Lascaux do not match the animals whose bones fill the site's rubbish. What does that mismatch do to the 'hunting magic' interpretation?
Hints
- Hunting magic predicts a relationship between what is painted and what is hunted. Ask whether the evidence shows one.
- Compare the species list on the wall with the species list in the midden.
Show the answer
C. It undermines it: they ate reindeer and painted horses
Why
The theory predicts a correlation and the record shows a mismatch, reindeer dominate the diet and barely appear on the walls. Option 2 is the move that saves the theory by making it unfalsifiable, and noticing that is why Leroi-Gourhan's structural readings displaced sympathetic magic.
Practise Prehistoric Art
The app has 5 more questions on this lesson, and keeps your place in the course. History I is free to start.
More questions on Prehistoric Art
- Order these landmarks of early art from oldest to youngest.
- Some of the oldest known figurative cave art is in Indonesia, not Europe.
- Sort each claim about cave art: supported by evidence or projection?
- Roughly how many years ago were the Chauvet paintings made? Set the slider.
- Match each site or form to what makes it significant.
- Which observations support the shamanistic interpretation of cave art?
- Hunting magic, shamanism and information storage have all been proposed for cave art. Why has finding more…