tatteredbanners:“The Sorcerer” is a mysterious cave painting found in the Trois-Frères cave in Franc
tatteredbanners:“The Sorcerer” is a mysterious cave painting found in the Trois-Frères cave in France. The image is of a being which is part human, and part beast. The image is truly ancient, being around 15,000 years old. It appears to be depiction of a horned deity or shaman. The figure has “a penetrating look that seems almost inquisitorial. It has superb reindeer antlers, which is the dominant animal theme in some of the neighbouring engraved panels (together with bison). The forelimbs are quite comparable to those of the male reindeer followed by the female bison; they are human and feline at the same time. The body is slender, neither reindeer, nor bison, or, for that matter, human. The back limbs are completely human, with particularly realistic feet. This ‘god’ has a clear sexual identity: a dilated scrotum, which would normally be visible in profile in felines or even in canids, and an aroused penis which could be human, but which is usually invisible in profile for these carnivores. The tail could be a wolf’s or a fox’s, but in any event not a feline’s.This composite and supernatural being seems to assemble many of the naturalistic figurative components of close hybrid beings, with two main underlying pairs of poles: on the one hand the exchange of gaze and insistent sexuality, and on the other, that of animality and humanity, signified by the limbs and the feet” -- source link
#cave painting#cave art#prehistoric#the sorcerer