THE UNCANNY VALLEY AND PALEOLITHIC ROCK ART (with a thank you nod to Adrienne Mayor):

Chauvet Cave, France. Internet

photo - Public domain.

Close-up of upper Rhinos.

Chauvet Cave, France. Internet

photo - Public domain.

In the past I have commented on the appearance of motion I expect viewers would feel with some of the most realistic cave art when seen in the flickering and moving light and shadow of a flame. I have now found a really descriptive term that applies to the feelings evoked by the realistic paintings of Chauvette, Lascaux, and other Paleolithic caves viewed in the flickering light of torches or lamps - the Uncanny Valley.

Chauvet Cave, France. Internet

photo - Public domain.

Uncanny Valley chart.

www.techopedia.com.

From Adrienne Mayor in Time Magazine, November 13, 2018 - "Most people experience an eerie sensation when they meet natural-looking artificial beings, especially humanoid robots. This is the 'Uncanny Valley' effect, the psychological reaction of unease and apprehension upon encountering hyper-realistic replicas or automata. Affinity increases with verisimilitude, but positive feelings drop off steeply as the entity approaches being indistinguishable from reality. Anxiety rises when the line dividing the inanimate from the animate begins to collapse, and actual movement or the illusion of movement intensifies the disturbing feeling. The sudden drop-off is the descent into the 'Uncanny Valley', first identified by the robotics engineer Masahiro Mori in 1970. Today the Uncanny Valley is a well-known response to extremely lifelike robots and AI entities." 1

(Mayor 2018)

Altamire Cave, Spain. Internet

photo - Public domain.

In other words, if I understand this right, knowing that a picture (or statue, etc.) is not a real live being we are comfortable with it, perhaps increasingly so as it approaches more lifelike in appearance, until it reaches a certain point at which the increasingly lifelike appearance gives us an uneasy feeling, or perhaps a creepy feeling is actually the best word. Then that feeling dissipates as the object continues to become more lifelike. "The term refers to the shape of the graph formed when plotting people's reactions to different objects that continuously increase in their human-like appearance. As the human likeness of the object increases, people's affinity to it increases until a point is reached that the human likeness becomes off-putting, disturbing and weird. This is the uncanny "valley" since there is an immediate drop to affinity and then another immediate rise on the other side, forming the shape of a 'V' or a valley." (techopedia.com)

Chauvet Cave, France. Internet

photo - Public domain.

I wondered about applying this theory to rock art studies so I contacted Adrienne Mayor to get her opinion. To my inquiry on this Mayor replied "Yes, I think the uncanny valley sensation can be triggered by realistic-seeming animals. Notably, the roboticist who first identified the eerie sensation in about 1970, Masahiro Mori, felt the uncanny sensation when looking at lifelike prostheses. So, I would guess that seeing the amazingly lifelike animals in cave paintings by flickering light would evoke feelings of fear, awe, and wonder." 2

(Mayor, Nov. 14, 2019, personal communication)

Chauvet Cave, France. Internet

photo - Public domain.

Having looked at this I believe it adequately fits the proposed situation of the effect applied to the cave paintings. Perhaps the proponents of the Neuropsychological Model should look at this as a real neuropsychological effect in perceiving rock art instead of promoting their theories about shaman and phosphenes. This is one effect that can actually be measured by an electroencephalogram.

NOTE: I am grateful to Adrienne Mayor, a friend of many years now, for her suggestion and help with this.

Some images in this posting were retrieved from the internet with a search for public domain photographs. If any of these images are not intended to be public domain, I apologize, and will happily provide the picture credits if the owner will contact me with them. For further information on these reports you should read the original reports at the sites listed below.

REFERENCES:

https://www.techopedia.com/definition/31570/uncanny-valley

Mayor, Adrienne

1.     2018 The Concept of the "Uncanny Valley" Dates to 1970. The Phenomenon Is Thousands of Years Older, Time Magazine, November 13, 2018, Time-Life Corp.

2.     2019, November 14, personal communication with the Adrienne Mayor.

A DINOSAUR TRACK PETROGLYPH:

Chirotherium Track, Joseph City, NM. 

Printed in Mayor and Sarjeant, 2001.

On February 9, 2011, I posted a column entitled Dinosaur Footprints and the Giant Lizard Petroglyphs at CubCreek, Dinosaur National Monument (see the RockArtBlog archive). In this I discussed the possibility that the presence of the giant lizard petroglyphs was influenced by the nearby Cub Creek dinosaur track site. In other words large lizard tracks suggesting large lizards.

In this regard it is of interest that Adrienne Mayor has related that the Aztec Indians of Mexico identified fossil footprints in the rock as the “hand prints” of the great feathered God Quetzalcoatl (Mayor and Sarjeant 2001:156). Quetzalcoatl is usually portrayed as a giant feathered serpent. This may cast some light on the question of prehistoric meso-American influence on the peoples of the American southwest. The Hopi Snake Dance is held to bring rain, a primary consideration of the agricultural people of the arid southwest. Snakes, who live underground, are believed to take their message of supplication underground to the Horned Water Serpent named Palulukong (Tyler 1964:245), who is portrayed as a giant serpent wearing feathers, or horns, or sometimes both. Perhaps a meso-American influence provided the Hopi with the idea that fossil dinosaur footprints are handprints of the Great Horned Water Serpent Palulukong leading to their portrayal on the kilts worn by the Snake Dancers whose ceremonial efforts are believed to culminate in a supplication to Palulukong to provide the rain.

Pictograph above Chirotherium Track, Joseph City,

New Mexico. Printed in Mayor and Sargeant, 2001.

Near Joseph City, Arizona, a petroglyph was inscribed 800 to 1500 years ago above a slab of the Moenkopi formation exhibiting footprints. The petroglyph appears to be a schematic depiction of the Triassic Chirotherium tracks visible on that slab. (Mayor and Serjeant 2001:151)

We know that Native American hunters were consummate trackers, their lives sometimes depended upon following and finding the game animals that they and their families depended upon. They must have been fascinated by the sometimes very large tracks that they would see in solid rock. This would not only have attracted their attention, I believe that it would have had an effect upon their mythology and belief systems. In this case we have an example of a human made copy of a dinosaur footprint in the rock. In future postings I will revisit the subject of dinosaur tracks and rock art.

REFERENCES:

Faris, Peter

2011   Dinosaur Footprints and the Giant Lizard Petroglyphs at Cub Creek, Dinosaur National Monument, February 9, 2011, http://rockartblog.blogspot.com/search/label/dinosaur%20tracks

Mayor, Adrienne and William A. S. Serjeant

2001    The Folklore of Footprints in Stone: From Classical Antiquity to the Present, Ichnos, Vol. 8, No. 2, 143-163.

Tyler, Hamilton A.

1964    Pueblo Gods and Myths, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman.