to be able to draw in proportion like that, for there have been no shifts in ground level in these caves during the last few millennia. Without overstretching my imagination, I get the impression that the great god Mars is depicted in a space- or diving-suit. On his heavy powerful shoulders rests a helmet which is connected to his torso by a kind of joint. There are a number of slits on the helmet where mouth and nose would normally be. One would readily believe that it was the result of chance or even in the pictorial imagination of the prehistoric 'artist' if this picture was unique. But there are several of these clumsy figures with the same equipment at Tassili, and very similar figures have also been found on rock faces in the USA, in the Tulare region of California.
I should like to be generous and I am willing to postulate that the primitive artists were unskilled and portrayed the figures in this rather crude way because it was the best they could do. But in that case why could the same primitive cave-dwellers depict animals and normal human beings to perfection? So it seems more credible to me to assume that the 'artists' were perfectly capable of drawing what they actually saw. In Inyo County (California) a geometrical figure in a cave drawing is recognisable—without overstraining the imagination—as a normal slide-rule in a double frame. The archaeological opinion is that the drawing shows figures of the gods.
An animal of unknown species with gigantic upright horns on its head appears on a pottery vessel found at Siyalk in Iran. Why not? But both horns display five spirals to left and right. If you imagine two rods with large porcelain insulators, that is roughly what this drawing looks like. What do the archaeologists say to that? Quite simply that they are symbols of a god. Gods are good value. People explain a great deal—certainly everything that is unexplained—by referring to their unknowableness and super-naturalness. In this world of the undemonstrable they can live in peace. Every figurine that is found, every artefact that is put together, every figure that can be restored from fragments—they are all instantly associated with some ancient religion or other. But if an object cannot be fitted into any of the existing religions, even forcibly, some new crackpot old cult is rapidly conjured up—like a rabbit out of a top hat) The sum works out once again.
But what if the frescoes, at Tassili or in the USA, or in France, actually reproduce what the primitive peoples saw? What should we say if the spirals on the rods really depicted antennae, just as the primitive peoples had seen them on the unfamiliar gods? Isn't it possible that things which ought not to exist do in fact exist? A 'savage', who nevertheless was skilful enough to execute wall paintings, cannot really have been so savage. The wall drawing of the White Lady of Brandberg (South Africa) could be a twentieth-century painting. She wears a short-sleeved pullover, closely-fitting breeches, and gloves, garters and slippers. The lady is not alone; behind her stands a thin man with a strange prickly rod in his hand and wearing a very complicated helmet with a kind of visor. This would be accepted as a modern painting without hesitation, but the snag is that we are dealing with a cave drawing.
All the gods who are depicted in cave drawings in Sweden and Norway have uniform undefinable heads. The archaeologists say that they are animal heads. Yet isn't there something rather absurd about worshipping a 'god' whom one also slaughters and eats? We often see ships with wings and even more frequently typical antennae.
Figures in bulky suits occur again in Val Camonica (Brescia, Italy) and, annoyingly enough, they also have horns on their heads. I am not going so far as to claim that the Italian cave-dwellers shuttled backwards and forwards between North America or Sweden, the Sahara and Spain (Ciudad Real) to transmit their illustrative talents and
Dorothy Calimeris, Sondi Bruner