What can Stone Age art tell us about extinct animals?

From Lascaux to Chauvet to Australia, in this video I discuss the many illustrations of now extinct prehistoric animals and how they can be significant to paleontologists. Additionally, artwork created by our long dead ancestors can actually tell us a lot about prehistory we wouldn't know otherwise from cultural norms to religious beliefs. So I've taken the time to examine what prehistoric art can tell us. We will talk about everything from Irish Elk to Marsupial Lions so I hope you enjoy!

Most Images are taken from Wikimedia Commons

[betrayal]

I get chills every time I see that hand print. Someone, tens of thousands of years ago, did that to make their mark on the world.

[LetsGoGetThem]

A window into a world that is so long ago yet feels weirdly close.

[dougthedonkey]

Fun fact, the last full dodo bird was a stuffed one that was thrown out in like the 17 or 1800s because it “smelled musty”

[lucym]

Something I find fascinating about this is that, humans have always been the same. With a few upgrades to technology and education. We still love telling stories and sharing our wisdom, we are naturally curious and paint or write just for the joy of doing it. Idk it's just amazing

[lovesick_loser]

honestly cave paintings always give me this one feeling, like a mix of the feeling you get when you go hiking alone and find a still smoking campfire, and arriving to a store just after they closed? Like having an eerie trace of someone just having been there but also feeling kinda upset for being too late...? idk its cool tho

[Jotari]

No humans, but tonnes of cows. Clearly the cows painted the caves.

[averynelson]

Fun fact, there are accurate descriptions of megafauna in the oral histories of the Aboriginal peoples. They have kept accurate records verbally for tens of thousands of years.

[FORRESTtheunoriginal]

"the lion headed man is the first human animal hybrids in cave art, and certainly not the last"
Is this the original fursona?

[BatteredWalrus]

It's kinda sad and humbling seeing the art. A tiny window to a world that once was. Thanks for sharing this with us Trey

[TuberoseKisser]

"Rarely will they draw humans"
Because what's more fun to draw, people or animals.

[spartan]

Its crazy that some people think they can never learn how to draw when early humans could do it and it was actually pretty well done art

[nintenx]

"is it a form of primitive pornography?"
knowing humanity: yes 100% no doubt in my mind yes

[rovsea-]

Personally, I think the most fascinating image is that last image outlining a human hand. If that is truly thousands or tens of thousands of years old, than isn't it amazing that we still do the same thing today? Children playing or in school paint their hands and create a hand print, a way to say "this hand print is mine, I was here", and in a way it's a relate-able message from a person whose lifestyle might not have been like ours, but who thought, felt, and imagined just like any other human. There's something incredible in that, that thousands of years ago another human sat in a cave, and wanted to say "I was here". It's a message that we shouldn't ever lose. When I saw the image, I turned and put my hand up to the wall, and tried to make the same shape, and that's something just about everyone can do. It's simply amazing.

[berkleypearl]

The reason these people probably didn’t paint humans is because humans are really hard to draw

[Ring]

Those different colored areas on the mammoth and rhino could easily be "this is where you want to hit it with your spear"

[AZ-krff]

"Depictions of the lower halves of women, specifically centered on the private area, are exceptionally common, and are very *very widely spread."*

You don't say.

[kitty-pmmd]

hey trey. i'm a bonafide aboriginal. i thought i'd give you some more info and context of the rock art you used.

first, megalania: it's not true they were never depicted. they absolutely were. megalania, and in other places quinkana, are referred to as burrunjor in most places (or a close variant of that). megalania is a huge part of the Dreaming of the nations of the Australian interior (and quinkana in the more southern parts of the region, but crocodilian interpretations of the story are rarer than megalania).

thylaceleo. while you're right, that particular image was probably thylacine and not thylaceleo, however it is known through our stories that we had extended contact with these animals. thylaceleo is also known as the kadimakara and variants. according to the stories, kadimakara were arboreal predators who ambushed from above, long ago in the time of the great forests. when the climate changed and the continental interior began to dry out, the kadimakara were forced down from their trees to live on the ground, and made watering holes more dangerous. eventually, they all died out because of this. this is exactly what happened to thylaceleo.

diprodon. this is one you might know of --- the much feared bunyip, who gave us our cultural wariness of watering holes and the cultural practices around water sources. apparently, they were quite fierce when provoked, not unlike a hippo, and more than capable of killing people. there are numerous stories and depictions, but the most commonly accepted root of these stories is that diprodon is, indeed, the bunyip.

geyornis, known here as mihirung. they were depicted many times in art as you said, and had a similar cultural significance to emus --- which is to say, a lot. we ate them, wore them, used their fat to cook with and preserve foods, and ate and collected their eggs as items of value.

one you did not depict here: yurlunggur, otherwise known as Liasis dubudingala or the bluff downs python, a close relative of the olive python that grew to 10m in length. you can find yurlunggur in almost every place you go here, although perhaps by the english name, the rainbow serpent. the appearance of yurlunggur signals the imminence of rain, which elevated him to the status of creation spirit. like many pythons, they were very comfortable in and around watering holes, which would have been frequented by my ancestors and brought them into close contact with this massive snake. while in many other parts of the world, snakes have the connotation of evil, bad omens and demons, snakes are widely revered here and treated with the utmost respect and we eat them, too. it's not unlike an oilier white fish.

the unfortunate fact of getting things right with academic knowledge on our cultural artefacts is that, very rarely, are the people actually asked what is depicted in art their ancestors made 60 000 years ago, despite the fact it's widely known that our method of story preservation is the most systematically effective method of cultural preservation in the world. when we are consulted, our input is usually ignored, or at best a footnote. we aren't considered experts in our own history. i mean, it was only a few years ago that academics realised boomerangs are hunting weapons, despite the fact there be people out there still using them to hunt. that's how bad it is.

i'd be more than happy to give you any more information i have or can find on our amazing fauna, both extinct and extant. i am wiradjuri, but i'm also an evolutionary biologist, so it's my two great loves come together. there's no end to the fascinating stories past down through millennia about animals that western science has only just discovered. i have one rule though, and it's that you dont make me look at short faced kangaroos. they make me angry at god.

[lordgimpsbury]

Sometimes I think about what it would be like to go back to that time. The time of glaciers and migrations and hunter-gatherers. To see young mountains and forests. Unpoluted. Completely wild. The funny thing I've come to realize, and I think most of you will agree, is that when we think of that time... it feels less like wishful thinking and more like reminiscing. Like a distant memory we can only somewhat recall.

[stephenrafter]

Maybe the cave art was used to teach the young children to recognise the animals in the wild outside. Like a school.

[marcelalobo]

I have studied a small amount of pre-historic art in college, and here's what I know on why there were no humans in these paintings:
(Keep in mind that these are all SPECULATIONS from scientists, I don't think we can possibly know the reason for sure, but well these people studied a lot to say this so they might be onto something lol)
In the Palaeolithic, we were nomad hunter-gatherers. There was no such thing as an organised society with tribes and etc. Our existence was probably very in sync with nature and we probably placed a lot of value in stuff from it and felt like part of it, such as other peoples we have had contact with - natives from South America, Australia, etc. (I'm not saying they're primitive when I compare them to pre-historic humans, I'm just mentioning the better connection to nature as an example. They're not primitive, just different.)
What I learned to abandon right away when studying this was the notion that this art was a creative effort done for fun, or just for the sake of art, or to decorate the caves. Scientists consider this very unlikely since these humans didn't actually live in the caves and they were dark. They were, at most, poorly lit by fire. So there's a huge chance these paintings had a purpose, specially considering these humans were tightly connected to nature.
A hypothesis often known is that they drew the animals because they thought it would, in a magical way, attract them so they could hunt them and eat them. I learned this is no longer widely believed since research found that the animals that were depicted were not the ones humans were eating. And, for me, it's not hard to imagine that. Primitive humans were probably smart enough not to try to take down lions or giant rhinos. It is believed that they were trying to evoke the strength and abilities of those animals they probably admired. Desiring this makes a lot of sense if you're living as a hunter in the middle of the forest surrounded by dangers. There is maybe evidence of this wish to absorb the qualities of the animals in those famous hand prints in caves. Humans often placed their hands on top of paintings of animals. This could also explain why they strived for realism when painting these animals. You might think they're not that good, but remember there was no technical artistic knowledge back then and no pictures, so they had to look at these animals from afar (considering many of them were dangerous) and draw them from memory alone, so the paintings are pretty damn good if you think about it.
Later (in the Neolithic, I think) we were not nomads hunter-gatherers anymore, we lived in tribes and even began farming, so all of this stuff stopped making sense. That's when you start seeing paintings depicting human life and they didn't need the realism I mentioned anymore (that's why we get those stick figures).
If you study this stuff more deeply and I said something wrong please let me know. I love learning about this!