Illuminating cave art

Deep in our past, in the dark depths of caves, our ancestors did something strange and beautiful. Working by firelight, some doodled little designs. Others made hand stencils. Some saw a bulge of rock, or a crack in the wall, and thought to turn it into a horse or a bison. Why did they make this art? What did it mean to them? Who were these artists? These questions are old—very old—but thanks to new methods and new interpretive frameworks, archaeologists are beginning to see them in a new light.

My guest today is Dr. Izzy Wisher. Izzy is an archaeologist at Aarhus University in Denmark, specializing in Paleolithic art.

Here, Izzy and I talk about why we in the present are so drawn to cave art. We lay out the basic timeline, geography, and categories of Paleolithic art. We consider the difference between figurative and non-figurative art, and why it might be that non-figurative art came first. We discuss hand stencils. We talk about an ongoing shift in archaeology known as the "sensory turn." We dig into some of Izzy's work on the role of pareidolia, palimpsests, and children in cave art. And we touch on an ongoing project she is involved in trying to understand the earliest symbolic marks that our species made—and what they could have been used for. Along the way we touch on the site known as El Castillo, Werner Herzog, hunting magic, why hand stencils are so often missing fingers, graffiti, tectiforms and flutings, why depictions of humans are actually quite rare in cave art, stages in children's art production, the use of virtual reality as a research method, and the idea of archaeology as world-building.

I think you'll enjoy this one friends. Who among us—after all—doesn't feel drawn to these caves, to these most enigmatic of human creations? Without further ado, here's my conversation with Dr. Izzy Wisher.

Notes

3:00 – For more on El Castillo cave, see here and here.

9:00 – Werner Herzog's film—Cave of Forgotten Dreams—is being briefly re-released in April 2026.

12:00 – For some of Dr. Wisher's popular writing on cave art, see here and here.

16:30 – One example of a recent rock art finding in Sulawesi.

20:30 – Our earlier episode with Dr. Eleanor Scerri and Dr. Manuel Will, in which we discuss the mostly retired idea of a "cognitive revolution" in Europe in the Upper Paleolithic.

22:00 – For more on the recently discovered rock art panel in Colombia, see this news story and this recent academic study.

25:00 – The relative rarity of humans in Paleolithic art has provoked much discussion, both among scholars and the public.

27:00 – On the idea that Venus figurines might be self-representations—made from the perspective of the artist viewing her own body—see here.

29:00 – For a recent treatment of the "missing fingers" in hand stencils, with some overview of different hypotheses, see here. For more on the idea that such stencils could constitute a system of hand-signs, see here.

34:00 – A popular article by Dr. Wisher about one example of portable art—a deer-tooth necklace with engraved designs.

36:00 ­– For a discussion of the earliest non-figurative art, see here. For one account of the transition from non-figurative to figurative art, including discussion of hand stencils, see here.

42:00 – A paper in which Dr. Wisher and a colleague discuss the "sensory turn" in archaeology and how her work contributes to it.

51:00 – Dr. Wisher's studies on pareidolia are here and here.

59:00 – For Dr. Wisher's study of palimpsests in cave art, see here.

1:07:00 – For an influential early study on cave marking by children, see here. For Dr. Wisher's recent study of children's art in the caves, see here. A book by Dr. John Matthews on the development of drawing in children.

1:14:00 – The website of the eSYMB project is here. An important early publication by this group is here. A recent overview of the project and its context by Dr. Wisher and colleagues.

1:18:00 – A recent paper arguing that certain systems of marks represented a "phenological calendar." Another recent paper providing evidence that certain Paleolithic marks constituted a system of conventional signs.

1:22:00 – The paper arguing that archaeology is "world-building."

Recommendations

Kindred, by Rebecca Wragg Sykes (former guest!)

Homo sapiens rediscovered, by Paul Pettitt

Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Indiana University. The show is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd.

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