The Cave of Forgotten Dreams

  

  Throughout history, painting had a very important place in human life. Humans could reflect his ideas thanks to drawings. For instance, in prehistoric times, humans generally were drawing on rocks, especially, in caves. Therefore, caves were significant in terms of drawings. One of the most important examples of cave painting is Chauvet Cave in France which was explored by explorer Jean-Marie Chauvet. This cave is about 32,000 years old and there are a lot of paintings which are masterwork inside that. In this paper, I evaluate these paintings in the mentioned cave in terms of its relationship with religion.

     In the beginning, this cave was explored intact anywise. It was seen that the cave has a lot of material such as paintings, bones, stones and coal ruins. When explorers came to cave, they saw various animals on paintings such as horses, bisons, rhinos, tigers and gazelles. When researchers examine these paintings, they discovered an interesting painting method on them. Motion illusion was successfully applied to these drawings. At the same time, they saw a few stones on the ground and there was a bear skull on stones. Some people support that they painted on rocks in the cave because they were worshiping animals. In my opinion, there is a relationship between that drawings and religion and  these ruins show that humans were conducting a religious ceremony in this cave. Reason for drawing these pictures is that humans were sacrificing animals for their gods. After that, they were painting their sacrifices because they were thinking that they had to prove their sacrifices to gods and gods would see their worships. Moreover, the used this cave for just religious ceremonies, not for living. 

     When everything is taken into account, the drawings in cave and religion have a relationship. They drew pictures on the rocks of cave because they wanted to show their sacrifices to their gods. Discovers who explored the cave argued that these humans came to cave only for painting pictures and religious ceremonies. I think these ruins show that the history of religion is older, contrary to popular belief. There are enough evidence to prove relationship between paintings in the Cave of Forgotten Dreams and religion.