While the Men were Hunting
Drawn 1981/11/3 by Chris Wayan
Digging through a box of your old art is like digging down through the strata on the floor of a cave in Neanderthal country--layers on layers. Here's an old drawing I'd quite forgotten, from decades ago. Despite its prehistoricity, its premise still seems likely to me:
For twenty thousand years, the men were all out hunting. It was the women who had the time and opportunity to explore the cave-depths, and also to know to the properties of plant dyes and mineral paints. So the famous cave paintings were most likely done by women.
It sounds strange now, but remember--back in the savage 1980s, when this was drawn, its premise that the cave-artists might be women was actually controversial! As was the idea women could do much of anything.
Some Ice Ages do melt in the blink of an eye.
Technique: a tiny ink drawing at work, blown up huge on the office Xerox machine after hours, tinted later with Sanford's erasable crayons
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