Cave kids 13,000 years ago drew their art work on cave walls;Apparently, the cave walls in one area were covered with hand and finger prints of children.

Cave kids 13,000 years ago drew their art work on cave walls;Apparently, the cave walls in one area were covered with hand and finger prints of children.

Cave dwellers 13,000 years ago in what today is France entertained themselves in Rouffignac cave complex, original home of the Cro-magnons before they migrated elsewhere to cover most of Europe, had a room in the cave full of paintings by children, some as young as two years old.

How do the scientists know this? Apparently, the cave walls in one area were covered with hand and finger prints of children. And in other areas adults ran their hands along the walls covered with a mineral-based or animal fat-based paint such as red or yellow ochre.

The paintings by the kindergarten-age kids were 'flutings.' Yet researchers are interpreting these cave paintings by kids of various ages from two to teenage as their impressions of life in France during the last ice age 13,000 years ago.

 Did the kids eat marrow pudding, stewed greens, berries, nuts, and wild root vegetables in season with shellfish or meat, when found? Or did they make a type of bread from wild flax seeds?
Did they paint caves to keep busy while their pet wolves kept the sabre-toothed tigers at bay? Or did the children paint what they saw, much like the adults in a smaller form? The hand prints reveal children as young as two years old.


Interestingly, scientists can interpret the cave markings and paintings in this flourishing of great art during the last thousand years of the ice age also to show that some of the adults held the children probably piggy back on the adult's shoulders so the children could paint the upper levels of the cave walls.


One part of the cave explored by researchers has so many children's paintings or markings by tiny young hands and fingerprints that it could have been what researchers call a communal children's play room...much like a kindergarten of artwork by children, helped by the adults to reach higher places on the cave walls. Check out the article by Alan Boyle, "Cosmic Log - Prehistoric kids left marks in caves," from the MSNBC Cosmic Log.


Archaeologists say the shapes of finger marks suggest that children as young as 2 years old made drawings on the walls of a Paleolithic cave dwelling, with an occasional boost from the grown-ups.


The culture that drew the cave paintings was known as the Magdalenian. This is the same culture that is thought to have created the better-known cave drawings at Lascaux cave in France. Also see, Cosmic Log - Prehistoric kids left marks in caves - All Things Now. Some of the children's paintings are curved lines as if someone was trying to count.


Those were the days when prehistoric dogs and wolves were sometimes used in caves to keep out the bears and sabre-toothed tigers that roamed Europe as large numbers of children seemed to congregate in a large, communal room where both kids and adults painted the walls or left markings and various types of hand and finger impressions on the cave walls.


There had to be some type of communication as the adults must have lifted the children high above to paint the upper parts of the cave walls that had children's markings and hand prints far above the height of the toddlers and young children in that cave space. Could it have been a home-learning experience or even a communal school of sorts?