Martinez Dettinger: Chauvet Cave and the Beginning of Religion

 After watching the documentary about Chauvet Cave, I couldn't help but think what religion before the advent of systemized language would be like? We have focused so much this semester on the connection between oral traditions and primal religions, but what about before we know whether or not there was a strong oral culture. According to the documentary the cave paintings seem to have a narrative structure. This would suggest the presence of oral narratives in their culture. There is nothing that would tell us if the paintings were the subjects of oral narratives or if they were a communication method of all their own. If so, we are not even sure if the full extent of the meaning behind the paintings. It remains unclear if they served a ritualistic purpose or if they were a record-keeping method. If they were a mode of religious communication, perhaps like the dreamtime paintings of the Aboriginals, how were the beliefs or the rituals passed outside of communication. It would follow that actions might correlate with paintings, whether it is hunting or a ritual action. It is hard to imagine, though, what religion would be like without any aspect of orality. Without song or stories, a culture would seemingly have no reliable way to pass on generational information, except through pictures, but even pictures cannot relate details as fully as words can. 

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