1 00:00:02,400 --> 00:00:04,120 Whether we call it art or not, 2 00:00:04,120 --> 00:00:05,960 there's something absolutely wonderful, 3 00:00:05,960 --> 00:00:09,440 isn't there, just about this activity, 4 00:00:09,440 --> 00:00:12,200 that's a form of thinking and feeling 5 00:00:12,200 --> 00:00:15,080 through just doing, through making. 6 00:00:17,320 --> 00:00:21,280 I've been doing this for 40 years, just trying to make things that ask 7 00:00:21,280 --> 00:00:26,320 that question - what does it feel like to be alive now? 8 00:00:31,520 --> 00:00:34,800 For me, art is the best tool we have for trying 9 00:00:34,800 --> 00:00:37,440 to understand our place in the world, 10 00:00:37,440 --> 00:00:40,440 and I think that's what it's done, since it began, 11 00:00:40,440 --> 00:00:42,880 tens of thousands of years ago. 12 00:00:44,120 --> 00:00:47,360 I want to go back to the very beginning, 13 00:00:47,360 --> 00:00:50,600 to see the art of our ancestors. 14 00:00:50,600 --> 00:00:52,880 Wow. 15 00:00:52,880 --> 00:00:57,120 And understand what compelled them to create these images. 16 00:00:57,120 --> 00:01:01,160 This is so moving, I mean, so tender. 17 00:01:02,320 --> 00:01:04,440 Once we believed that art began 18 00:01:04,440 --> 00:01:07,280 with the cave paintings of Ice Age Europe, 19 00:01:07,280 --> 00:01:11,760 but, now, new discoveries are overturning that idea. 20 00:01:13,680 --> 00:01:18,640 I'm going to travel across the world to piece together a new story 21 00:01:18,680 --> 00:01:21,960 of when and where art really began... 22 00:01:21,960 --> 00:01:25,360 It still strikes me as a complete miracle. 23 00:01:25,360 --> 00:01:29,080 ..and find out what it can tell us about who we are. 24 00:01:29,080 --> 00:01:32,680 Absolutely magnificent. 25 00:01:33,880 --> 00:01:37,160 If we can look closely at the art of our ancestors... 26 00:01:40,360 --> 00:01:43,000 ..perhaps we will be able to reconnect 27 00:01:43,000 --> 00:01:45,840 with something vital that we have lost. 28 00:02:00,520 --> 00:02:05,400 14,000 years ago, a small group of humans came to this valley. 29 00:02:06,600 --> 00:02:09,840 This is the Vezere, in the south of France. 30 00:02:11,680 --> 00:02:16,080 It was here, during the last Ice Age, that modern humans created some 31 00:02:16,080 --> 00:02:20,520 of the most extraordinary works of art the world has ever seen. 32 00:02:21,840 --> 00:02:25,720 When I was a student, this was thought to be the place 33 00:02:25,720 --> 00:02:29,720 where art began, and this is where my own journey began, 34 00:02:29,720 --> 00:02:31,760 almost 40 years ago. 35 00:02:33,640 --> 00:02:37,240 I came here with my wife on our honeymoon. 36 00:02:37,240 --> 00:02:40,080 We'd just graduated from art school. 37 00:02:40,080 --> 00:02:43,000 We had a Renault 4 van and a tent, 38 00:02:43,000 --> 00:02:47,080 and we went on a road trip together, to see the beginnings of art. 39 00:02:53,640 --> 00:02:56,400 So much has changed since then, for me. 40 00:03:01,040 --> 00:03:04,680 I want to start this journey by returning here, 41 00:03:04,680 --> 00:03:08,120 a tiny cave, called Les Combarelles. 42 00:03:10,320 --> 00:03:15,280 The images in this cave were made between 14 and 16,000 years ago. 43 00:03:16,080 --> 00:03:18,440 They aren't the earliest we know of, 44 00:03:18,440 --> 00:03:20,840 but they are some of the most exciting to me... 45 00:03:23,000 --> 00:03:28,040 ..because, here, you can feel the raw creative process in action, 46 00:03:29,360 --> 00:03:32,080 as images start to emerge in the torchlight. 47 00:03:35,240 --> 00:03:39,800 It's extraordinary for me to think that I was this very cave 48 00:03:39,800 --> 00:03:42,720 38 years ago. 49 00:03:42,720 --> 00:03:47,720 That feeling, that remembrance of going into something very secret, 50 00:03:48,960 --> 00:03:51,440 and very sacred. 51 00:03:51,440 --> 00:03:55,880 Just imagine, so here, here is the original cave surface, 52 00:03:55,880 --> 00:03:59,560 I mean, the surface of the bottom of the cave. 53 00:03:59,560 --> 00:04:04,600 So we are less than a metre between the top and the floor, 54 00:04:05,480 --> 00:04:08,640 so you're crawling, crawling on your hands and knees, 55 00:04:08,640 --> 00:04:12,560 just like the animals that you're going to now try to summon. 56 00:04:16,280 --> 00:04:18,080 Oh! 57 00:04:21,760 --> 00:04:26,480 We have a horse. Look at that. 58 00:04:27,760 --> 00:04:30,360 It's almost smiling. 59 00:04:30,360 --> 00:04:32,400 This is incredible. 60 00:04:32,400 --> 00:04:36,360 And then, look at the mane, with all the hairs kind of standing up, 61 00:04:36,360 --> 00:04:38,920 like, to attention, and then those ears, 62 00:04:38,920 --> 00:04:41,160 all folded forward. 63 00:04:41,160 --> 00:04:43,640 He's very aware, very alert, 64 00:04:43,640 --> 00:04:46,840 and then those veins and lines in the neck. 65 00:04:48,640 --> 00:04:50,880 This is fantastic. 66 00:04:57,640 --> 00:05:01,800 Using a sharpened piece of flint and scratching into the walls 67 00:05:01,800 --> 00:05:06,160 around them, these Ice Age artists conjured the essence of an animal. 68 00:05:07,200 --> 00:05:08,760 Phew! 69 00:05:08,760 --> 00:05:11,000 There's so much here. 70 00:05:14,240 --> 00:05:16,960 Just hardly a surface that hasn't been... 71 00:05:16,960 --> 00:05:19,360 Just a web. 72 00:05:19,360 --> 00:05:21,400 Look, look, look. 73 00:05:23,840 --> 00:05:27,000 Because it's fantastic, there's just so much energy 74 00:05:27,000 --> 00:05:31,960 in just the making of the lines, whether they found a form or not, 75 00:05:33,400 --> 00:05:36,360 and it's almost like they want to, sort of, 76 00:05:36,360 --> 00:05:39,040 express the energy they're feeling, 77 00:05:39,040 --> 00:05:43,600 because there's marks everywhere on these walls. 78 00:05:44,680 --> 00:05:46,960 Look, just everywhere. 79 00:05:49,400 --> 00:05:52,240 There is the famous lion. 80 00:05:58,520 --> 00:05:59,960 But isn't that magnificent? 81 00:05:59,960 --> 00:06:03,440 Just that feeling of the profile of the head, 82 00:06:03,440 --> 00:06:08,480 and then this forward, like, motion of the right leg, 83 00:06:08,960 --> 00:06:12,360 as it moves in a way out of the inchoate, 84 00:06:12,360 --> 00:06:15,600 the unseen, into visibility. 85 00:06:24,600 --> 00:06:29,600 I must say, I'm changing my mind about what we're looking at here. 86 00:06:31,280 --> 00:06:35,880 We can see that there are, yes, emergent figures, 87 00:06:35,880 --> 00:06:41,000 but actually it's the act of drawing itself that is the thing. 88 00:06:42,400 --> 00:06:45,480 And maybe something comes, and maybe it doesn't. 89 00:06:49,560 --> 00:06:52,280 You just feel like the energy of legs moving, 90 00:06:52,280 --> 00:06:54,640 legs moving through, through the grass. 91 00:06:54,640 --> 00:06:59,520 We've seen legs now, already, of horses, and then that last 92 00:06:59,520 --> 00:07:02,800 lion, and then... GASPS 93 00:07:04,120 --> 00:07:06,800 Ah, look, look, look, look! 94 00:07:06,800 --> 00:07:10,120 This deer, is it a reindeer? Yes. 95 00:07:10,120 --> 00:07:13,640 Look, bending down to drink. 96 00:07:13,640 --> 00:07:16,080 Can you see that? Can you see that? 97 00:07:16,080 --> 00:07:19,080 There's the lovely curved antlers, 98 00:07:19,080 --> 00:07:22,680 and then you can see the brow above, 99 00:07:22,680 --> 00:07:24,680 and even, is that a tongue? 100 00:07:24,680 --> 00:07:26,480 Do you see? Just there, tongue, 101 00:07:26,480 --> 00:07:29,560 coming out from the lower lip. 102 00:07:32,800 --> 00:07:35,920 This is so gentle, isn't it? 103 00:07:35,920 --> 00:07:38,120 So empathic. 104 00:07:40,120 --> 00:07:43,600 You could spend all day here just dreaming with this wall. 105 00:07:43,600 --> 00:07:48,640 It's like you're reading, you know, these are marks left by a human, 106 00:07:49,120 --> 00:07:53,200 but they're part, then, of the rock, and it's like the rock now 107 00:07:53,200 --> 00:07:56,760 is a place where you can dream and bring forth these, 108 00:07:56,760 --> 00:07:59,200 yeah, these presences. 109 00:08:00,320 --> 00:08:03,840 It's just, it's like this is a kind of, 110 00:08:03,840 --> 00:08:08,800 you know, cathedral of memory, but also joy in living things. 111 00:08:15,880 --> 00:08:19,960 But then, you know, things come, and they go. 112 00:08:28,680 --> 00:08:33,720 These engravings were made between 14 and 16,000 years ago. 113 00:08:37,200 --> 00:08:39,640 Just think about what that means. 114 00:08:49,000 --> 00:08:51,200 This was a time before farming, 115 00:08:51,200 --> 00:08:53,400 before the invention of metal tools... 116 00:08:58,000 --> 00:09:00,440 ..and the people who made these were foragers, 117 00:09:00,440 --> 00:09:02,600 hunter-gatherers. 118 00:09:02,600 --> 00:09:06,880 But this cave shows us that making art was something vitally important 119 00:09:06,880 --> 00:09:09,000 to Ice Age people. 120 00:09:09,000 --> 00:09:12,760 Again and again, they came here, scratching and marking, 121 00:09:12,760 --> 00:09:16,800 over and over, to leave traces that have lasted for millennia. 122 00:09:27,040 --> 00:09:30,640 I mean, in a way I think I come out thinking 123 00:09:30,640 --> 00:09:35,680 how wide this need to leave an inscription and a trace is. 124 00:09:42,720 --> 00:09:46,640 All of those abstract ideas about time 125 00:09:46,640 --> 00:09:49,640 just totally cease to matter. 126 00:09:49,640 --> 00:09:53,760 There's an absolute presence, absolute presentness 127 00:09:53,760 --> 00:09:57,240 and absolute presence in there, and... 128 00:09:58,320 --> 00:10:01,120 ..that is art of now. 129 00:10:01,120 --> 00:10:05,920 I mean, it's absolutely extraordinary how immediate it is. 130 00:10:10,840 --> 00:10:13,960 When cave paintings were first discovered in Europe, 131 00:10:13,960 --> 00:10:17,760 more than a century ago, an idea took hold that they must 132 00:10:17,760 --> 00:10:21,360 have somehow helped us to hunt and kill the animals 133 00:10:21,360 --> 00:10:23,400 that they represented. 134 00:10:24,440 --> 00:10:26,720 But that isn't what I see here. 135 00:10:30,160 --> 00:10:32,800 There is a cave further up the Vezere Valley 136 00:10:32,800 --> 00:10:34,960 called Font-de-Gaume... 137 00:10:36,440 --> 00:10:39,520 ..which I think shows that Ice Age artists 138 00:10:39,520 --> 00:10:41,920 had a very different intention. 139 00:10:55,760 --> 00:11:00,800 This is one of the most touching images that we have. 140 00:11:03,040 --> 00:11:06,680 We already saw a reindeer drinking. 141 00:11:06,680 --> 00:11:11,760 Now we have a male and female in this incredibly intimate moment. 142 00:11:17,360 --> 00:11:21,720 The male standing above, and painted in black, 143 00:11:21,720 --> 00:11:26,800 and the female, this wonderful smudge of ochre. 144 00:11:28,000 --> 00:11:30,920 So there is the the eye, eye. 145 00:11:30,920 --> 00:11:33,680 Here is the ridge, there's the eyebrow, 146 00:11:33,680 --> 00:11:36,760 here's the nose, here's the tongue, 147 00:11:36,760 --> 00:11:41,040 here's the bottom of the head, 148 00:11:41,040 --> 00:11:43,640 and then there's the bottom of the neck, 149 00:11:43,640 --> 00:11:45,640 here's the front leg, 150 00:11:45,640 --> 00:11:50,760 there's the back leg, and then these magnificent horns. 151 00:11:51,800 --> 00:11:54,680 And then, here, here is... 152 00:11:54,680 --> 00:11:58,400 Here is the red deer. 153 00:11:58,400 --> 00:12:00,360 And you can see its head very closely. 154 00:12:00,360 --> 00:12:03,200 There's his eye... 155 00:12:03,200 --> 00:12:07,720 ..and it's painted and engraved, but very, very gently. 156 00:12:09,680 --> 00:12:14,120 The connection between the two is so gentle. 157 00:12:14,120 --> 00:12:19,200 This tongue just touching, seemingly, the horns of the female. 158 00:12:24,720 --> 00:12:29,760 The kind of conventional view is that cavemen were primitive, 159 00:12:30,800 --> 00:12:35,080 and everything that they had to do with was to do with the hunt, 160 00:12:35,080 --> 00:12:39,600 and killing, and it's through images like this, and the one 161 00:12:39,600 --> 00:12:43,360 that we looked at earlier, in Combarelles, 162 00:12:43,360 --> 00:12:46,840 it's completely the opposite. 163 00:12:46,840 --> 00:12:50,920 You know, I think we just have to give up on the idea 164 00:12:50,920 --> 00:12:53,480 of the hairy caveman being a brute. 165 00:12:56,560 --> 00:13:00,920 This is so moving, I mean, so tender, so... 166 00:13:02,680 --> 00:13:04,920 ..yeah, peaceful. 167 00:13:04,920 --> 00:13:08,960 It seems to be about continuity. 168 00:13:11,200 --> 00:13:16,160 We had to live by killing... 169 00:13:17,640 --> 00:13:21,160 ..and yet we saw that, in some way... 170 00:13:22,880 --> 00:13:26,640 ..these animals show us our better selves. 171 00:13:37,320 --> 00:13:39,600 When we created the images in this valley, 172 00:13:39,600 --> 00:13:43,200 there were perhaps 50,000 humans in all of Europe. 173 00:13:47,680 --> 00:13:52,400 Far from being the dominant hunters, we were the vulnerable ones. 174 00:14:00,400 --> 00:14:05,240 If you can imagine that you were standing at the edge of a valley, 175 00:14:05,240 --> 00:14:07,680 and you heard this sound. 176 00:14:10,920 --> 00:14:15,280 The sound of a million hooves 177 00:14:15,280 --> 00:14:18,240 beating on the earth. 178 00:14:18,240 --> 00:14:20,680 You'd hear it before you see it, 179 00:14:20,680 --> 00:14:25,360 and then this wave of animal life would appear. 180 00:14:29,040 --> 00:14:33,800 That rush, that feeling, that feeling of being surrounded 181 00:14:33,800 --> 00:14:38,840 by a plethora of life forms, in which you were very small, 182 00:14:39,480 --> 00:14:41,640 utterly dependent, 183 00:14:41,640 --> 00:14:44,760 and they seem like the wind in the trees, 184 00:14:44,760 --> 00:14:46,640 the water of a river, 185 00:14:46,640 --> 00:14:51,680 to be closer to the heartbeat of the way things are. 186 00:14:54,280 --> 00:14:56,480 You would want to become them, 187 00:14:56,480 --> 00:15:00,200 you would want to be filled with that energy, spirit. 188 00:15:15,800 --> 00:15:20,800 We've just seen, as it were, a monumental expression 189 00:15:22,000 --> 00:15:24,320 of extreme delicacy. 190 00:15:24,320 --> 00:15:29,360 This is art before narcissism, this is art dedicated to the fact 191 00:15:29,800 --> 00:15:33,640 that we are part of a continuum of life. 192 00:15:33,640 --> 00:15:38,280 We live in a time where we spend more time involved in our metalanguage... 193 00:15:40,080 --> 00:15:42,640 ..through screens, through, you know, 194 00:15:42,640 --> 00:15:44,960 all the ways in which we, in a way, 195 00:15:44,960 --> 00:15:47,840 redramatise our little hopes and fears. 196 00:15:47,840 --> 00:15:52,920 Here is an unequivocal expression of how dependent 197 00:15:53,480 --> 00:15:55,760 we are on all living beings. 198 00:15:59,040 --> 00:16:02,640 But not all Ice Age art conveyed such tenderness. 199 00:16:03,960 --> 00:16:08,960 200 miles away in the French Pyrenees is a cave called Niaux, 200 00:16:09,400 --> 00:16:11,520 famous for a very different kind of imagery. 201 00:16:14,680 --> 00:16:17,680 I'm going to see it for myself for the first time. 202 00:16:27,960 --> 00:16:32,960 The paintings at Niaux were made between 12 and 14,000 years ago... 203 00:16:37,360 --> 00:16:40,440 ..so the people who made them would have walked through here barefoot, 204 00:16:40,440 --> 00:16:42,480 carrying a flame. 205 00:16:53,280 --> 00:16:56,480 Being this deep inside a cave alters your perception. 206 00:16:58,600 --> 00:17:02,880 You become aware of your own breathing, of your heartbeat, 207 00:17:02,880 --> 00:17:06,000 of your footsteps. 208 00:17:06,000 --> 00:17:09,480 Every bump and hollow has the potential to spring to life. 209 00:17:14,560 --> 00:17:17,840 Were they led here by something sacred or spiritual 210 00:17:17,840 --> 00:17:20,800 that brought them deep inside this alien environment 211 00:17:20,800 --> 00:17:22,880 in order to make art? 212 00:17:26,120 --> 00:17:30,440 It's surely not chance that most of the images in this cave are found 213 00:17:30,440 --> 00:17:35,400 half a mile from the daylight, in a space called the Salon Noir. 214 00:17:58,520 --> 00:18:03,520 The assurance of this drawing is extraordinary. 215 00:18:03,560 --> 00:18:05,760 In a way, this is the closest that I've seen 216 00:18:05,760 --> 00:18:10,640 to really sketching in the, in the caves. 217 00:18:11,880 --> 00:18:15,720 It's somebody who's very assured of their own ability 218 00:18:15,720 --> 00:18:17,880 to evoke an animal. 219 00:18:17,880 --> 00:18:21,800 You know, a single line... Shck, shck, shck, shh-sh. 220 00:18:21,800 --> 00:18:26,680 Shk, psh, whew, psh, shoo, t-shock. 221 00:18:29,840 --> 00:18:34,800 What interests me, I think, is the degree to which 222 00:18:34,800 --> 00:18:39,880 the main images in this hall 223 00:18:39,880 --> 00:18:44,880 seem to be associated with, erm, death. 224 00:18:47,720 --> 00:18:52,680 Very, you know, brutally executed, 225 00:18:53,160 --> 00:18:58,240 and there's something very impressive about that. 226 00:18:58,600 --> 00:19:03,640 But, at the same time, I don't get any...the same sense of sympathy 227 00:19:05,080 --> 00:19:07,080 that we've had before. 228 00:19:08,760 --> 00:19:13,760 My theory is crumbling in the face of the truth of this, 229 00:19:14,440 --> 00:19:17,720 which is, you know, this seems to me to be more about 230 00:19:17,720 --> 00:19:22,400 our species' sense of superiority, and the right, 231 00:19:22,400 --> 00:19:26,480 the right to end the lives of other living things. 232 00:19:28,240 --> 00:19:29,840 So it is sad. 233 00:19:29,840 --> 00:19:33,960 I mean, when I see an image like that, I think, yeah, that's sad. 234 00:19:33,960 --> 00:19:37,080 That is the end of the life of a fine creature. 235 00:19:39,200 --> 00:19:44,080 So the sympathy, empathy, identification, love... 236 00:19:47,920 --> 00:19:50,360 ..isn't here, for me. 237 00:19:51,560 --> 00:19:56,280 Certainly, this is the same hand. 238 00:19:56,280 --> 00:19:59,520 I think we've found the Paleolithic Picasso. 239 00:19:59,520 --> 00:20:02,280 He is, you know, he's bloody pleased with himself, 240 00:20:02,280 --> 00:20:06,800 or herself, you know, bloody good at it. I can, I can... 241 00:20:06,800 --> 00:20:11,240 I can command the image of a bison, 242 00:20:11,240 --> 00:20:13,320 and furthermore... 243 00:20:14,480 --> 00:20:18,680 ..tell you that I'm going to kill it. 244 00:20:21,280 --> 00:20:24,720 Well, it's a bit like Picasso's attitude to women, 245 00:20:24,720 --> 00:20:29,760 and I don't, I don't care for Picasso, erm... 246 00:20:31,920 --> 00:20:34,000 ..because he was a predator. 247 00:20:35,080 --> 00:20:40,080 And I see these images as, in a way, these two things - 248 00:20:41,360 --> 00:20:45,640 the egotism of a human 249 00:20:45,640 --> 00:20:49,480 that feels that they are in control 250 00:20:49,480 --> 00:20:54,520 and the egotism of an artist who feels that he can command the image, 251 00:20:55,200 --> 00:20:59,440 and, in commanding the image, commands the creature. 252 00:20:59,440 --> 00:21:04,480 It doesn't open the valves of my sympathy for life. 253 00:21:06,000 --> 00:21:08,120 Quite the reverse. 254 00:21:14,800 --> 00:21:17,520 And that's shocking, and sad. 255 00:21:22,520 --> 00:21:25,520 Like so much that has been made since, 256 00:21:25,520 --> 00:21:30,200 this is art in which man is asserting his own superiority. 257 00:21:33,320 --> 00:21:36,320 Art is a litmus test of our values, 258 00:21:36,320 --> 00:21:38,640 I mean, it just tells us what we care about, 259 00:21:38,640 --> 00:21:43,680 it tells us what makes us feel more alive. 260 00:21:44,360 --> 00:21:49,360 I think that's what art's supposed to do, make us feel more alive, 261 00:21:49,800 --> 00:21:54,880 but, often, art is sidestepped into making us feel more tasteful, 262 00:21:55,080 --> 00:21:59,440 more powerful, more rich, more special. 263 00:22:03,480 --> 00:22:06,800 And seeing this has made me re-evaluate this journey. 264 00:22:08,680 --> 00:22:11,800 I came here because I wanted to reconnect with what art was 265 00:22:11,800 --> 00:22:16,840 for our ancestors, and what it can still be, at its best. 266 00:22:17,440 --> 00:22:21,720 But, here, rather than discovering how art began, 267 00:22:21,720 --> 00:22:26,560 the images inside the cave felt like the beginning of the end. 268 00:22:28,240 --> 00:22:33,080 I think that what I'm looking for might lie further back in time. 269 00:22:35,080 --> 00:22:39,240 The next cave I'm going to see is as far away in time 270 00:22:39,240 --> 00:22:43,280 from the artists of Niaux as they are from us in the present day. 271 00:22:44,640 --> 00:22:48,880 We're going back 28,000 years before the present. 272 00:22:58,880 --> 00:23:03,000 I've come here to the Lot valley, 100 miles north of Niaux... 273 00:23:07,400 --> 00:23:10,440 ..because there's a cave here that contains one of the earliest 274 00:23:10,440 --> 00:23:14,080 paintings of animals found anywhere in Europe. 275 00:23:30,160 --> 00:23:35,200 The cave of Pech Merle was discovered in 1922 by two local boys 276 00:23:39,920 --> 00:23:44,760 Just like at Niaux, the cave itself sets your imagination running. 277 00:23:48,440 --> 00:23:51,920 Again, there's something extraordinary, to me, 278 00:23:51,920 --> 00:23:56,960 about the response to just the sheer physicality 279 00:23:58,400 --> 00:24:01,600 of the space, with these... 280 00:24:01,600 --> 00:24:05,920 These are like great, you know... 281 00:24:05,920 --> 00:24:09,600 If we were in the belly of a whale, and he'd just eaten his breakfast, 282 00:24:09,600 --> 00:24:14,440 and this was, like, great big mouthfuls of something, 283 00:24:14,440 --> 00:24:19,520 you know, you feel, somehow, in here that we're being privileged 284 00:24:21,800 --> 00:24:26,880 to be somewhere very special. 285 00:24:31,480 --> 00:24:34,320 What these two boys who first came here discovered 286 00:24:34,320 --> 00:24:37,160 was an extraordinary painting. 287 00:24:38,760 --> 00:24:40,240 Extraordinary in its beauty, 288 00:24:40,240 --> 00:24:43,040 but also because it wasn't created with a paintbrush, 289 00:24:43,040 --> 00:24:45,680 or by scratching lines into the rock, 290 00:24:45,680 --> 00:24:48,560 it was created by human breath. 291 00:25:11,720 --> 00:25:13,960 Prehistorian Michel Lorblanchet 292 00:25:13,960 --> 00:25:16,960 has spent many years studying this painting 293 00:25:16,960 --> 00:25:19,800 to try and unlock the secrets it contains. 294 00:25:21,240 --> 00:25:26,120 Here is the panel, the dotted horses panel, which... 295 00:25:27,360 --> 00:25:32,240 All the paintings have been made with the spitting technique. 296 00:25:32,240 --> 00:25:35,040 No brushes? No brushes, no. 297 00:25:35,040 --> 00:25:38,360 In fact, the artist, by his breath, 298 00:25:38,360 --> 00:25:40,760 he projected himself with the breath, 299 00:25:40,760 --> 00:25:43,400 with his breath onto the rock, 300 00:25:43,400 --> 00:25:47,680 and in this beautiful figure, 301 00:25:47,680 --> 00:25:49,640 beautiful painting of horses. 302 00:25:50,920 --> 00:25:55,960 The man who did the drawing did six hand stencils, 303 00:25:56,200 --> 00:26:01,280 and after the hands, the black dots were drawn. 304 00:26:03,920 --> 00:26:06,320 There are more than 200 black dots. 305 00:26:07,800 --> 00:26:11,640 But the spots go beyond the horse and below the horse 306 00:26:11,640 --> 00:26:14,240 and around the horse, so what's happening? Of course. Of course. 307 00:26:14,240 --> 00:26:19,320 Ah, yes, here the dots are not the fur of the animals, 308 00:26:20,480 --> 00:26:25,480 of the horses, they are just geometric marks. 309 00:26:25,920 --> 00:26:28,720 So they are a kind of emanation of a horse, 310 00:26:28,720 --> 00:26:30,320 not the horse itself. Of course. 311 00:26:30,320 --> 00:26:32,280 So this is the spirit of the horse. 312 00:26:32,280 --> 00:26:37,360 In your, in your interpretation, this is also an image of life. 313 00:26:38,200 --> 00:26:39,720 Yes. 314 00:26:39,720 --> 00:26:42,720 Everything in here is like, it's becoming, you know, 315 00:26:42,720 --> 00:26:45,800 you look in every direction, and you see, yeah, 316 00:26:45,800 --> 00:26:50,800 these forms that are so complex, and, yeah, magical. 317 00:26:52,880 --> 00:26:56,920 This is natural, the temple of the nature, 318 00:26:56,920 --> 00:26:59,240 and it's a good expression, I think. 319 00:26:59,240 --> 00:27:04,280 Nature is already a sort of artist, nature itself, 320 00:27:05,080 --> 00:27:08,320 and so man is invited to do the same. 321 00:27:08,320 --> 00:27:12,600 He is a member, a part of the nature himself. 322 00:27:14,160 --> 00:27:18,040 Michel's insight into this painting is borne of experience. 323 00:27:20,200 --> 00:27:25,160 He realised that in order to truly inhabit the mind of the prehistoric 324 00:27:25,320 --> 00:27:29,920 artist, he must dedicate himself to recreating their art, 325 00:27:29,920 --> 00:27:33,880 and their methods, bringing him closer to the art 326 00:27:33,880 --> 00:27:36,240 at the moment of its making. 327 00:27:59,680 --> 00:28:01,640 SPITS 328 00:28:11,080 --> 00:28:13,160 SERIES OF RAPID SHORT PUFFS 329 00:28:19,640 --> 00:28:23,640 In the 1970s, Michel was researching the painting techniques 330 00:28:23,640 --> 00:28:26,720 of the Aboriginal Australians... 331 00:28:30,480 --> 00:28:33,640 ..and he realised that some of the Ice-Age art in Europe 332 00:28:33,640 --> 00:28:36,160 appeared to have been made using the same methods. 333 00:28:38,680 --> 00:28:42,840 And he set about trying to recreate the whole frieze 334 00:28:42,840 --> 00:28:45,400 of the horses at Pech Merle. 335 00:28:46,640 --> 00:28:48,880 It gave him an unexpected insight 336 00:28:48,880 --> 00:28:52,480 into the ritual involved in the process of painting. 337 00:28:56,000 --> 00:29:00,840 Painting is to project oneself onto the rock... 338 00:29:02,040 --> 00:29:04,640 ..by the breath. 339 00:29:06,600 --> 00:29:09,280 So the breath must be symbolic. 340 00:29:11,600 --> 00:29:16,560 Breathing the painting is something very personal. 341 00:29:18,480 --> 00:29:21,720 The paintings become part of yourself, 342 00:29:21,720 --> 00:29:24,200 which is projected onto the rock. 343 00:29:25,400 --> 00:29:30,480 And so I had the feeling that these paintings are deeply 344 00:29:31,480 --> 00:29:35,400 spiritual actions in the cave. 345 00:29:47,240 --> 00:29:51,600 Et voila. C'est, c'est encore plus d'energie necessaire! 346 00:29:51,600 --> 00:29:53,240 Non, mais c'est... 347 00:29:53,240 --> 00:29:57,120 It's really impressive, honestly, Michel, I... 348 00:29:57,120 --> 00:30:02,120 It's completely changed my feeling about what I'm seeing in the caves. 349 00:30:02,920 --> 00:30:05,240 Ah, yes. Because I thought it was like... 350 00:30:05,240 --> 00:30:08,200 IMITATES SPITTING One. No, no... And not at all. 351 00:30:08,200 --> 00:30:10,920 No. So it's... No, no, it doesn't work... 352 00:30:10,920 --> 00:30:12,960 So it's a really long time... 353 00:30:12,960 --> 00:30:16,720 Yes, it needs, yes, for almost three-quarters of an hour 354 00:30:16,720 --> 00:30:21,320 to get to a true, a good hand stencil. 355 00:30:21,320 --> 00:30:26,040 And so this is like really a moment of... 356 00:30:27,200 --> 00:30:30,680 ..complete concentration and persistence. 357 00:30:30,680 --> 00:30:33,920 That's right, that's right, that's right, that's right. 358 00:30:33,920 --> 00:30:39,000 And, also, in the cave, it's necessary to have light, 359 00:30:39,000 --> 00:30:43,240 because the painter can't hold the light. 360 00:30:43,240 --> 00:30:46,480 Yes, because you have to do... Somebody has to hold the light for him. 361 00:30:46,480 --> 00:30:49,840 Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? Beside of him. Yeah. 362 00:30:49,840 --> 00:30:53,960 Unless he lit a fire by the wall. 363 00:30:53,960 --> 00:30:56,120 Near the wall. 364 00:31:00,200 --> 00:31:03,080 The process seems so elemental. 365 00:31:04,120 --> 00:31:07,160 They brought fire into the cave for light, 366 00:31:07,160 --> 00:31:10,840 and the charcoal the fire made gave them pigment. 367 00:31:14,520 --> 00:31:19,040 It's a bit like a bassoon player, like this... 368 00:31:19,040 --> 00:31:23,840 You really have to, like, constrict your lips, 369 00:31:23,840 --> 00:31:26,040 and, you know... 370 00:31:27,080 --> 00:31:29,360 Oh, that's, that's... 371 00:31:31,400 --> 00:31:36,440 Unfortunately, the natural patches here are disturbing... 372 00:31:36,480 --> 00:31:40,520 Already. No, but it's very... I think that's very beautiful. 373 00:31:40,520 --> 00:31:44,200 The way the hand appears out of the rock. 374 00:31:44,200 --> 00:31:46,840 Yeah, that's right. That's right. 375 00:31:49,680 --> 00:31:54,640 I think that's what makes these handprints unbearably poignant. 376 00:31:59,920 --> 00:32:02,640 In some way, we know that rocks don't change. 377 00:32:04,080 --> 00:32:08,400 In the scale of human life, geology is a constant... 378 00:32:12,240 --> 00:32:15,240 ..and if we want to reflect on our own mortality, 379 00:32:15,240 --> 00:32:20,320 and the fact that we're here to die, whereas rocks are here to stay... 380 00:32:22,960 --> 00:32:27,480 ..we do this thing of touching the rock... 381 00:32:29,280 --> 00:32:34,160 ..and we make that touch eternal by blowing pigment around it. 382 00:32:38,880 --> 00:32:42,480 In a way, it's not the handprint, 383 00:32:42,480 --> 00:32:46,120 it is the place that a hand once was, 384 00:32:46,120 --> 00:32:49,280 and that's very, you know... To me, that's very deep, 385 00:32:49,280 --> 00:32:51,200 for my work. 386 00:32:56,160 --> 00:33:00,120 My work is absolutely a continuation of that concern 387 00:33:00,120 --> 00:33:02,280 with leaving your trace. 388 00:33:05,520 --> 00:33:10,480 It could be a shadow, a footprint in the snow, 389 00:33:20,080 --> 00:33:24,640 They're all an attempt to say, you know, 390 00:33:24,640 --> 00:33:27,520 we exist in time, 391 00:33:27,520 --> 00:33:29,600 we're subject to time... 392 00:33:31,440 --> 00:33:36,160 ..and we will not have time quite soon. 393 00:33:40,720 --> 00:33:44,480 But how long ago did we first understand these ideas, 394 00:33:44,480 --> 00:33:47,440 and was that when art began? 395 00:33:50,840 --> 00:33:54,600 I've crossed the border into Spain to come to a cave that we now know 396 00:33:54,600 --> 00:33:59,280 contains some of the oldest art made by homo sapiens anywhere in the world. 397 00:34:04,560 --> 00:34:08,680 I want to come here because this could be as close as I can get 398 00:34:08,680 --> 00:34:13,240 to the moment when we first understood who we are as humans, 399 00:34:13,240 --> 00:34:18,320 when we began to make art expressing our own mortality. 400 00:34:21,040 --> 00:34:26,040 This line of 86 red dots is art stripped back to its very essence. 401 00:34:29,480 --> 00:34:32,520 So beautiful, because this is about interval. 402 00:34:34,000 --> 00:34:38,840 This is as if we are beginning to understand time. 403 00:34:38,840 --> 00:34:42,440 In other words, we can determine interval, 404 00:34:42,440 --> 00:34:46,240 we can mark a moment followed by a moment. 405 00:34:48,360 --> 00:34:53,280 And it reminds me of being a kid going to school, 406 00:34:53,280 --> 00:34:58,200 and with a stick, tapping on the railings as I walked 407 00:34:58,600 --> 00:35:01,160 down Fitzjohns Avenue. 408 00:35:01,160 --> 00:35:03,760 That's the thought. 409 00:35:03,760 --> 00:35:06,680 Every time we come into the caves, we feel the same thing, 410 00:35:06,680 --> 00:35:09,720 that this is immediate, this could have been made yesterday. 411 00:35:09,720 --> 00:35:12,960 It is present, it makes us more present in the time 412 00:35:12,960 --> 00:35:16,880 of our own movement through these spaces. 413 00:35:16,880 --> 00:35:20,680 And it's so moving. 414 00:35:25,960 --> 00:35:28,720 We always ask that question, what does this mean? 415 00:35:28,720 --> 00:35:31,440 What does this represent? 416 00:35:33,080 --> 00:35:38,080 And it's escaped from that kind of meaning and that kind of picturing. 417 00:35:39,800 --> 00:35:44,840 This is just saying, here, now, here, 418 00:35:46,240 --> 00:35:49,360 now, here, now. 419 00:35:51,200 --> 00:35:53,720 And that's about as good as art gets. 420 00:35:57,960 --> 00:36:00,840 But this is not the whole story. 421 00:36:04,600 --> 00:36:07,760 In the last ten years, new evidence has come to light 422 00:36:07,760 --> 00:36:10,800 that suggests that there is art that is much, 423 00:36:10,800 --> 00:36:13,280 much older than this. 424 00:36:19,000 --> 00:36:23,280 When modern humans, homo sapiens, arrived in this part of Europe 425 00:36:23,280 --> 00:36:28,160 42,000 years ago, a now-extinct species of human, 426 00:36:28,320 --> 00:36:31,920 Neanderthals, had already been living here 427 00:36:31,920 --> 00:36:34,440 for hundreds of thousands of years. 428 00:36:36,080 --> 00:36:40,440 The classic image of Neanderthals is that they had inferior minds 429 00:36:40,440 --> 00:36:44,600 and were not capable of the self-reflection it takes to make art. 430 00:36:44,600 --> 00:36:49,040 But it turns out we may have underestimated our human cousins. 431 00:36:51,480 --> 00:36:55,320 In 2012, a team led by Professor Alistair Pike 432 00:36:55,320 --> 00:36:57,800 was experimenting with a new dating technique 433 00:36:57,800 --> 00:37:00,560 to find ages for those cave paintings 434 00:37:00,560 --> 00:37:02,840 that had been impossible to date before. 435 00:37:04,160 --> 00:37:07,880 His initial research focused on an area of El Castillo 436 00:37:07,880 --> 00:37:12,800 where red painted discs sit alongside another, now-familiar image. 437 00:37:13,880 --> 00:37:17,200 So, this is the panel of hands. 438 00:37:17,200 --> 00:37:20,320 And there are more than 40 hand stencils arranged on this wall. 439 00:37:21,400 --> 00:37:24,640 They're quite ghostly, aren't they? 440 00:37:24,640 --> 00:37:27,880 It's a person, isn't it? You see the absence of hand. Yeah. 441 00:37:27,880 --> 00:37:31,640 And the significance of that is, you can't make one of these accidentally. 442 00:37:31,640 --> 00:37:34,360 So, if you were to put your hand in some red mud 443 00:37:34,360 --> 00:37:37,360 and fall against the cave wall, you'll leave the handprint, 444 00:37:37,360 --> 00:37:39,240 but it may not have been intentional, 445 00:37:39,240 --> 00:37:41,400 whereas you can't make this accidentally. 446 00:37:41,400 --> 00:37:43,880 It was a deliberate act of creating a hand stencil. 447 00:37:46,400 --> 00:37:49,800 And you can see that many of these hand stencils and red discs 448 00:37:49,800 --> 00:37:53,560 that are on here are covered in this white substance, 449 00:37:53,560 --> 00:37:55,680 which is calcium carbonate. 450 00:37:55,680 --> 00:37:59,920 The same material that's formed when stalagmites and stalactites form. 451 00:37:59,920 --> 00:38:02,440 And because it's forming on top of some of these hand stencils, 452 00:38:02,440 --> 00:38:06,080 that gives us a minimum age, nearly 37,000 years for this hand. 453 00:38:06,080 --> 00:38:09,240 Goodness. And just to the right of it is a red disc, 454 00:38:09,240 --> 00:38:13,240 rather like the ones you were looking at in the corridor of discs. 455 00:38:13,240 --> 00:38:16,600 And this is older than 40,800. 456 00:38:17,840 --> 00:38:21,560 It's a matter of faith that we believe a disc is there! 457 00:38:21,560 --> 00:38:23,760 THEY LAUGH 458 00:38:23,760 --> 00:38:27,960 So, this calcite formed just after the arrival of modern humans. 459 00:38:27,960 --> 00:38:31,440 But there's an unknown amount of time between the painting 460 00:38:31,440 --> 00:38:34,160 being done and the calcite forming. 461 00:38:35,840 --> 00:38:39,200 So, on the one hand, this red disc, and possibly the hands, 462 00:38:39,200 --> 00:38:41,600 which we think were made around the same time, 463 00:38:41,600 --> 00:38:45,440 were amongst the earliest paintings that modern humans did 464 00:38:45,440 --> 00:38:47,680 when they arrived in Europe. 465 00:38:47,680 --> 00:38:50,160 Or if there was a time delay of more than a few thousand years 466 00:38:50,160 --> 00:38:53,120 between the painting and the formation of the calcite, 467 00:38:53,120 --> 00:38:56,400 then this red disc must have been made by a Neanderthal. 468 00:38:57,560 --> 00:39:00,760 If it's true that Neanderthals were making art, 469 00:39:00,760 --> 00:39:05,280 it changes all our ideas about how art began. 470 00:39:05,280 --> 00:39:08,800 To find out for sure, Alistair took more samples 471 00:39:08,800 --> 00:39:13,080 from calcium deposits on other images in caves across Spain. 472 00:39:13,080 --> 00:39:17,920 These are some pictures that we took when we were taking samples 473 00:39:17,920 --> 00:39:21,840 for dating from Maltravieso cave in Caceres in the west of Spain. 474 00:39:21,840 --> 00:39:26,720 And this cave has an unusually high number of red hand stencils in it. 475 00:39:26,720 --> 00:39:31,760 And we found a hand stencil in here that had calcite on it 476 00:39:32,200 --> 00:39:36,400 that showed that it dated to older than 66,000 years. Wow. 477 00:39:36,400 --> 00:39:41,360 Now, this is 25,000 years before humans arrived in Spain, 478 00:39:41,960 --> 00:39:46,880 so there's absolutely no question that this must have been made by a Neanderthal. 479 00:39:50,680 --> 00:39:54,040 With this extraordinary research, Alistair Pike and his team 480 00:39:54,040 --> 00:39:56,920 have reset the clock on when art began... 481 00:39:58,400 --> 00:40:02,000 ..pushing it back by 25,000 years. 482 00:40:08,760 --> 00:40:13,080 And if our cousins the Neanderthals were making art, 483 00:40:13,080 --> 00:40:16,640 it opens up the possibility that art goes much further back 484 00:40:16,640 --> 00:40:18,720 in our human family tree, 485 00:40:18,720 --> 00:40:21,760 and we were not the first but simply the most recent type 486 00:40:21,760 --> 00:40:24,680 of human to harness the power of art. 487 00:40:26,360 --> 00:40:30,680 So, you now have a picture of modern humans arriving in a Europe 488 00:40:30,680 --> 00:40:34,000 where the caves are already painted. 489 00:40:34,000 --> 00:40:39,080 So, Alistair, does that mean that the impetus for making art, 490 00:40:40,440 --> 00:40:45,440 in some senses, is homo sapiens' response to the traces 491 00:40:45,720 --> 00:40:49,840 of Neanderthal art that were already in the caves? 492 00:40:49,840 --> 00:40:52,200 Well, if you only look at the European evidence, 493 00:40:52,200 --> 00:40:54,240 you might come to that conclusion. 494 00:40:54,240 --> 00:40:56,800 But, in fact, there have been some recent amazing discoveries 495 00:40:56,800 --> 00:41:00,400 on the other side of the world that suggest a very different 496 00:41:00,400 --> 00:41:03,160 picture for understanding the origin of human art. 497 00:41:08,880 --> 00:41:13,360 Thousands of miles away, on the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia, 498 00:41:13,360 --> 00:41:17,440 another group of scientists have made an extraordinary discovery. 499 00:41:24,320 --> 00:41:28,160 They've found art here made by human beings who'd had no contact 500 00:41:28,160 --> 00:41:31,920 with the people of Europe, who were living in a place 501 00:41:31,920 --> 00:41:35,080 where no Neanderthals had been before them. 502 00:41:35,080 --> 00:41:37,880 And, yet, they've found evidence that people started to paint 503 00:41:37,880 --> 00:41:41,880 in the caves in these mountains at almost exactly the same time 504 00:41:41,880 --> 00:41:44,280 as the first humans were painting in Europe. 505 00:41:49,520 --> 00:41:53,160 Were these two isolated groups of people motivated to make art 506 00:41:53,160 --> 00:41:55,960 at the same time for the same reason? 507 00:42:04,560 --> 00:42:07,120 geochemist Maxime Aubert. 508 00:42:16,480 --> 00:42:18,920 Hello, Antony. Max. Maxime. 509 00:42:18,920 --> 00:42:21,400 How are you? I'm very well. Lovely to see you. 510 00:42:21,400 --> 00:42:24,400 Me too. Goodness. Welcome to Leang Timpuseng. 511 00:42:28,680 --> 00:42:32,720 There is something here in this cave that Maxime thinks I should see. 512 00:42:37,720 --> 00:42:39,720 GASPS 513 00:42:41,120 --> 00:42:43,240 Wow. 514 00:42:45,120 --> 00:42:49,160 We were thousands and thousands of miles away, 515 00:42:49,160 --> 00:42:53,440 looking at other hands, 516 00:42:53,440 --> 00:42:58,320 and here we are, in a completely different culture, 517 00:43:00,600 --> 00:43:04,200 different latitude, different side of the world. 518 00:43:07,720 --> 00:43:11,360 The same idea of leaving a mark. 519 00:43:12,480 --> 00:43:17,520 What is it that changed in our hominine minds 520 00:43:18,640 --> 00:43:22,640 that made us feel that this kind of thing was necessary? 521 00:43:24,840 --> 00:43:28,560 I find this really incredibly moving. 522 00:43:40,880 --> 00:43:44,880 You know, this is, this is about, on the one hand, you know, 523 00:43:44,880 --> 00:43:49,920 you're invited to put your hand and say, 524 00:43:50,680 --> 00:43:55,600 "I've just high-fived somebody from 30,000 years ago." 525 00:43:56,920 --> 00:44:00,920 And, then, on the other, no, it's the absolute... 526 00:44:00,920 --> 00:44:03,480 It's saying, here is the world. 527 00:44:03,480 --> 00:44:05,160 Here is what will be, 528 00:44:05,160 --> 00:44:10,040 long after the person who made it has gone. 529 00:44:10,240 --> 00:44:14,720 But also long after I who come after him will be gone. Yeah. 530 00:44:17,560 --> 00:44:21,120 It's apparently, like, 30 years ago, this whole thing was painted. 531 00:44:21,120 --> 00:44:24,080 The whole ceiling of this cave was completely painted, 532 00:44:24,080 --> 00:44:26,320 so there's still some painting on that side. 533 00:44:26,320 --> 00:44:28,400 And this has all collapsed. It's all gone now. 534 00:44:28,400 --> 00:44:32,160 That's the old rock face, and when it's white, it's the new rock face. 535 00:44:32,160 --> 00:44:34,320 And you can see... There is something there. 536 00:44:34,320 --> 00:44:37,480 The bits of the painting that went through the rock, like the old surface. 537 00:44:37,480 --> 00:44:40,120 But this has all collapsed. This is all gone. 538 00:44:40,120 --> 00:44:42,560 So this is not the same thing as the cave in France, 539 00:44:42,560 --> 00:44:45,680 where it's deep and it's cold, but, here, it's really wet and humid, 540 00:44:45,680 --> 00:44:47,800 so the further deep you go inside the cave, 541 00:44:47,800 --> 00:44:49,840 the more humid it is. 542 00:44:50,880 --> 00:44:55,400 Increasing pollution over the last 30 years means that this art 543 00:44:55,400 --> 00:45:00,200 is disappearing, just as its significance is being understood. 544 00:45:00,200 --> 00:45:04,480 For Maxime, this is most serious when it affects art 545 00:45:04,480 --> 00:45:06,920 that is unique to this area. 546 00:45:06,920 --> 00:45:11,560 If you come maybe here and look on your back, 547 00:45:11,560 --> 00:45:16,440 and look at this pig here, so, you can see there's a really large 548 00:45:16,440 --> 00:45:19,320 animal painting of a pig. 549 00:45:19,320 --> 00:45:22,600 And you can see the legs there. Yeah. And you can see the hoof, you know. Yeah. 550 00:45:22,600 --> 00:45:26,600 And then all of the body here, the head, and there's the nose. 551 00:45:26,600 --> 00:45:30,600 Yeah. And you can see the snout and the mouth, all the details. 552 00:45:30,600 --> 00:45:34,320 Is this done with a finger, or is this done with a brush? 553 00:45:34,320 --> 00:45:36,560 There's some really details that would be hard to do, 554 00:45:36,560 --> 00:45:39,800 I think, with a finger. Look at the mouth here. Yeah, yeah. 555 00:45:39,800 --> 00:45:42,240 It's really fine details. 556 00:45:42,240 --> 00:45:46,680 What are these strange, balloon-like animals? 557 00:45:46,680 --> 00:45:48,960 Yeah, well, we think it's a babirusa. 558 00:45:48,960 --> 00:45:53,360 That's a type of pig, like, a wild pig around here. 559 00:45:53,360 --> 00:45:55,680 But it's pretty rare now. 560 00:46:00,280 --> 00:46:03,600 The significance of these animal paintings lies not just 561 00:46:03,600 --> 00:46:05,920 in the choice of animal that they painted. 562 00:46:08,840 --> 00:46:12,880 Maxime is taking me to a cave called Leang Tempuseng, 563 00:46:12,880 --> 00:46:15,400 where he found a painting of a babirusa 564 00:46:15,400 --> 00:46:18,200 that brought this art to the attention of the world. 565 00:46:30,800 --> 00:46:33,040 All right, Antony, so this is it. 566 00:46:35,240 --> 00:46:38,960 Oh, yeah. So, here we have a pig, a babirusa. 567 00:46:40,200 --> 00:46:44,640 How incredible. There's a hand stencil on the right-hand side. 568 00:46:44,640 --> 00:46:47,240 I don't know if you can see, but there is a little sample 569 00:46:47,240 --> 00:46:49,640 that we took out on the left-hand side. 570 00:46:49,640 --> 00:46:51,640 Oh, yeah. On the little finger. Yeah. 571 00:46:51,640 --> 00:46:56,560 And then that provided us a minimum age of about 40,000 years old 572 00:46:56,560 --> 00:46:58,040 for that hand stencil. 573 00:46:58,040 --> 00:47:00,680 And on the babirusa here, we took a sample, 574 00:47:00,680 --> 00:47:02,720 and that gave us a minimum age 575 00:47:02,720 --> 00:47:04,760 for the pig of 35,000, 576 00:47:04,760 --> 00:47:08,040 so that's the oldest figurative art in the world. 577 00:47:08,040 --> 00:47:11,920 I mean, this claim is that this is the first, 578 00:47:11,920 --> 00:47:16,920 as it were, referential, representational figure work in the world. 579 00:47:18,040 --> 00:47:21,640 And that's, you know, that's an extraordinary thing. 580 00:47:21,640 --> 00:47:23,600 So what do you put that down to? 581 00:47:23,600 --> 00:47:27,280 Maybe, like, when the modern humans arrived here on this island, 582 00:47:27,280 --> 00:47:30,200 this island's got lots and lots and lots of, like, specific species, 583 00:47:30,200 --> 00:47:32,480 like, endemic species to this island. 584 00:47:32,480 --> 00:47:35,160 So maybe when modern human arrived, they were just amazed to see 585 00:47:35,160 --> 00:47:37,880 a different kind of, you know, animal they've never seen before, 586 00:47:37,880 --> 00:47:40,520 and maybe that's how it became special to them. I like that idea. 587 00:47:40,520 --> 00:47:44,120 Yeah, so this is, like, this is the way this landscape 588 00:47:44,120 --> 00:47:46,760 expresses itself with this form. Maybe, yeah. 589 00:47:46,760 --> 00:47:50,400 I like that. I like that. That makes a lot of sense to me. 590 00:47:55,680 --> 00:48:00,000 It seems that while we were making dots and hand stencils in Europe, 591 00:48:00,000 --> 00:48:02,840 people here had realised that they could draw a picture 592 00:48:02,840 --> 00:48:07,080 of something, and those first pictures were of animals. 593 00:48:10,160 --> 00:48:13,000 Perhaps because they embodied this new landscape, 594 00:48:13,000 --> 00:48:15,640 or perhaps for reasons that we do not yet understand. 595 00:48:22,120 --> 00:48:24,960 An archaeological dig nearby is trying to find evidence 596 00:48:24,960 --> 00:48:28,760 about the role of art in the lives of these early people. 597 00:48:34,840 --> 00:48:38,560 The team is led by Maxime's colleague, Adam Brumm. 598 00:48:47,800 --> 00:48:51,000 When the Ice-Age artists came here from Africa, 599 00:48:51,000 --> 00:48:54,320 they were seeing for the first time a totally different animal world, 600 00:48:54,320 --> 00:48:57,480 and, so, I think, really, we could be seeing, 601 00:48:57,480 --> 00:49:01,360 I guess, an evolution or a transformation in human spirituality 602 00:49:01,360 --> 00:49:06,400 and religion in terms of the level of spiritual connectedness to the animal world. 603 00:49:07,440 --> 00:49:10,440 The thing we have to remember here in Sulawesi is, 604 00:49:10,440 --> 00:49:12,720 this is really uncharted territory. 605 00:49:12,720 --> 00:49:17,000 I mean, you've got to remember that the Ice Age art in Europe is something that's been knownfor... 606 00:49:17,000 --> 00:49:19,600 Generations of intensive research has been done. 607 00:49:19,600 --> 00:49:22,680 Our Indonesian colleagues have done an incredible job here documenting 608 00:49:22,680 --> 00:49:25,440 and recording and discovering all these sites, 609 00:49:25,440 --> 00:49:30,360 but it's only four years ago we showed that these images are some of the oldest in the world. 610 00:49:30,440 --> 00:49:34,560 And now we really need, now we've made that the initial breakthrough, 611 00:49:34,560 --> 00:49:37,280 we really need to understand more about this art. 612 00:49:40,360 --> 00:49:43,160 It had always been thought that this urge to create such 613 00:49:43,160 --> 00:49:47,560 incredible art had emerged in Europe 40,000 years ago, 614 00:49:47,560 --> 00:49:52,600 but is it now a matter of eventually we can join up the dots, so to speak, 615 00:49:52,600 --> 00:49:55,720 the thousands of kilometres separating this part of the world 616 00:49:55,720 --> 00:49:57,360 from the old world, from Europe? 617 00:49:59,240 --> 00:50:03,320 I believe that it's, you know, it's really just a matter of time 618 00:50:03,320 --> 00:50:06,720 until we do see some evidence for a similar sort of art being created 619 00:50:06,720 --> 00:50:10,760 at around the same time between here and in Europe. 620 00:50:21,320 --> 00:50:24,600 Today and the last days have just really... 621 00:50:26,240 --> 00:50:31,280 ..opened my mind to the fact that we are looking, really, at a global picture now. 622 00:50:32,320 --> 00:50:35,600 What we're seeing is - and we're going to see more and more - 623 00:50:35,600 --> 00:50:38,400 the fact is there's very little from Africa at this age. 624 00:50:38,400 --> 00:50:40,840 That's simply because we haven't looked for it, 625 00:50:40,840 --> 00:50:42,960 or we haven't looked for it hard enough. 626 00:50:42,960 --> 00:50:45,280 There's nothing, or very little, from India. 627 00:50:45,280 --> 00:50:46,960 We haven't looked hard, either, there. 628 00:50:46,960 --> 00:50:52,040 So, this story of the earliest art will go on changing, 629 00:50:54,040 --> 00:50:57,120 and will go on getting deeper, and will go on astonishing us. 630 00:51:00,560 --> 00:51:05,560 We now know that art began earlier than we'd ever thought before, 631 00:51:05,960 --> 00:51:09,520 and that it was happening on opposite sides of the world. 632 00:51:09,520 --> 00:51:14,040 But, for me, these discoveries don't answer the most important question of all. 633 00:51:14,040 --> 00:51:16,360 Why do we make art? 634 00:51:18,280 --> 00:51:21,880 Because the tradition of cave art came to an end in Europe 635 00:51:21,880 --> 00:51:24,920 and Indonesia so long ago, 636 00:51:24,920 --> 00:51:27,800 the answer may not lie here. 637 00:51:27,800 --> 00:51:31,680 But there is one part of the world where cave and rock art 638 00:51:31,680 --> 00:51:34,600 has continued to be made almost to the present. 639 00:51:35,840 --> 00:51:40,880 Humans first came to Australia from Indonesia 60,000 years ago. 640 00:51:41,400 --> 00:51:43,920 And it's here, in the Australian wilderness, 641 00:51:43,920 --> 00:51:47,240 that I hope to find answers to the deepest mystery - 642 00:51:47,240 --> 00:51:49,680 what art means to us. 643 00:51:56,120 --> 00:52:00,520 This is the Kimberley in Western Australia. 644 00:52:00,520 --> 00:52:04,800 This vast wilderness, three times the size of England, 645 00:52:04,800 --> 00:52:09,440 is home to the most breathtaking variety of rock art anywhere in the world. 646 00:52:11,080 --> 00:52:14,920 And it's art that some believe, although not yet definitively dated, 647 00:52:14,920 --> 00:52:18,160 could be older than anything we've yet seen. 648 00:52:20,200 --> 00:52:23,680 I'm joining a small team of scientists from the University 649 00:52:23,680 --> 00:52:27,440 of Melbourne, who've come to take samples for further study. 650 00:52:32,000 --> 00:52:35,400 This land belongs to the Balanggarra people. 651 00:52:37,280 --> 00:52:40,760 Their spiritual beliefs govern their relationship with the land, 652 00:52:40,760 --> 00:52:44,560 with plants and animals, and with the art here. 653 00:52:46,160 --> 00:52:49,560 So we need to be purified in a smoking ceremony 654 00:52:49,560 --> 00:52:51,840 before we can visit their sacred sites. 655 00:53:01,840 --> 00:53:06,840 The art here is not hidden deep inside caves. 656 00:53:06,840 --> 00:53:10,480 But the landscape itself is so extreme 657 00:53:10,480 --> 00:53:14,160 that much of the art has remained unknown to the wider world. 658 00:53:20,240 --> 00:53:23,080 One of the traditional owners, Ado French, 659 00:53:23,080 --> 00:53:27,120 is taking me to see a piece of art that was discovered only two days ago. 660 00:53:37,640 --> 00:53:40,720 And trying to get to it, you can understand why. 661 00:54:05,640 --> 00:54:09,040 Oh, boy! This is the real thing. 662 00:54:21,840 --> 00:54:26,920 This is absolutely magnificent. 663 00:54:30,480 --> 00:54:35,480 So, this is a life-size kangaroo, mid-leap. 664 00:54:37,840 --> 00:54:41,040 It's just fantastic. 665 00:54:41,040 --> 00:54:44,880 Really, really, this is a moment of lived time captured 666 00:54:44,880 --> 00:54:49,280 through exactly what we were finding in France - 667 00:54:49,280 --> 00:54:53,120 that feeling of being the animal. 668 00:54:53,120 --> 00:54:55,080 It's just fantastic. 669 00:54:55,080 --> 00:55:00,120 Right arm open, you know, sensing space. 670 00:55:01,280 --> 00:55:06,320 But the main thing is, this is totally alive. 671 00:55:06,760 --> 00:55:10,000 And it's painted with such assurance. 672 00:55:10,000 --> 00:55:14,280 A single stroke from the haunches, from the shoulder blades 673 00:55:14,280 --> 00:55:19,160 of the front arms, that runs, after being pressed... 674 00:55:19,160 --> 00:55:23,840 If you had a fully loaded Chinese brush absolutely full of pigment, 675 00:55:23,840 --> 00:55:27,480 you'd press it hard against the surface and then drag it 676 00:55:27,480 --> 00:55:31,960 all the way to the beginning of the tail. 677 00:55:31,960 --> 00:55:33,960 The whole thing is about... 678 00:55:33,960 --> 00:55:37,040 ..is about life. 679 00:55:37,040 --> 00:55:40,480 About movement, about alert, aware, alive. 680 00:55:40,480 --> 00:55:42,480 And it's... 681 00:55:43,520 --> 00:55:45,800 Well... 682 00:55:45,800 --> 00:55:50,800 I think this connects so powerfully with what we saw, I think... 683 00:55:52,440 --> 00:55:57,360 ..to some extent, in Sulawesi, but certainly in Font-de-Gaume. 684 00:55:58,920 --> 00:56:02,640 Absolutely magnificent. 685 00:56:07,480 --> 00:56:12,320 There's art of this quality absolutely everywhere here, 686 00:56:12,320 --> 00:56:15,640 but what differentiates it from the art of Europe 687 00:56:15,640 --> 00:56:20,160 is that it's broken free from that narrow palette of subjects 688 00:56:20,160 --> 00:56:22,320 we've seen in France and Spain. 689 00:56:24,800 --> 00:56:28,240 There are animal paintings, of course, but there is also art 690 00:56:28,240 --> 00:56:32,360 that reflects the natural world in a way that we haven't seen before. 691 00:56:36,840 --> 00:56:41,840 And nowhere is this more apparent than in the place that Ado has now brought me to. 692 00:56:44,480 --> 00:56:46,280 That's fantastic. 693 00:56:47,680 --> 00:56:50,120 GASPS 694 00:56:50,120 --> 00:56:52,360 They're so delicate. 695 00:56:55,600 --> 00:57:00,680 This is like some, like, Japanese, 696 00:57:01,360 --> 00:57:06,280 delicate celebration of water, water plants. 697 00:57:10,080 --> 00:57:14,920 Wonderful. And even the colouration is so lovely. 698 00:57:14,920 --> 00:57:19,960 The yellow ochre inside the pod, and then these reaching... 699 00:57:21,040 --> 00:57:26,080 ..fine, fine leaves that come up out of the surface of the water. 700 00:57:28,160 --> 00:57:30,160 It's really beautiful. 701 00:57:34,760 --> 00:57:37,480 I'm starting to feel that the art here 702 00:57:37,480 --> 00:57:41,920 is revealing a different relationship between man and nature 703 00:57:41,920 --> 00:57:43,760 than in the paintings we saw in Europe. 704 00:57:44,800 --> 00:57:48,640 Alongside beautiful images of plants and animals, 705 00:57:48,640 --> 00:57:53,520 there are paintings of something hardly ever depicted in Europe. 706 00:57:53,520 --> 00:57:55,440 Humans. 707 00:57:55,440 --> 00:58:00,000 The main thinking about this transition between where we've been 708 00:58:00,000 --> 00:58:04,960 and where we are now, here are human images, 709 00:58:05,640 --> 00:58:10,600 but not just human images crudely painted as a sign, 710 00:58:11,280 --> 00:58:16,360 but human images that celebrate a life, 711 00:58:17,000 --> 00:58:19,920 a whole collective, communal life. 712 00:58:22,600 --> 00:58:27,040 Across the Kimberley, we find paintings of human figures 713 00:58:27,040 --> 00:58:30,680 swept up in ecstatic celebration. 714 00:58:32,160 --> 00:58:36,320 In Europe, we painted animals because they embodied the qualities we lacked, 715 00:58:36,320 --> 00:58:40,160 but in Australia, it seems, we're no longer jealous 716 00:58:40,160 --> 00:58:42,480 of the collective vitality of the animals, 717 00:58:42,480 --> 00:58:45,160 because we possess it ourselves. 718 00:59:02,840 --> 00:59:07,840 We've come to rest on a ledge halfway between the ground and the sky, 719 00:59:08,720 --> 00:59:13,760 and we're seeing an image that I can't help respond to 720 00:59:14,200 --> 00:59:18,400 as a very positive and life affirming thing. 721 00:59:23,720 --> 00:59:27,440 We've got two figures, one much darker than the other, 722 00:59:27,440 --> 00:59:30,080 and it's almost like one is the shadow of the other, 723 00:59:30,080 --> 00:59:33,680 and in this case, you know, the darker is actually the thing 724 00:59:33,680 --> 00:59:38,080 that is projecting this lighter shadow on the back, 725 00:59:38,080 --> 00:59:43,000 but they mirror each other almost perfectly. 726 00:59:43,120 --> 00:59:46,640 There's a feeling of togetherness... 727 00:59:47,880 --> 00:59:52,960 ..but also, you know, just joy. 728 00:59:57,480 --> 00:59:59,880 And it's an extraordinary thing, really, 729 00:59:59,880 --> 01:00:03,920 if we started this journey with animals, 730 01:00:03,920 --> 01:00:08,960 somehow in this suspended animation 731 01:00:10,280 --> 01:00:15,280 that nevertheless conveyed a kind of feeling of conjuring of life, 732 01:00:15,640 --> 01:00:20,560 here we have the same thing, but focused entirely on a human being, 733 01:00:21,440 --> 01:00:26,400 and a very strong communicated sense of confidence, 734 01:00:28,080 --> 01:00:30,360 of being in the world. 735 01:00:39,880 --> 01:00:44,200 And at the moment where our species seems to be treading so heavily 736 01:00:44,200 --> 01:00:49,040 on the face of this Earth, it's just lovely to come here 737 01:00:49,040 --> 01:00:54,200 where there are no roads, there are no railways, 738 01:00:54,320 --> 01:00:57,600 there are no pylons that stalk across the land. 739 01:00:57,600 --> 01:01:02,640 It is truly a wilderness, and yet in that wilderness 740 01:01:03,000 --> 01:01:07,960 are images of us in our native state as artists and human beings. 741 01:01:23,600 --> 01:01:27,640 But alongside these new forms, there is a more familiar image 742 01:01:27,640 --> 01:01:32,520 here too, one that shows us just how universal art is 743 01:01:32,680 --> 01:01:35,360 in trying to understand our place in the world. 744 01:01:38,800 --> 01:01:43,880 Here is something that speaks across all the continents 745 01:01:44,560 --> 01:01:49,520 that we've looked at, or all the different geographies. 746 01:01:49,520 --> 01:01:54,520 Here is a hand stencil almost identical to my hand size. 747 01:01:57,400 --> 01:02:02,400 Here is the hand reaching out to us that we found in France, 748 01:02:03,000 --> 01:02:08,000 we found in Sulawesi, and now here it is again. 749 01:02:08,280 --> 01:02:12,200 It still strikes me as a complete miracle... 750 01:02:13,320 --> 01:02:17,440 ..that, spontaneously, it seems, 751 01:02:17,440 --> 01:02:22,440 very separated communities of modern man found it necessary 752 01:02:23,040 --> 01:02:25,320 to do this thing, 753 01:02:25,320 --> 01:02:30,400 leave this sign of being in a particular place. 754 01:02:35,960 --> 01:02:40,960 You know, for me, this journey, this journey, the journey of making this film... 755 01:02:44,600 --> 01:02:49,680 ..is in a way a journey about... 756 01:02:53,240 --> 01:02:57,520 ..the consistencies in this need... 757 01:02:59,040 --> 01:03:01,800 ..a human need to express, 758 01:03:01,800 --> 01:03:06,280 in a way, the inexpressible. 759 01:03:06,280 --> 01:03:11,200 All the things about life that are not to do simply 760 01:03:11,680 --> 01:03:14,080 with the support of the body. 761 01:03:14,080 --> 01:03:19,120 Art has always wanted to go beyond the horizon, 762 01:03:19,360 --> 01:03:23,400 beyond the limit, and I think touch the... 763 01:03:26,480 --> 01:03:31,480 That which cannot be, perhaps, logically explained 764 01:03:32,960 --> 01:03:35,400 or transmitted in words. 765 01:03:36,800 --> 01:03:39,240 The universality of this gesture, 766 01:03:39,240 --> 01:03:43,600 of leaving a present absence that isn't the thumbprint, 767 01:03:43,600 --> 01:03:48,560 it is simply the outline that registers a moment 768 01:03:49,440 --> 01:03:54,480 of lived time against the truths of geological time, 769 01:03:54,920 --> 01:03:59,920 and the need to do that has expressed itself 770 01:04:01,200 --> 01:04:03,760 all over the surface of this planet. 771 01:04:28,280 --> 01:04:31,600 The practice of painting in the caves of Europe 772 01:04:31,600 --> 01:04:34,000 came to an end about 10,000 years ago. 773 01:04:36,160 --> 01:04:38,720 Whatever need it had served was over. 774 01:04:43,160 --> 01:04:48,200 But here in the Kimberley, rock art is still a part of spiritual life. 775 01:04:52,440 --> 01:04:55,840 Ado's father Orgee has come to take us to a place 776 01:04:55,840 --> 01:04:58,560 that is special to him and his people. 777 01:05:04,760 --> 01:05:06,760 HE CALLS 778 01:05:11,720 --> 01:05:16,040 According to their tradition, the spirit of the creation being lives here. 779 01:05:16,040 --> 01:05:18,960 Orgee has to call out to introduce me 780 01:05:18,960 --> 01:05:21,080 and seek permission to visit the site. 781 01:05:33,160 --> 01:05:35,240 Oh, wow! 782 01:05:43,360 --> 01:05:45,360 Wolara? Yes. 783 01:05:47,200 --> 01:05:51,480 And tell me, what does Wolara look after? 784 01:06:03,160 --> 01:06:04,480 Uh-huh. 785 01:06:14,240 --> 01:06:17,480 How long ago - was it your father's father who painted this, 786 01:06:17,480 --> 01:06:19,480 or even further back? 787 01:06:19,480 --> 01:06:22,760 Further back. Further back. Yeah. 788 01:06:22,760 --> 01:06:27,960 So, would you say this was an earlier time or a dreamtime 789 01:06:29,000 --> 01:06:31,520 or - what is this early time? 790 01:06:43,280 --> 01:06:46,520 Right. So that's older than 2,000 years? 791 01:07:01,000 --> 01:07:05,000 Did your father bring you here? Yeah. 792 01:07:05,000 --> 01:07:07,440 And his father brought him here? 793 01:07:24,120 --> 01:07:27,760 Oh, what, that's your handprint? 794 01:07:27,760 --> 01:07:29,800 You and your two brothers? Yes. 795 01:07:32,040 --> 01:07:34,240 So, you were small? Yeah. 796 01:07:34,240 --> 01:07:36,680 How old were you when you came? 797 01:07:43,400 --> 01:07:47,520 And you made that by just putting your hand in red ochre? 798 01:07:59,280 --> 01:08:02,320 So, Orgee, what would happen to your people if they couldn't 799 01:08:02,320 --> 01:08:04,760 have access to these sites? 800 01:08:11,840 --> 01:08:14,600 So these are really, like, 801 01:08:14,600 --> 01:08:18,440 they show your past but they also show your future? 802 01:08:35,240 --> 01:08:38,640 It's just so amazing that we, as it were, 803 01:08:38,640 --> 01:08:43,600 do have a living connection with those that painted the painting. 804 01:08:50,680 --> 01:08:54,480 And I think that's what makes this so special. 805 01:08:54,480 --> 01:08:57,320 In a sense, it allows us to understand better 806 01:08:57,320 --> 01:09:00,200 what we were seeing in Europe, 807 01:09:00,200 --> 01:09:05,160 because I think there is still a connection with the earth, 808 01:09:05,480 --> 01:09:10,120 with the topography, with the landscape, the flora, the fauna. 809 01:09:10,120 --> 01:09:13,400 But, simply, you know, they have disappeared in Europe. 810 01:09:37,000 --> 01:09:42,040 If this film of ours can convey anything, it's the sense 811 01:09:42,280 --> 01:09:47,320 of this emergent truth that art was there right from the very beginning. 812 01:09:47,760 --> 01:09:51,360 It doesn't matter whether it's an individual artist making something 813 01:09:51,360 --> 01:09:54,240 only for themselves down the most inaccessible 814 01:09:54,240 --> 01:09:59,280 little crack of a deep, deep cave, or these extraordinary celebratory 815 01:09:59,920 --> 01:10:02,760 panels of the Kimberley. 816 01:10:06,240 --> 01:10:09,800 This has reinforced for me something perhaps I always felt 817 01:10:09,800 --> 01:10:12,320 but I'd never seen quite in this way, 818 01:10:12,320 --> 01:10:16,840 and so repeatedly over so many thousands of miles, 819 01:10:16,840 --> 01:10:20,560 that art is intrinsic to who we are. 820 01:10:20,560 --> 01:10:24,280 But art is probably our better part. 821 01:10:25,720 --> 01:10:30,720 And that in some way when uncaptured... 822 01:10:33,920 --> 01:10:38,880 ..by political or economic interests, 823 01:10:39,120 --> 01:10:42,480 it expresses a joy in being. 824 01:10:42,480 --> 01:10:45,840 A connection with all living beings. 825 01:10:45,840 --> 01:10:47,840 An awareness of... 826 01:10:49,240 --> 01:10:53,720 ..the is-ness of the palpable world. 827 01:10:53,720 --> 01:10:58,800 But the absolute and utter need 828 01:10:58,880 --> 01:11:03,480 of the imaginative to join it, 829 01:11:03,480 --> 01:11:08,400 mark it and in that marking, 830 01:11:08,400 --> 01:11:13,440 register our extraordinary ability to reflect on existence. 831 01:11:21,960 --> 01:11:25,280 It's easy to think that art is an extra, 832 01:11:25,280 --> 01:11:29,560 that it's an add-on, that it is only to be pursued 833 01:11:29,560 --> 01:11:34,000 by those with the leisure or the money and the, in a way, idleness to pursue it. 834 01:11:34,000 --> 01:11:38,880 But it's very, very clear that actually it's best to think of it 835 01:11:40,040 --> 01:11:42,320 the other way around. 836 01:11:42,320 --> 01:11:44,920 That it's the art that makes us. 837 01:11:44,920 --> 01:11:49,880 Through doing it, seeing it, participating in it in some way, 838 01:11:50,800 --> 01:11:54,480 we become fully ourselves.