Hymnes à la Vie dans l’art pariétal du Paléolithique supérieur en Europe occidentale

Abstract

After having briefly revisited the path of the human thoughts initially conceptual then sequentially abstract, artistic, social, symbolic, spiritual and finally mythical, our work is focusing on three majors cave paintings discovered in France, namely the Chauvet, Combarelles and Lascaux caves. A specific tool used in this study is the relationship between personal and collective consciousness-unconsciousness revealed by Carl-Gustav JUNG. Located in deep in the human collective unconsciousness, the archetypes are generating various but specific human behaviours and particularly the archetype “Anima” physiologically in charge of both the basic impulse of life and the related myths painted on the cave walls. Numerous symbols are analysed such as the Divine embodied by the hierophany of the mammoth. Two epiphanies are also highlighted: the cervid for immortality (deer antlers growing back every year) and the ibex, incarnation of the rainbow, link between the High (the sky) and the Low (the earth). The use of the “image-number”, a new concept implemented in the analysis of the “Salle des taureaux” (Hall of the bulls) in the Lascaux cave, is revealing both the reproduction and the perpetuation of the life. In the Magdalenian Combarelles Cave, a trilogy of the Divine is disclosed along with several representations of the human being. Finally, a table recapitulating the various upper paleolithic epiphanies reviewed in this study is displayed, enlightening that life is sacred.