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2024年4月16日发(作者：dakks认证)
新托福TPO4阅读原文(二):Cave Art in Europe
TPO-4-2：Cave Art in Europe
The earliest discovered traces of art are beads and carvings, and then
paintings, from sites dating back to the Upper Paleolithic period. We might expect
that early artistic efforts would be crude, but the cave paintings of Spain and
southern France show a marked degree of skill. So do the naturalistic paintings
on slabs of stone excavated in southern Africa. Some of those slabs appear to
have been painted as much as 28,000 years ago, which suggests that painting in
Africa is as old as painting in Europe. But painting may be even older than that.
The early Australians may have painted on the walls of rock shelters and cliff
faces at least 30,000 years ago, and maybe as much as 60,000 years ago.
The researchers Peter Ucko and Andree Rosenfeld identified three principal
locations of paintings in the caves of western Europe: (1) in obviously inhabited
rock shelters and cave entrances; (2) in galleries immediately off the inhabited
areas of caves; and (3) in the inner reaches of caves, whose difficulty of access
has been interpreted by some as a sign that magical-religious activities were
performed there.
The subjects of the paintings are mostly animals. The paintings rest on bare
walls, with no backdrops or environmental trappings. Perhaps, like many
contemporary peoples, Upper Paleolithic men and women believed that the
drawing of a human image could cause death or injury, and if that were indeed
their belief, it might explain why human figures are rarely depicted in cave art.
Another explanation for the focus on animals might be that these people sought
to improve their luck at hunting. This theory is suggested by evidence of chips in
the painted figures, perhaps made by spears thrown at the drawings. But if
improving their hunting luck was the chief motivation for the paintings, it is
difficult to explain why only a few show signs of having been speared. Perhaps the
paintings were inspired by the need to increase the supply of animals. Cave art
seems to have reached a peak toward the end of the Upper Paleolithic period,
when the herds of game were decreasing.
The particular symbolic significance of the cave paintings in southwestern
France is more explicitly revealed, perhaps, by the results of a study conducted by
researchers Patricia Rice and Ann Paterson. The data they present suggest that
the animals portrayed in the cave paintings were mostly the ones that the
painters preferred for meat and for materials such as hides. For example, wild
cattle (bovines) and horses are portrayed more often than we would expect by
chance, probably because they were larger and heavier (meatier) than other
animals in the environment. In addition, the paintings mostly portray animals that
the painters may have feared the most because of their size, speed, natural
weapons such as tusks and horns, and the unpredictability of their behavior. That
is, mammoths, bovines, and horses are portrayed more often than deer and
reindeer. Thus, the paintings are consistent with the idea that the art is related to
the importance of hunting in the economy of Upper Paleolithic people. Consistent
with this idea, according to the investigators, is the fact that the art of the cultural
period that followed the Upper Paleolithic also seems to reflect how people got
their food. But in that period, when getting food no longer depended on hunting
large game animals (because they were becoming extinct), the art ceased to
focus on portrayals of animals.
Upper Paleolithic art was not confined to cave paintings. Many shafts of
spears and similar objects were decorated with figures of animals. The
anthropologist Alexander Marshack has an interesting interpretation of some of
the engravings made during the Upper Paleolithic. He believes that as far back as
30,000 B.C., hunters may have used a system of notation, engraved on bone and
stone, to mark phases of the Moon. If this is true, it would mean that Upper
Paleolithic people were capable of complex thought and were consciously aware
of their environment. In addition to other artworks, figurines representing the
human female in exaggerated form have also been found at Upper Paleolithic
sites. It has been suggested that these figurines were an ideal type or an
expression of a desire for fertility.
译文：TPO-4-2 欧洲的岩洞艺术
迄今为止，发现的最早的并且有迹可寻的工艺品是珠链和雕刻，然后还有绘
画，人类在旧石器时代晚期的遗址上发现了它们。虽然我们可能会认为早期的艺
术成就都是不成熟的，但西班牙与法国南部的岩洞画显示出了高超的技艺，在非
洲南部发掘出的自然石板画也是如此。其中的一些石板画看上去像是在28 000
年前画出的，这表明非洲绘画与欧洲绘画一样时间久远，但可能更早些。至少
30 000年前，也可能追溯至60 000年前，早期澳大利亚人就已经在岩石遮蔽
的墙上和悬崖断面上作画了。
研究人员彼特•阿寇和安德烈•罗森菲尔德指出西欧洞画的三个主要地点：
(1)在明显有遮蔽可供人类居住的岩石和洞穴入口处，(2)在居住的洞穴一出门的
走廊上，(3)在洞穴所能及的最深处，有人认为之所以在最深处作画是因为当时
的人们曾在这里进行神秘的宗教活动。
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