Speculations about the meaning and purpose of prehistoric
art ① rely heavily on analogies drawn with modern-day
hunter-gatherer societies. Such primitive societies, ② as
Steven Mithen emphasizes in The Prehistory of the Modern
Mind, tend to view man and beast, animal and plant, organic
and inorganic spheres, as participants in an integrated,
animated totality. The dual expressions of this tendency are
anthropomorphism (the practice of regarding animals as
humans) and totemism (the practice of regarding humans as
animals), both of ③ which spread through the visual art and
the mythology of primitive cultures. Thus the natural world is
conceptualized in terms of human social relations. When
considered in this light, the visual preoccupation of early
humans with the nonhuman creatures ④ inhabited their world
becomes profoundly meaningful. Among hunter-gatherers,
animals are not only good to eat, they are also good to think
about, as Claude Lévi-Strauss has observed. In the practice of
totemism, he has suggested, an unlettered humanity “broods
upon ⑤ itself and its place in nature.”
* speculation: 고찰 ** analogy: 유사점
*** brood: 곰곰이 생각하다
