Introduction
Stone Age Animation
Moving pictures were thought to have been a modern invention until recently. All that changed in 2012 when archaeologist Marc Azema revealed animals in cave paintings in France could be animated (1). By lighting different parts of paintings Azema showed animals trotting, galloping, tossing their heads or shaking their tails. This remarkable discovery is demonstrated in this short film by Azema (2), who spent 20 years researching Stone Age animation techniques.
https://www.soton.ac.uk/~cpd/pies/Azema.html
Azema identified 53 paintings in 12 French caves which superimpose two or more images to apparently represent movement. These images pre-date Walt Disney by around 30,000 years.
Azema’s researchers also found that engraved discs from the Magdalenian era may have been used as thaumatropes - an optical toy thought to have been invented in 1825 by astronomer John Hershel. Thaumatropes rely on retinal persistence, the capacity of the eye to retain an image already seen superimposed on images being seen.
Artist Florent Rivere was studying paleolithic bone discs cut from the shoulder blades of large animals when he noted that some were decorated on both sides with animals shown in different positions. Rivere and Azema hypothesised they could be strung on a cord of sinew or plant fibre and rotated as a thaumatrope.
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Illustration 1: Spinning disk animation
This picture shows a bone disc 3.1cm in diameter found in 1868 by M. Hardy in the Laugerie-Basse rockshelter in the Dordogne. It was previously thought to be a button. But it was discovered that by spinning this disc between two pieces of string, the doe-like creature repeatedly stands up.
Azema and Rivere said in their study: “Palaeolithic thaumatropes can be claimed as the earliest of the attempts to represent movement that culminated in the invention of the cinematic camera.”
But this study suggests animation may be even older than cave paintings and spinning discs.
Azema demonstrated prehistoric man had systems of breaking down movement and graphic narrative. By highlighting different lines and curves in sequence we could represent animal movement. Did we first discover this using the lines and curves of our palms?
This study shows that ancient storytellers had everything they needed to create animations in their hands.
Although every fingerprint is different, the four main lines crossing the palm are shared by all of us. Examples on this website show that palm lines and thumb creases can be positioned so that they depict a range of animals. Slight movements of the fingers and hands show these creatures swimming, flying and transforming into other animals. Human characters are also shown firing arrows and turning into creatures.
Different lines are emphasised by moving the fingers and thumb. One example shows a human figure appearing to take a step by switching the position of his front leg, the same technique that is used to move the bull’s legs in Azema’s film.
It is argued that prehistoric man worked out how to manipulate the curves and straight lines in his palm into pictures and moving pictures long before we had other means to record drawings. Although cave paintings and engraved discs date back tens of thousands of years, the lines in our palm have been with us since we first walked the earth around 200,000 to 300,000 years ago (3).
Stone Age Storytelling
But this study indicates the palm lines were not just used to represent animals in motion. They appear to offer a storyteller a format for illustrating ever-changing myths about gods, heroes and monsters.
The ease with which one character turns into another with a slight movement of a thumb or finger shows the hand is particularly well suited to illustrate stories about gods and their magical transformations into animals.
To demonstrate this, pictures and videos show palm line animations of famous transformation myths like Zeus becoming a bull and Pan turning into a Sea Goat (4). All the myths studied are linked to characters in the Graeco-Roman zodiac as these characters are still in the public mind, even if the transformation myths behind them are less well known.
These myths have been told for thousands of years and details vary in different versions. This study has focused on features most often quoted and which can be sourced to celebrated works by ancient writers.
Weapons Of The Gods
The idea of a storytelling format was supported when it was discovered during this study that the weapons of the major gods appear to match markings of the hand. In ancient palmistry, the fingers were named after the planetary gods (5). This is what first suggested a link between the palm symbols and storytelling. It was found that when the hand is held as a fist, markings at the tips of each finger appear to match the main weapon of each god. These weapons were thought to have been established by the Greek poets Homer and Hesiod around 800 BC (6). It is argued they were actually established - and recorded - by a Stone Age storyteller using just the creases of the hand.
References
1. (a) Azéma M., Rivère F., 2012 - Animation in Palaeolithic art: a pre-echo of cinéma, Antiquity , Volume 86 , Issue 332 , June 2012 , pp. 316 - 324DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003598X00062785
1 (b). Azéma M., Rivère F, 2013 “Animation in Paleolithic Art: Recent Observations”, Palethnologie [Online], 5 | 2013, Online since 30 January 2013. http://journals.openedition.org/palethnologie/2094
2. Azema M, short film https://www.soton.ac.uk/~cpd/pies/Azema.html
3. Australian Museum, Human Evolution https://australian.museum/learn/science/human-evolution/homo-sapiens-modern-humans/#:~:text=Homo%20sapiens%20age,from%20about%20160%2C000%20years%20ago
4. Mythology of the zodiac https://www.greeklegendsandmyths.com/signs-of-the-zodiac.html
5. Pack, Roger A, 1972 On the Greek Chiromantic Fragment Roger A. Pack, University of Michigan Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association Vol. 103 (1972), pp. 367-380 (14 pages) https://www.jstor.org/stable/2935981
Establishes the system of planetary names for the fingers and parts of the hand. (Page 10)
Supports ancient origins of the fragment (Page 1)
6. (a) British Museum blog https://www.britishmuseum.org/blog/who-was-homer
“(Homer’s) Iliad and Odyssey are conventionally dated to the late 8th or early 7th century BC. By this time the use of writing was becoming more widespread in Greece and it seems that the poems were also set down for the first time. But it's clear that the poems contain features preserved from the pre-writing age.”
7. (b) World History website https://www.worldhistory.org/Theogony/
The Theogony is an 8th-century BCE didactic and instructional poem, credited to the Greek poet Hesiod.