Maybe prehistoric cave paintings were actually the worst paintings of their time, because bad artists were forced to practice in caves where no one could see them.
It's a pretty funny picture, but why would the bad folk get to go in the cave? It feels to me that most caves would have been highly desirable locations back then.
Prehistoric people leaving things in caves is practically the only way we still know about them, but that doesn’t mean humans normally hung out in caves as a permanent lifestyle. We have evidence of people making wooden structures in Africa long before the first cave paintings—and compared to structures, caves would have been cold and dark, unlikely to be conveniently located, and contested for by cave-adapted animals.
It’s because the caves were so shitty that subsequent people left them untouched for tens of thousands of years.
There was a last major migration out of Africa starting around 70–50,000 years ago that coincides with both the disappearance of Neanderthals and Denisovans, and with the appearance of representational art. Earlier Neanderthals made artistic crafts like shell jewelry, but it wasn’t representational.
Back in caveman times, no-one had a smartphone with a torch on it to help see the caves. It was all done using flip-phones with just the screen lit up. Those poor artists :(
Genuinely cool shower thought though, I wonder if it's true