Short-fingered Artists
One of the curiosities of modern science is the discovery that testosterone, as well as making men more boisterous and aggressive, has an effect on the length of their fingers. If you compare the length of the ring finger and the index finger, you will find that in women the two fingers are almost equal in length. In men, however, the ring finger is usually longer than the index finger.
Curiously, a long ring finger and symmetrical hands are an indication of male fertility. Women, however, are more likely to be fertile if they have a long index finger! In addition, men with a short ring finger have a greater risk of suffering a heart attack in early adulthood and may be more prone to depression.
It all comes down to the amount of testosterone you received in the womb and it doesn't just affect your fingers. The ratio of arm-length to torso-length also depends on pre-natal exposure to testosterone as well as a whole raft of other features: spem counts, obesity, autism, spatial ability, assertiveness in women, even musical ability.
A recent study by Pennsylvania State University archaeologist Dean Snow used this peculiarity of human hands to revolutionise our understanding of cave art.
According to the account you will find in most histories, hunters and shamans - all male - retreated underground and drew dashing pictures of wild animals and hunting scenes as a form of sympathetic magic. When the male bonding ritual was complete those present left hand prints behind, no doubt for "ritual reasons". Meanwhile the women huddled above ground, looking after the children, cooking the food and fending off the attentions of sabre-toothed tigers and men from other tribes.
Snow, however, has analysed the finger lengths of the hand prints at the Pech Merle in France and also at the El Castillo cave in Spain. To his surprise there as clear evidence that many of the hand prints had index fingers as long as the ring finger, proof that whether or not women were the artists, they were at least present when the hand-printing was being done.
In a laudable attempt to be absolutely accurate, Snow considered the possibility that European hands might be different from American hands. He therefore undertook a study of modern European hands, persuading many Europeans to give him their hand prints. The result merely confirmed what he already knew: although hand proportions do vary across populations, the general rule holds true and he is safe in stating that women were involved in cave art.
"We don't know what the roles of artists were in Upper Paleolithic society general, but it's a step forward to be able to say that a strong majority of them were women," he says.
Instead of dark and mysterious rituals with the sombre purpose of ensuring the success of the hunt, cave art now appears to be a communal effort with men and women frolicking underground and taking it in turns to add a cow here, an oryx there, and a boyfriend with an extra large spear over "there". For all we know, the actual drawing may have been done by some visiting specialist, hired by the tribe to produce a bit of community art which they then all "owned" by adding their hand prints, just as a primary school might hire a visiting artist to produce a mural to which the children all add their signatures.
In short, Dean Snow's discovery may simply prove that people back in the Upper Paleolithic were just as human as people in the Early Twenty-first - and just as gullible to arty talk from self-aggrandising artists as we are today.
© Kendall K. Down 2009
