Cave drawings

After viewing the cave drawings online and remembering our discussion in class, I have come to the conclusion that these cave drawings do not constitute proof of an ancient religion. In class we discussed the qualities of a religion, such as worship, tradition, and stories. Even though some of these criteria are met by the cave drawings, I still don't believe that these drawings constitute a religion. These cave drawings imply stories, a group setting, and possibly worship if they thought these animals were sacred. On the other hand, these drawings do not suggest some sort of shared belief, meaning, or explanation of existence or afterlife.

Even though it is possible that these people worshiped these animals, it is a farfetched idea. I think the most probable explanation for these drawings is that these people were interested in animals. These people relied on nature for their food and way of life so they naturally expressed interest in the things that thet shared the land with. These people also followed the animals in nomadic ways because they needed the meat for sustanence.

In the documentary we viewed in class today, The Grizzly Man was very interesting.  He really wanted to be an animal.  In some ways maybe he thought he was an animal.  Either way, I don't believe that he did the bears any good by living with him.  His explorations seemed selfish; if he wanted the best for the bears, he would study them but not disrupt their lives by living with them.  The Grizzly Man was somewhat similar to the cave paintings by he was interested in the animals in nature but also drastically different because the cave drawings were of mostly humans hunting animals, not humans and animals living in harmony.  It is very arguable that the Grizzly Man was not mentally sound due solely to the fact that he lived with bears thinking that he was supposed to be in the wild.