“Let’s hold our breaths, to hear the silence of the cave, and maybe we can hear our own heartbeat” - Warner Herzog

The Chauvet Cave was discovered in 1994 by Jean-Marie Chauvet, Éliette Brunel-Deschamps and Christian Hillaire in south France, inside the cave they found the most ancient evidence of Paleolithic art. In the film Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Warner Herzog shows us the analysis done to the Chauvet Cave after 26 years. The film is supported by the analysis of the best archeologists, for them it was a challenge to recreate and interpret the past with the few evidence left; but after years of investigation they did. In the cave there were only animal skulls; this fact leaded the archeologists to say humans never lived there, they just used the cave for paintings and probably for ceremonies. The paintings were made with different techniques, some were scraped first and others sanded to be smooth, some paintings were made painted with red paint and others with black paint, these proving that paintings were made at different times by different artists, a group centered around 27 000-26 000 BC and the other around 32 000-30 000 BC. Paintings have a tridimensional effect, giving the sensation that drawings had movement; the cave walls were covered with predators like panthers, bears, hyenas, but for archeologists, lions were the most amazing due to the concentrating eyes they had. According to scientists, the animal skulls and paintings refer to more than 15 species, which most of them were extinct.

In Darwin’s theory of evolution, “survival of the fittest” explains that in order for specie to survive, the biological features of a specie have to change to adapt best in its environment, otherwise they extinct. The Chauvet Caves supports this idea since the evidence of animals in the cave were similar to the animals that exist today but evolved, actual animals, compared to the painting animals were weaker.

Progress and improvement of a specie is created by the over-population and the struggle for uncommon resources, according to Malthus.

We know ancient man used different techniques, paint and themes for their paintings than we do know, ancient man needed a place for their ceremonies to worship Mother Nature or goddess, their alimentation was based in seeds, fruits and meat as we but our way of obtaining it is different; With the pas of time ideologies, alimentation, ways of living have changed and it’s because we developed technology in order to survive, but there was a point in where technology provoked humans stop adapting to the environment and adapt the environment to humans. Technology is expensive; according to Carnegie, this leads to competition and the human society loses homogeneity.

“The competition is hard for an individual, but is best for the race because it ensures the survival of the fittest in every department” – Andrew Carnegie

 I definitely agree with Carnegie, the main problem of our society is the administration, day by day rich people become richer and poor people become poorer, what amazes me is that poor people spend their money on technology with the feeling that that way they would feel accepted.

I think it’s important to know about our past in order to understand our present; and like Walter Benjamin’s ideas: we need to reflation about it to recognize errors so in the future we don’t commit them again.