weren't they just like us,,,

The Man and I went to an exhibition at The British Museum. Ice Age Art.
Made up of artifacts made between 13,000 and 42,000 years ago, which were borrowed from museums across Europ.
It was amazing to look at these carvings that were made by Ice Age folks that were very much the same as us. They demonstrate that way back then folks had a form of religion, and that the original makers of these works were not ignorant chisellers While some were clearly more talented than others, the better pieces were patently produced by true artists, as we understand that term. These highly skilled workers had learned how to master line, form, pattern, perspective and contrast. They could carve or paint in naturalistic or abstract styles, and they experimented with light, scale, volume and movement. The only "primitive" things about this show are the visitors who use such words about it.
These objects were not quickly turned out, either. It is estimated that many of the pieces took hundreds of hours to manufacture. Since these people survived on near-constant hunting and foraging, the extended work involved in making, say, a simple cylindrical bead attests to the great value they granted these products of their labour.

 The tiny human faces featured in this show include the “Oldest portrait of a woman”,  as the gallery titles one little masterpiece made in the Czech republic 26,000 years ago.

 The woman's disfigured eye suggests this is an individual portrait, drawn from life. But such verisimilitude appears to have been an exception: human bodies in this show are overwhelmingly abstract, while animals are portrayed with gobsmacking accuracy – from line drawings of reindeer to lions carved on ivory. While humans have been done better, no one – not even Leonado– has ever surpassed these ice-age animal portraits. The first cave paintings, discovered in the late 19th century, were dismissed as forgeries: they seemed too good to be the work of "savages". Nowadays, dating techniques have silenced such doubts.

So what are we to make of the works that fuse animals and humans?

The oldest object here is the Lion Man carving pieced together from fragments found in Stadel Cave in the German Alps. About 40,000 years old, this human figure with a lion's head stands tall, reeking of dreams, terror, magical rites and myths.It makes me think of those animal-headed Egyptian gods, with their air of the supernatural. Meanwhile, a clever video installation delves deep into the world of the Lion Man. In a darkened room, images from caves at Chauvet and Pech Merle flash across rock-like surfaces, flickering as if in the firelight by which these paintings were first seen. The effect is thrilling, a great improvement on photographs: we see herds of horses, portraits of lions, as if we were in the caves themselves.