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#5889
Kaitlyn
Participant

Since we know that the purpose of these pictures and figures was not to be seen as artwork that slightly narrows down their function. To me a few functions stood out more than others, as mentioned, they could serve as teaching tools, there was no common written language at the the time so the figures and pictures could have been used to teach, or tell stories, especially to pass down over the generations. Their function also could have been seen as a way to communicate, notably with themselves, but perhaps with other people passing through the area, after all their was no guarantee of a common language, so figures or pictures would be a good way to communicate. Perhaps the paintings in particular were also used as landmarks, to serve as a map in some ways. There is also the spiritual function, the imagery could have been used in rituals or for worship. So there are many possible functions. I think these images and figures must have played a very important role in prehistoric people’s lives because they clearly spent a lot of time creating these works of art, it would not have been an easy task to create figures and paintings, especially with such attention to detail. Given the amount of time that must have went into planning these creations and in some cases passing down the task over decades, these pieces were obviously very significant to the prehistoric people.