The Paleolithic hunters who painted the unsurpassed animal murals on the ceiling of the cave at Altamira had only rudimentary tools. Art is older than production for use, and play older than work. Man was shaped less by what he had to do than by what he did in playful moments. It is the child in man that is the source of his uniqueness and creativeness, and the playground is the optimal milieu for the unfolding of his capacities. Eric Hoffer
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Somethings never change, we still look for roomy abodes, running water, views, morning sun, patios, hmmmmm wonder how much input the Cavewoman was given? Most realtors I know says it is the woman who really makes the decision even if she LETS the husband think it was his!
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Cavemen Chose Caves on Five Criteria
The recently released three-year-long survey of approximately 230 caves in the Yorkshire Dales and 190 caves in the northern England Peak District determined that people there from 4,000 to 2,000 B.C. selected caves based on at least five criteria.
Location, Location, Location
The Sevenways Cave is shown, located in the Peak District National Park. A new survey of British caves concluded that prehistoric dwellers preferred caves with larger entrances, deep passages, ones perched higher up, facing east or west and with flat areas out front.
He added that most of the caves linked to human activities tended to have level areas outside of the entrances.
Funded by the English Heritage’s Historic Environment Enabling Program, Chamberlain and his colleagues focused on caves in the two chosen English districts because recreational spelunkers often visit these areas and concern about cave conservation there is high. They excluded artificial caves, mines, tunnels, grottoes and passages revealed by mining, quarrying or hydrologically, as for sink holes.
The archaeologists discovered that the Peak District attracted more prehistoric cave users than the Yorkshire Dales, suggesting that today’s "location, location, location" real estate mantra might have also been true 6,000 years ago.
"The (Peak District) region is a more productive area for agriculture today," said Chamberlain, "and the same may have been true in prehistoric times and thus there may have been more people in the Peak District."
He said it is also a possibility people there simply utilized caves more. Chamberlain explained that caves served a multitude of purposes aside from housing the ancients. Early people also conducted ritual activities and performed burials in them.
Thor's Cave is shown, located in the Peak District National Park. The cave was one among approximately 230 caves in the Yorkshire Dales and 190 caves in the northern England Peak District surveyed for a new study that analyzed what kinds of caves drew the most prehistoric traffic.
Sometimes caves were even like roadside motels, where both human and animal travelers would stop in for a night or two of rest before hitting the road again.
The team believes their compiled data can help other researchers in the future to predict what sorts of caves might contain archaelogical artifacts.
Carol Ramsey is a noted anthropologist and cave scientist based in British Columbia, Canada. She described the new cave survey as "an absolutely wonderful project — a great multi-faceted approach and a very useful exercise in terms of managing and conserving an important finite resource."
To Ramsey's knowledge, no comparable survey of caves, especially one directed towards caves with archaeological potential, has ever taken place in British Columbia.
"I’d dearly love to see aspects of it adapted for use in B.C. — especially the landscape archaeology/predictive modeling," she said.
As for Chamberlain and his team, they identified many unexplored caves throughout Britain, particularly in the Yorkshire Dales, during their research. They hope to investigate these caves soon.
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