Even Caveman Can Do It

There was a girl in my sixth-grade class who loved horses. A lot. And she used to draw them. A lot. Horses running. Horses sitting. Horses jumping. Horses being ridden. Horses. Horses. Horses. I really didn’t care too much about horses, but I envied her horse-drawing capabilities. Maybe I shouldn’t have.

It turns out that cavemen (or if we are being politically correct, prehistoric humans), far from being slow-witted and clumsy were actually pretty keen observers of the animal kingdom. And pretty good at creating realistic drawings to decorate the walls of their caves (or if we are being politically correct, their prehistoric galleries). According to Smithsonian, a new study found that cavemen illustrated the gait of four-legged animals with better accuracy than more modern artists. Even after the invention of photography and motion studies that showed definitively how animals moved, a large portion of the depictions of animal movement got it wrong.

Not sure if that girl from sixth grade got it right or not, but I suspect she did not. At least, that is the way I am going to remember it.