Perhaps the price of our scientific objectivity is that it brings with it an inability to see the world as our early human ancestors did. I live surrounded by prehistoric caves filled with wall paintings and etchings, and it is very possible that these paintings were not meant to depict an animal in an environment by a human — as if all these perspectives and entities were separate for them.

It is true that early humans didn’t have our science. It is also true that they didn’t have the remoteness of these perspectives and myriad entities that are a kind of cognitive frame for us, that we cannot see beyond today, without effort.

Perhaps these paintings were an act of communion, rather than the production of a piece of art, or a manifestation of an afternoon’s boredom, or any of the other possibilities that our limited palette offers us. It’s a different way toward knowledge, this act of communion, one based in connection, unity, and shared context and respect.

You feel it when you are in these caves, especially the wild ones, rather than the tourist caves. Everyone here does. When Picasso visited the Lascaux cave in the 50’s, upon exiting the cave he declared that “we have invented nothing!” We being modern humans blinkered by our pride, blinded to the wisdom of those ancient ancestors of ours, we who try to comprehend today, as if we were aliens.