Did the French Invent Everything?

Shrinks have lots of theories about how and why we create, but anthropologists now think they've dug up the roots of modern creativity. One-upping psychologists and poets, the rock hounds excavating Chauvet Cave in Southern France, have uncovered stone rooms filled with detailed paintings made more than 31,000 years ago.

Werner Herzog, one of the world's great storytellers, has made the Chauvet cave paintings the focus of his documentary, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, which was a big hit at the Toronto Film Festival. Last week in Philadelphia, I had a chance to watch the film and reflect on its message in the context of Philly's lush creative community. While the city is known for great baseball (GO PHILS!) and cheesesteaks, for me it's always been a hive of creative communities, bursting with artistic expression.

Philly is dense with gorgeous murals, hidden gardens, and every form of poetry known to man and thug. The city also has links to France -- Ben Franklin's gang loved Paris! -- that help me accept the Chauvet anthropologists' theory that their cave paintings may be the first art that used modern techniques of shading and perspective. It's okay with me if the French take credit for inventing modern art since they've done so much to refine it during the intervening centuries.

For a writer, however, the most interesting part of Herzog's story comes at the end of his film during a discussion of how aboriginal people explain the source of their creative impulse. When the Chauvet scientists talked about worldwide cave art discoveries, one man mentioned a story about an aboriginal cave artist in Australia. An ethnographer asked the aboriginal man to explain why he would go the caves to touch up ancient paintings. The aboriginal artist protested that he did not paint -- it was the Great Spirit doing the painting. For me, this explanation also describes the most profound writing experiences. It is not Ego Me that writes good stuff. It is that strange visitor who steps in from the underground cave to leave inspired work on my page.

They have yet to discover any books in Chauvet Cave. But I feel certain that one day they will stumble into the cavern library which is surely located just behind the cave's central fireplace. Unfortunately, the reading chair is made of stalagmites.