A MAN IS A DIFFICULT BEAST TO DRAW: THE NEGLECTED DETERMINANT IN ROCK ART

This paper offers a perceptual! psychologist’s explanation of the predominance of portrayals of certain views of animals in rock art and of special problems associated with depiction of human figures and, as a consequence, of the special place these figures occupy in iconographic development. The argument is a refinement of the arguments presented by the author in his earlier paper (Rock Art Research, 1995), and rests upon the notion of the ‘typical contour’, a perceptual feature of most objects, used by artists in a variety of cultures, sometimes with rather surprising results. it is argued that human beings are inherently more difficult to portray than bovines, equines and similar animals, and that this explains the rather late appearance of depictions of human figures. There is a readily noticeable and well known difference between the manner of portrayal of animals and that of men in Palaeolithic art; animals are generally portrayed naturalistically whilst men are only sketchily represented. There is much speculation as to the origin of this difference, the explanation of which, according to Kloosterboer (1994), is the touchstone of any theory of Palaeolithic art. Proffered explanations share the view that the difference reflects the tact that animals were of particular importance to Palaeolithic man although they differ as to the nature o