Editorial April 13, 1987 Issue

The brightest of all visions

William E. Moody

In the museum case lay a fragile flute expertly made, the haunting melodies from a replica playing in the background. There was also the most graceful horse, carved from an antler. There were vibrant wall paintings of caribou in flight. There were bison sculpted in stone, and delicate beads carefully worked for an elaborate necklace. And there were ordinary tools made extraordinary through the artistic touch of a skilled craftsman.

Many of these treasures would certainly be considered priceless works of art. Some had never been publicly exhibited before. Yet the remarkable artists were all unknown. Their names had long since passed into prehistory. Such records just don't exist from thirty thousand years ago.

Everything I was looking at had come from the rock shelters, caves, and other archaeological sites of Europe. The exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History in New York was aptly called "Dark Caves, Bright Visions." Each of the works had been produced during the closing years of the last Ice Age. For millennia, people had made only simple utilitarian tools. But suddenly, almost miraculously, in that harsh era there was an explosion of culture—music, painting, sculpture, architecture. The thirty-two-thousand-year-old flute, for example, is the earliest-known musical instrument.

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