My two yr old is looking through a book about prehistoric art and she saw a picture of those cave painting of hands and she held up her own and said "hand!" And I gotta be honest. That hit
Oh my god, this reminds me of the childrens garden of our local botanical garden. There’s one section that’s called the prehistoric lives garden or smth, and it’s full of native plants that indigenous people 2000 years ago would have eaten and used as medicine, etc. And within this little garden, there’s an adobe style playhouse, which for some reason (probably lighting reasons) has no roof, which means the rusty red dirt floor is often quite muddy.
And this series of events has led to my favorite interactive art piece ever.
Handprints.
Little tiny handprints at the bottom. Big teenager and adult sized handprints at the top. Handprints upon handprints upon handprints, a modern day continuation of an ancient tradition.
Most of the people who contributed were probably doing so because they thought it would be fun, not for any deep philosophical reason. Heck, you can tell based on the height of the larger handprints that their owners were having a jumping competition. They didn’t think about the fact that they were creating art in the exact same way the earliest humans created art. They didn’t think about the fact that humans have always been and will always be humans, and the ways we interact with each other and the world have always stayed the same in the most important ways.
But I did. I thought about it. And I am in love with humanity all over again.
