The Cellar / Oldest Movies

**Posted by Happy Monkey** 11/16/2021 10:12 am

Apparently some prehistoric folks discovered ways to make animations using flickering firelight.

By firelight, a secret of the cave painters was exposed. In the space of a few moments, I saw cuts and dissolves, change and movement. Form appeared and disappeared. Colors shifted and changed. In short, I was watching a movie.”Understood this way, the antelope with two heads, under the dance of the firelight, is an antelope going from grazing to checking for predators. And the mammoth with two or three trunks becomes a mammoth in motion, swinging his trunk.

Last edited by Happy Monkey (11/16/2021 10:13 am)

**Posted by xoxoxoBruce** 11/17/2021 12:37 pm

I figured when the hunter was telling his story while pointing to his drawings, the reason for the multi-heads would become clear without flickering. So this recent observation that the flickering flame does that leads to the assumption the cave people knew that. But whether the drawings were made with the flickering in mind we'll never know.
That said, it's a pretty cool observation considering people haven't looked at these drawings by flame light in a very long time. LEDs don't flicker much.

**Posted by Happy Monkey** 11/17/2021 12:48 pm

I think it's a pretty good assumption that the effect was intentional, if the two heads are made to be visible in different angles of light, rather than random line segments across the whole image.

They don't have actual video of the effect (probably almost impossible for an amateur to capture), just an animated description, so that may not actually be the case.

**Posted by xoxoxoBruce** 11/17/2021 2:11 pm

I wonder if they've checked this out with other caves? I guess it would work best with heavily incised images rather than just "painted".