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Somewhere in the deep past, a human being looked at a blank rock and saw, in their mind, an animal that was not there. Then they made it appear. In that moment, or rather across thousands of such moments scattered through the long dawn of our species, something extraordinary happened. A creature began to do what no creature had ever done. To take an idea from inside the mind and set it down in the world. To let a mark of pigment stand for a living beast. To imagine, and then

A painting on a cave wall has survived for forty thousand years. Think of everything it has outlasted. The rise and fall of every empire. The end of the Ice Age. The invention of writing, the wheel, the city. Through all of it, the image endured on its rock, untouched, waiting. Then, in a single careless moment, a visitor reaches out and runs a hand across it. Or wets it to brighten the colours for a photograph. Or sets off a camera flash, again and again. What forty thousand

Press your palm against a cave wall where, thirty thousand years ago, someone pressed theirs. Look at the animal they painted, the symbol they carved, the handprint they left in pigment. Then ask the question that has no certain answer. Why did you do this? It is the most natural question in the world, and the hardest. We can see the art. We can date it, measure it, map it. We can stand exactly where the artist stood. The one thing we cannot do is ask them what it meant. The