Underground, you can feel the weight of the cliff face overhead. There is a solemn quiet in the tribe, even the bundled infants keep respectful silence. All would be dark, but you have brought fire with you, bundles of rivergrass twisted together burning brightly. White Streak pours water on a pile of powders, dips his hand into the mud and strokes the wall, leaving a swatch of color. He scratches with a burned stick, here and here. Behold: an animal, then a herd, running, powerful. Here a hunter carries a spear, here a spear has pierced the skin of a great longhorned bison that staggers and soon will die to feed the tribe.
Stories told in pictures have been with us for as long as we have recorded story in any durable form. We are hardwired to understand images, and make stories in our heads to make sense of these images. It is an important part of our mental heritage, and in fact one of the building blocks of ‘culture’ itself: the ability to pass on information via visual representations.
