We argue that hand marks initially supplied the idea to archaic humans that a graphic mark could act as a representation, however basic it was. This was a beginning of sorts, but how could hand marks give rise to the more complex animal depictions? Hunters entering the caves with an overactive visual system will have regularly “mistaken” the natural cave features for animals. The cave walls also simulated the outdoor environment, where hunters regularly had to be able to spot their prey in camouflage. All the hunters needed to do to “complete” a depiction was to add 1 or 2 graphic marks to the suggestive natural features based on the visual imagery in their “mind’s eye.” When later humans entered the same caves and saw these, the Neanderthals may literally have “handed on” to our own species the notion that a graphic mark could act as a figurative representation. Thanks to the primed visual system of the later hunter-gatherers—and the suggestive environment of the caves—it was Homo sapiens who took the final step creating the first complex figurative representations, with all the ramifications that followed for art and culture.

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