Durham University archaeologist Izzy Wisher and colleagues investigated whether pareidolia — a psychological phenomenon where people see meaningful forms in random patterns, such as seeing faces in clouds — may have influenced the artists who painted depictions of animals in the Las Monedas and La Pasiega caves, in Northern Spain. If so, then the majority of drawings would be expected to be depictions of animals that included features of the cave walls within them and take relatively simple forms. The authors found that pareidolia could be responsible for the production of some cave images, suggesting that the cave artists were experiencing the same psychological influences on perception when viewing the natural features of cave walls that humans still experience today.
Upper Paleolithic drawing of the partial outline of a horse that uses the natural edge of the wall of La Pasiega Cave to represent the back and head of the horse. Image credit: Izzy Wisher / Gobierno de Cantabria.
Pareidolia — the psychological phenomenon of seeing meaningful forms in random patterns, such as perceiving faces in clouds — is a universal feature of our visual system.
It is likely a consequence of the evolution of our visual system adapting to allow partial or obscured profiles of potential predators to be rapidly identified through the conferral of meaning, and hence to minimize risk.
To achieve this, our visual system constructs a complete picture despite missing visual information, thus often causing us to ‘see’ things that are not there as it attempts to resolve ambiguous visual cues.
This process has been the subject of extensive psychological study, with existing debates regarding the particular cultural mechanisms that may cause pareidolia, e.g. do modern Western people see faces relatively frequently because our visual system has evolved to treat the visual stimuli of faces as ‘special’ or merely because we have visual expertise in face perception?
It certainly seems that pareidolia is informed by cultural experience, through the frequent perception of everyday objects or animals.
Thus, one’s visual familiarity with certain stimuli (particular animals, faces, or objects) may shape the visual system to perceive ambiguous or fragmented stimuli as being evocative of familiar forms.
In modern Western societies, pareidolia frequently manifests as a propensity for perceiving faces or anthropomorphic features in objects and this ability emerges early in human development, perhaps even prenatally.
This may be a consequence of — but certainly triggers — our empathetic response to visual stimuli.
These psychological responses to pareidolic imagery are not limited to faces; animal-like pareidolia also elicits a response as if the person is viewing an animal in reality.
Thus, pareidolia is not merely a visual phenomenon, but can elicit visceral emotional responses too.
“It is exciting to see that cave artists in the Upper Paleolithic era were also experiencing pareidolia, just like many of us do today, and that this influenced their art,” Dr. Wisher said.
“Much like a modern artist might take inspiration from a basic form or shape, like a crack in a material or a smudge of paint on a canvas, and build their art around this, we can see that cave artists worked in similar ways.”
“However, whilst our study showed that pareidolia did have some influence on the cave artists, this was not always the case, giving us fascinating insight into the work of these early painters.”
“It seems to us that their art may have been part of a ‘creative conversation’ with the cave walls, where they both took inspiration from what they saw in the cracks and shapes of the cave wall, but also used their own creativity.”
Dr. Wisher and colleagues found that as many as 71% of images studied in the Las Monedas caves, and 55% in the La Pasiega caves, showed a strong relationship to the natural features of the cave wall, suggesting pareidolia may have been a partial influence on the artists.
Examples included where the curved edges of the cave wall were used to represent the backs of animals such as wild horses, or where natural cracks were used as bison’s horns.
The archaeologists found that of those drawings with a strong relationship to natural features on the cave wall, the majority (80% in Las Monedas and 83% in La Pasiega) lacked additional details such as eyes or hair, which correlates with the simplistic nature of imagery influenced by pareidolia.
They also investigated whether lighting conditions in the caves at the time the artwork was created might have contributed to the potential influence of pareidolia.
To do this, they used a virtual reality gaming software called Unity to model the cave walls and replicate the light sources used by the cave artists, which would have consisted of flickering firelight produced by small torches or lamps, to understand the visual effects across the cave wall.
The results showed that low and unstable lighting conditions did not have a strong correlation to cave art that uses natural features.
“Coupled with the conclusion that the influence of pareidolia was evident in some, but not all, of the artwork, this suggests that cave artists may also have been actively looking for shapes that reminded them of animals within the caves to incorporate into their drawings, as part of a nuanced dialogue between the artist’s personal creativity and the forms seen in the cave walls,” Dr. Wisher said.
Whilst the theory that pareidolia may have influenced cave artists has long been discussed, the authors believe their study offers the first systematic testing of this theory, and is the first to utilize simulated lighting conditions in virtual reality to achieve this.
It provides further detail in the understanding of the experiences, desires, imagination and influences of Upper Paleolithic cave artists and how cave art may have been made.
“Pareidolia may have first evolved to help humans evade predators by providing a heightened sense of visual interpretation for potential risks, such as helping humans see predators hiding behind bushes,” the researchers said.
“It is a fundamental part of the human visual system, and was probably triggered within dark cave environments.”
The study was published in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal.
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Izzy Wisher et al. Conversations with Caves: The Role of Pareidolia in the Upper Palaeolithic Figurative Art of Las Monedas and La Pasiega (Cantabria, Spain). Cambridge Archaeological Journal, published online September 21, 2023; doi: 10.1017/S0959774323000288
