Do you ever think about handprints in cave paintings and start crying

@checkervest It's a little sad, true, but it's also kind of amazing, because Neanderthal still lives on... inside us.

All of us have some Neanderthal DNA still bouncing around inside us, and it's part of what makes humans... human. And while people imagine the "savage caveman" when they think of Neanderthal and assume that any traits we inherited are savage and barbarous, we don't actually know what comes from where.

For all we know, the Neanderthal contribution to humanity is... our sense of wonder, love of art, and creative drives. We just don't know, can't know, because we've never seen or experienced a true pure Neanderthal... or, for that matter, a true pure "Homo Sapien", because none of us are 100% pure non-Neanderthal.

@thevhswizard some of the earliest records we have of art have been traced to Neanderthals! They used ochre to paint and decorate shell necklaces pierced and strung together in necklaces. They possibly buried their dead surrounded by flowers. They made flutes. I am always always team Neanderthal!

I think what makes me feel the way I feel when I see these is the moment of connection across millennia. Here is a person who saw the same thing we see in this rock, who maybe smiled and added a nose

@thevhswizard this person was a person just like we are with hopes and fears and loves and dreams and one day they picked up a rock they thought looked neat and painted it and it made them happy and almost all trace of this person has been scoured from the earth by time but we still have this rock they held and enjoyed. I can hold this rock this person held in my hand and see and feel the same thing they did, and sometimes the beauty and the immensity of that just hits me really really hard

@checkervest Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010)

@Thomas one of my all time faves, it’s so gorgeous. I would simply collapse if I saw it in person

I love the tech guy who talks about dreaming about the lions and happens to have worked in the circus in the past, Herzog pulls these incredible things out of people

@checkervest I feel like I mention it every time he comes up, but the way he makes documentaries, to paraphrase him, as "not just a fly on the wall, but as a hornet that stings" is just the way it ought to be done

@Thomas right!!! It kills me when I start a documentary and I realize it’s going to be a mealymouthed bland piece of garbage that’s afraid to take a stand on any of the things it’s talking about. Come on!! Sting!!

@checkervest I remember watching a doc about art forgery called Made You Look and the whole time I kept thinking about how it felt like it was made by a journalist reporting facts rather than a documentarian telling a story and I think that's a fundamental difference. I kept mentally comparing it to F for Fake which is also about forgery, but is a definitive example of the hornet stinging

@Thomas I watched one a while back about a scientist who falsified cloning data and he did some truly heinous stuff in the process and the movie did not interrogate it at all. The very end of the movie they asked him if he’d do it all again and he said “yeah ” and there was zero follow up, zero engagement, it went to credits leaving this feeling of “oh hey maybe it was worth it lol” in the air, I wanted to yell at my tv

One of the most relatable movie moments of all time is in Friendship when Craig is given a Neolithic tool to hold and immediately starts fountaining blood from his nose

@checkervest @thevhswizard

🥹 It makes me emotional as well. Like reaching out across the ages.

@checkervest I wasn't prepared to feel this much from this thread, Alex

@MmeLibertine if I’m having the big feelings everyone’s gonna have the big feelings lmao

@checkervest it's so good and so much!!!