Al cuore del fantastico. Ibridi da pensare nel Paleolitico

Our narrative abilities go back before Chauvet. Already the ivory figure of the so-called Hohlenstein-Stadel Lion-Man, dated to about 40,000 years ago, must be regarded as the most advanced product of a hundred if not a thousand years of figurative and narrative experimentation. In order to create this hybrid figure, as well the more or less theriomorphic figures which populate caves all over the world, the human mind must have possessed developed narrative skills. All the imaginary animals found in prehistoric art and all the teratologies found in caves, presuppose a narrative, more precisely the story of a metamorphosis. In this contribution I propose an interpretation that investigates the cognitive capacities of humans engaged in these figurations and the embodied processes which drive their production, distribution, and dismissal.