Brand
Bible
I wrote “Meaningful Markings”, the first chapter of the book, “Brand Bible, The Complete Guide to Building, Designing, and Sustaining Brands”. Additionally, I helped write and edit other chapters of the book on the history of branded consumer goods, and interviewed Rob Giampietro on cultural and institutional branding.
Meaningful Markings explores the emergence of
abstract thinking in paleolithic man and how this new ability manifested itself in the creation of objects with symbolic and personal meaning. It can be read in its entirety below.
Click here to view the book on Amazon.com.
Meaningful Markings
& the great leap forward
Perched high on the tallest hilltop overlooking a vast plain surrounding the modern-day Vezere River, the entrance to the Lascaux Cave would have had the same visual prominence to the local inhabitants as the cathedrals that would later come to dominate this landscape many thousands of years later. The cave itself was practically tailor-made for the purposes to which our ancestors used it. Its entrance was high on a hill facing the northwest, and the opening passage led down a long, slow slope into the main chamber, such that, at most times of the year, the setting sun would have shone down gloriously into the cave. Within these chambers some 18,000 years ago, Upper Paleolithic man created a stunning collection of images that captured their symbolic and mundane world—one of the few remaining artifacts of our ancient ancestors.
It is through the creation and decoration of Paleolithic tools that we can trace our intellectual development, and with it, our propensity for imbuing objects with meaning.
The main chamber of the cave, the Hall of the Bulls, is massive; it measures 62 feet long by 22 feet wide (19 x 7 m), with gently sloping walls that arch upward into a domed ceiling some 22 feet (7 m) from the floor. The ceiling is not only stalactite free, but is coated in a thick layer of calcite, which gave it a smooth, translucent white surface upon which to paint.
Although this first chamber contains more than thirty-four paintings, it is four massive bulls that dominate, the largest measuring 17 feet (5 m) across. Not only are the bulls exquisitely rendered, but they are drawn so that their proportions are correct only when viewed from the center of the space. The entire ceiling is a masterful composition that appears to have been planned out before its creation. These are not the paintings of individual shamans but are instead the result of a concerted tribal project, a stunning example of Upper Paleolithic technology and collaboration.
A community that poured so many resources into such a creation would clearly have valued it as a centerpiece of tribal life. The size of the hall and the compositional planning of its walls and ceiling suggest that it was used for large gatherings, a place where significant numbers of people gathered for social ritual. Although it’s impossible to say whether or not these paintings had a religious purpose—especially in our modern sense of what that entails—Lascaux, with its geographic prominence and the incredible art which it contained, would have occupied a significant place in the imaginations of the regional population at the time. While not the oldest, or the largest site of its kind—the cave at Chauvet, also in France, dates to 32,000 years ago—it is certainly the most famous, impressing modern viewers as much for its technical as well as artistic achievements.
Unlike the adroitly composed Hall of the Bulls, a further, interior chamber called “the Apse” was covered with thousands of engravings, rendered one atop another with complete disregard for composition or narrative. The chamber has been called one of the most vital areas of the cave, an exquisite palimpsest of personal psychic expression. Experienced through the flicker of dim candle light, the space, curving gently from floor to ceiling, would have enveloped the artisans’ entire visual field in an immersive aesthetic experience. Awash in the cacophony of shared tribal history, the ancient artists’ present moment would have been intimately connected to the tribe’s past through the shared act of creation—giving participants an unbroken link from past to future, a moment free from the constraints of time and space.
The caves are just as alive for us today as they were for our ancestors thousands of years ago.
The exact meanings of the engravings may be lost—debate still rages about them—but the process of the paintings’ creation conveys something of great importance: Recent discoveries seem to indicate that humans used these caves for thousands of years, continuously adding new imagery as well as repainting the existing drawings. This act of creation, of communicating through drawn representations, clearly played a fundamental and long-lasting role in the evolution and identity of this ancient society. Even if we can’t decipher the intended content of the message contained in these images, it seems clear that the caves at Lascaux and Chauvet served as an important locus for the society; they enabled a process of discovery and at the same time, an expression of social mores through ritual.
A similar act of expression and human evolution was evident in the tools made by our forebears. Initially, some 2.5 million years ago, our Homo habilis ancestors made simple stone tools such as a “chopper,” a handheld tool made from flint, presumably used for activities like chopping wood and butchering animals. As our ancestors evolved, they began to improve their tools to the much more refined and varied forms that began appearing about 150,000 years ago, coinciding with the arrival of Homo sapiens—the modern human.
Over this span of evolution, the tools began to take on a meaning relating to social status and its owners function in society. The tools that individuals carried would reflect the role they had during the hunt or taming of the local environment. And this burgeoning communication of social stature began to take expression in ever more varied forms. As early as 100,000 years ago, humans began fashioning necklaces and other adornments from petrified shells and the teeth of slain predators such as wolves and cave bears. These items were highly prized and were traded from tribe to tribe across ancient Europe. Elaborate burial rituals would sometimes involve hundreds of decorative pieces, far more than a single person could make—hinting that a communal system of creation had emerged at this time.
The most significant bellwether of change emerges about 45,000 years ago, conveying an important transformation of our interior life: Humans began creating objects that had no function other than to communicate ideas through designs, symbols, and archetypes. They carved small horse figurines and other decorative items from mammoth bone; they made the so-called Venus figurines, the carvings of women that had pronounced sexual features. At the same time that they were starting to create these objects, humans began to make aesthetic modifications to their tools as well. They crafted spear throwers, used to extend the hunter’s reach and leverage, in the shape of reindeer and other animals, an alteration that serves no “useful” function other than communicating an abstract idea.
The meaning of these designs is still debated: They may have communicated social status, imbued the object with symbolic power, or been of purely aesthetic motivation. To modern eyes, the Venus figurines might seem to represent the archetype of fertility, but the exact significance is lost to time.
What cannot be disputed is that these objects mean something; they tell stories and communicate ideas far beyond their practical functions. If cave paintings could be said to speak on behalf of the tribe to the individual, then tools and adornments spoke to the tribe on behalf of the individual, conveying personal meaning in an outwardly directed communication.
The evolution of our tools reflects the evolution of our selves.
Through these tools, objects, and adornments, ancient humans spoke to each other—and they are also speaking to us. These paintings, decorations, and other creations mark the beginning of our stories, our myths, and our ways of understanding the world. The caves are just as alive for us today with symbolic import and possibility as they were for humans thousands of years ago. We may not know the original intention of the creators, but the art speaks, has meaning, and communicates something, however ineffable, between two people across the gulf of time. When Pablo Picasso emerged from his visit to the Lascaux Cave, he is reported to have pronounced, “We have invented nothing.” Picasso’s pronouncement could easily mean that the subtle refinement of form and artistic mastery on display at Lascaux is equal to any contemporary art. However, one can also say that the will to communicate through artistic expression has been with us since the dawn of time—and perhaps it is not we who invented art, but art that invented us.
