John
fedro wrote in message ...
This has always seemed to me one of the most accessible of the Dan's
songs. I think it should be taken pretty much literally.
The caves in Altamira, Spain, are the site of some of the first (or
the first) cave paintings ever discovered. (They were discovered in
1868.) On the walls are images of roughly drawn men hunting
beautifully rendered animals. The paintings date back more than ten
thousand years.
The song is about a boy who stumbles into the cave and sees the
paintings. He realizes that the human impulse toward art predates
Hollywood (and probably a lot else). The song does a terrific job of
describing the awe that pretty much any modern person must feel when
seeing these paintings (or a good reproduction) for the first time.
For more info, look up "altamira caves" on Google. For tickets to the
actual caves, go to www.cuevasaltamira.com. I'm not kidding!