Special exhibition at the Museum of Prehistory and Ice Age Art Blaubeuren - Germany

We go our own way, step by step. Yet when we pause and look back, something astonishing is revealed: footprints that have endured for millions of years, handprints on cave walls whose red colour has glowed for thousands of years. What seems self-evident today is the result of a long evolutionary history – and at the same time a testament to a deeply human need to leave traces behind.

The exhibition “Abgedruckt” invites visitors on a search for traces through space and time. It leads from the approximately 3.6-million-year-old footprints in Laetoli, Tanzania, which tell of the upright gait of early pre-humans, to the mysterious handprints in caves across Europe, Asia and the America. In doing so, it brings together two motifs that witness the same thing: humans were here. The footprints in the volcanic dust document movement, perhaps flight, of a small family. The handprints on rock faces, on the other hand – rarely positive, very often negative, individually or in dense clusters – seem deliberately placed: as a gesture, as a sign, as a connection to the place.

How do the sciences approach this? Scientific methods are employed to determine the age and composition of the paintings. The shapes of the hands themselves are also examined to gain insights into age, gender or specific individuals. Furthermore, attention is focused on the paths people took within the caves in order to draw conclusions about their activities and the possible significance of these sites. Increasingly, forensic techniques originally developed for criminal investigation are also being used to determine who left these traces.

The exhibition explores various research approaches: from forensic analysis of papillary ridges, through the study of painting techniques and pigment compositions, to collaboration between archaeology and indigenous knowledge, as in the ‘Tracking in Caves’ project. Here, scientists worked alongside Namibian trackers to interpret 17,000-year-old traces in French caves. Such interdisciplinary perspectives open up new ways of understanding: they reveal the individuality of the people who once passed through these caves or placed their hands on the rocks.

At the same time, these approaches raise fundamental questions: Why were certain sites chosen? What significance did the hand impressions hold – a protective gesture, a ritual, or communication across generations? Research into gestures suggests that deliberately formed hand positions may also have played a role. Consequently, alongside technical and analytical investigations, the symbolic dimension is coming into sharper focus.

“Abgedruckt” is intended as an invitation to reflect on these open questions. The exhibition demonstrates that Stone Age art is not a European phenomenon, but occurs worldwide – from Newspaper Rock in the USA to Chile and Argentina, and to Frobenius’s copies of Indonesian rock art. It makes it clear that the need to express oneself and to leave a mark is deeply rooted in human nature. And it invites us to look at our own hands: unique, expressive, connecting – a tool, a means of communication, a sign without a name that speaks through the millennia.