This study quite literally contends that Stone Age artists specifically sought the effects of Hypnoxia and would even use the act of creating such art as an excuse to go "get high".
This reads more like a random theory than a newly discovered pattern of behavior from the past.
Yeah. Seems more likely that art was made everywhere and that only the art in the caves away from the weather survived.
Perhaps there is no way to make torch small enough to not be deprived of oxygen, but it seems plausible that you'd be fine if the flame was small enough and no one else was there.
I've been in small man-made caves and they are very tiny.
That stone age artists were using mind-altering effects is a pretty easy ballpark guess. I think most hunter-gatherer societies involve hallucinogens of various sorts in their religious ceremonies, the Romans and Greeks used a significant amount of drugs (the Oracle at Delphi was known for this) and Alcohol use was vastly larger at the time of the thirteen colonies.
First click didn't bring me to the page brought me to a full screen advert. Pressing back brought me to the page but it then hijacked my back button. I ended up closing the tab. This is with using an adblocker on mobile...
My hypothesis is that we use substances that hurt us because we are conscious about our own mortality. Using a mind-altering substance, a.k.a. poisoning yourself, is like turning on the light to see the big monster in the dark is just a pile of clothes. It gives us a sense that death won't be that bad.
That's even a bit debatable. Weed is definitely better now than in the Stone Age (it got stronger when prohibition started coming down hard on it), and they might have had access to thinks like shrooms, but we have stuff like LSD and MDMA. They also could have had access to coca, which would have produced a nice, mild high by chewing the leaves, without the full on "coked out" feeling. Stone Age people also were able to ferment things, so, alcohol would have been available.
it makes sense to also mention here the absinthe which is arguably responsible if not for all at least for some aspects of the Paris art of the 19th century, and the artemisia (or similar) may have been naturally known and used in the Stone Age - its natural discoverability is evidenced by the fact that it has been part of the folk medicine across the world.
Just a note: Absinthe and the species of artemisia normally used for it's production are entirely non-psychoactive. It's contribution to French Bohemianism are about the same as any other cheap liquor. It does not provide anything close to the the effects of oxygen-deprivation like the article talks about.
