"In Stone Age art, there is one shared characteristic that seems universal," Pontius says. "The human face always shows a consistent deviation from the norm in the configuration of the eye, nose and forehead."

"There is no interruption between nose and forehead," she adds. "The nose is coming continuously out of the forehead."

Those tribes who were not under threat of attack drew the geometric shapes and the relationship between the nose, eyes and forehead accurately, Pontius says.

But the others, who "were constantly in warfare with their neighbors," were unable to represent the figures on the tests accurately, she says, because continual danger and fear alters brain function and makes the artists unable to render human faces accurately.

The Science

In a normal brain, the cortex controls conscious processes, such as the spatial relations needed to accurately represent faces and geometric patterns, while the sub-cortex controls the unconscious. But Pontius says a highly-stressed brain can transfer some of the cortical processing to the sub-cortex and save about 250 milliseconds in the process.

"If people are in constant fear for life, their brain has to process very fast," Pontius says. "They don't have the time to process unnecessary details."

"They have to save a quarter of a second," she adds. "In the blink of an eye, they can be killed if they don't evaluate [the situation] immediately."

The Criticism

But other psychologists question the validity of Pontius' findings.

"That sounds extremely speculative," Jerome Kagan, Starch professor of psychology, says about Pontius' findings. "There might be a symbolic reason why they didn't draw faces accurately."

He adds, "Unless you know the values and the standards and the belief systems of the people, it is extremely difficult to interpret their drawings."

Patrick Cavanagh, a professor of psychology who has written about cave art, has an even more basic complaint with the premise of Pontius' work.

"I don't think there is a single drawn face incave art until urban life came around," Cavanaghsays. "Cave art is mostly animals."

"They don't have face details," he adds. "Idon't ever recall ever seeing a face with eyes and[a] mouth."

Further Theories