Ode To Those Cave Art Guys

The birth, maturity and death of Europe's first great artisitic period marked by those French Cave Paintings streches from 35,000 years ago to 9000 BC. This period starts with decorated and colored bone and ivory utilized to be tools, followed by figurative art, and hitting a peak with the painted cave 'sanctuaries'. This period had little change within main styles. This is an amazing 25000 years of singular stylistic coherence. As historian JM Roberts has said

so long a period - almost has long as the whole history of civilization on this planet - illustrates the slowness with which that tradition changed in ancient times and its imperviousness to outside influence.

Given the fact of how quickly changes are made now, this slow intense burn of culture seems fascinating. Where were the neighbours to come in and add something new? The tribes were likely so geographically isolated that no such exchange of ideas was possible. Also, what kept that proto-culture going for so long, when other greater cultures have vanished in less than a blink of that time?

And, maybe most interestingly, why did it dissappear? After 9000 BC, the culture that followed produced only some colored pebbles for a few thousand years. And that's just sad.