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| Arte elaborada |
The
experts of animal locomotion well know the characteristics of quadruped walking
since the pioneering work of Eadweard Muybridge in the 1880s. Most of the
quadrupeds advance their legs in the same lateral sequence when walking, and
only the timing of their supporting feet differ more or less. How did this
scientific knowledge influence the correctness of quadruped walking depictions
in the fine arts? Did the proportion of erroneous quadruped walking
illustrations relative to their total number (i.e. error rate) decrease after
Muybridge? How
correctly have cavemen (upper palaeolithic Homo
sapiens) illustrated the walking of their quadruped prey in prehistoric
times? The aim of this work is to answer these
questions. We have analyzed 1.000 prehistoric and modern artistic quadruped
walking depictions and determined whether they are correct or not in respect of
the limb attitudes presented, assuming that the other aspects of depictions
used to determine the animals gait are illustrated correctly. The error rate of modern pre-Muybridgean quadruped
walking illustrations was 83.5%, much more than the error rate of 73.3% of mere
chance. It
decreased to 57.9% after 1887, that is in the post-Muybridgean period. Most surprisingly, the prehistoric quadruped walking
depictions had the lowest error rate of 46.2%. All these differences were statistically
significant. Thus, cavemen were more keenly aware of the slower
motion of their prey animals and illustrated quadruped walking more precisely
than later artists.
(PDF grátis aqui: PLoS One)
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