by Philip Tung Yep Very nearly the earliest art of which we have
evidence is concerned with animals. It appears to represent
species we know our early ancestors hunted and one hypothesis is
that the images were part of magical rituals designed to placate
the spirits of prey. We may never know whether this is true but
the drawings, crude as they are, are vital and carefully
rendered, often deep in caves where the only light must have
been fire, carefully established and tended. We know the animals
were hunted and eaten. We know they were lovingly represented at
great difficulty. There is a human ambivalence towards animals
which runs like a thread from that remote time until the present
day. In more recent times, animals have been worshipped as gods,
tried and punished like human criminals in human courts and bred
into useful or bizarre forms. Their status relative to humans
has swung wildly through the centuries. In the past century or
two, there have been attempts to establish more firmly their
rights, or in