The Universal Symbol of the Hand

1. The Universal Symbol of the Hand Across History and Culture

2. Entrance to Cave where Cave Paintings were discovered Similar caves are located in Chavet and Lascaux in Southern Franceand Altamira in Northern Spain

3. Paintings in Europe 10,000 to 35,000 years ago Late Pleistocene epoch Done by accomplished shaman artists Some done by teenage male artists - graffiti artists artists chewed up a piece of red ochre, placed their hand on the wall and spit over their hand

4. Cuevas de las Manos(Spanish for Cave of the Hands) • Located in the Santa Cruz Provence in Argentina in South America • Dated around 550 BC • Mostly left hands • The painters held the spraying pipe with their right hand • The size of the hands resembles that of a 13-year-old boy, though possibly a few years older • Marked their right of passage into manhoodby stamping their hands on the walls of this sacred cave

5. Gua Tewet • The Tree of Life • Located in the rain forest of eastern Borneo, Indonesia • Dated back to more than 10,000 years ago • Stenciled hands were decorated with dots, dashes, and other patterns • Perhaps related to prehistoric Aboriginal art in Australia. • “The design may symbolize ties that connect individuals, families, territories, or spirits to each other."

6. Traditional Aboriginal Painting • Traditional techniques: • blowing a fine spray from the mouth to produce stencils (silhouettes) • brushing the pigment using a fine stick, crushed stick or hair brush • applying the paint using fingers and hands - for example in body painting. • Stencil images are some of the oldest painted images known from the Australian continent. • Stencil images are a common form of rock art • Often of hands or arms, animal tracks, boomerangs, spear throwers or other tools such as stone axes.

7. The Anasazi Cave Paintings • Navajo for “The Ancient Ones” • Dated 1100 B.C. to 800 A.D. • Located in San Juan County, Utah • Colorado Plateau - hundreds of handprints: painted hands, carved hands, handprints stamped with images and negative handprints.  • Spitting or blowing a white calcite substance over a hand placed on the cliff wall created these negative image handprints.  • Located above a cliff dwelling. • What do these prints mean?  • Pueblo Indians left handprints at sacred places where they prayed • Believed that supernatural beings would identify a person by his handprint.

8. The Hand of Fatima Hamsa Hand • The fear of the evil eye has been ongoing since prehistoric times. • A universal symbol for protection to ward off negative energies became an eye placed in the palm of a hand. • In the Islam culture this was called the Hand of Fatima, or the Hamsa Hand. • Fatima is the Prophet Muhammad’s daughter • The Jews refer to it as Miriam’s hand • It is a sort of “protection of the hand” or “The hand of God“.

9. The five fingers have different meanings: • The Five Pillars of Islam • The five books of the Torah to Jews • The five fingers of the Hamsa represent our five limbs, arms, legs, and head, the power of the enlightened being. • In recent years, several peace activists in the Middle East, have chosen to wear the hand as a symbol of resistance. • The Hamsa Hand illustrates the similarities between the Jewish and Islamic tradition.

10. Hindu Images the Evil Eye

11. Images of the Hand of Fatima and Miriam

12. Images of Henna Designs

13. Additional Images

14. Bibliography http://www.aboriginalartonline.com/methods/methods.php http://joyrb.hubpages.com/hub/The-Hamsa-Hand-Symbol---Its-History-and-Use-in-Jewelry-and-Art http://www.livescience.com/7028-ancient-cave-art-full-teenage graffiti.html http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/print/features/world/asia/indonesia/cave-art-text http://scholarspacue.manoa.hawaii.edu/bitstream/handle/10125/17232/AP-v44n1-219-230.pdf?seqence=1 • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Pueblo_Peoples