[flocciput]

The lack of faces in most prehistoric art has always been fascinating to me, especially given the attention to detail paid to animals in cave paintings. Did people not give as much thought to individual identity before a certain milestone in our development as a species? Was it taboo or superstition to render someone's likeness? Were caves just not the place for portraiture? Why was this seemingly prevalent across cultures and geography? Etc etc; people with more to say than me have written about it at length I assume. This bust is from 24000BC, and the person depicted was 1) presumably already dead and 2) might have had a developmental deformity. Maybe that provides some clues about when, how, and why portraiture developed as an art form.