at Chauvet, in ochre and charcoal strokes, throws horns, tusks, and teeth against ironstained rock. These hordes tempt flight as they tempt meaning. In every pattern, we project modern myth—we project our own writing. In The Republic (some thirty-four millennia later), firelight paints. Bored of existence, we built brushes—we built schools and newer schools and the tools to break them. Yet, a short sentence ago, in the book of anthropology warm wind lured philosophers in through columns of its own carving to reveal indifferent handprints that ask: Have we ever left the cave?