Introduction
As a rule, the paintings have only one subject: human beings. In addition, various ornaments, signs and symbols appear. Representations of animals, a main topic of Ice Age cave painting in Western Europe, are extremely rare in Latmic rock paintings. The motifs, which are common in Post-Ice Age rock painting art, referring to hunting, agriculture, or other activities of humans who have settled down, have not been found in the Latmos up to now.
The portrayals of humans do not focus on the individual, but on man as a social being. There are pictures in which more than forty figures can be shown to have been present. Women predominate numerically. On the other hand, pictures of single figures are rare.
A certain pattern was followed for the portrayal of the human figure: Males are always depicted frontally and, with a few exceptions, without indication of their sex (1), while women appear with their bodies in profile with very broad buttocks that are often decorated (2). Owing to the motifs recalling a weave pattern, an item of clothing, a skirt or loincloth, is probably meant to be depicted by this. What is odd is that several female figures apparently have a male member. Up to now, no convincing explanation has yet been found for this.
In the case of portrayals of groups, these are mostly human beings of both sexes (3.5). However, there are also groups with only men or women (4). The main subject matter of the rock paintings therefore appears to be the relations between the sexes and the family. In one or the other case, there could be a wedding scene. The pictures in which, apart from adults, smaller figures also appear, children could be meant (4.5) giving an allusion to family. However, these ‘family scenes’ are not to be understood as realistic depictions of specific events, but in the sense of a pictorial language as ciphers for certain concepts of value of that time. The couple of male and female can also be regarded as a symbol of fertility in a figurative sense.