Rock storytelling: from paleolithic palimpsests to graphic novels

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.34680/EISCRT-2026-2(15)-17-50

Keywords:

media anthropology, visual storytelling, comics, paleoculture, contemporary mass media culture

Abstract

The research presented in this article explores the evolution of the dramatic structure of visual narrative, characteristic of social communication systems spanning the chronological range from paleoculture to modern mass society. The subject of the study is a comparative analysis of the principles of visual narrative in Western European paleolithic paintings and modern comics.
The research methodology combines historical-cultural, source-based, and art-historical approaches to understanding the functions of visual narrative practices in paleoculture and modern mass society. The study reveals that visual narrative practices, widespread in modern media culture, trace their origins directly to early forms of religious belief in paleoculture. Contemporary media comics, from a comparative historical perspective, are a legacy of the archaic social communication traditions of ancient societies, but now with linear texts and individual authorship. Like the cave paintings of the Paleolithic period in Western Europe, modern comics contain symbolic codes that unite people into communities and are therefore understandable only to those "within their own".

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Author Biography

Elena Okladnikova, Herzen State Pedagogical University, St. Petersburg, Russia

Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor at the Department of Sociology
e-mail: okladnikova-ea@yandex.ru

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Published

2026-06-30

How to Cite

Okladnikova, E. (2026). Rock storytelling: from paleolithic palimpsests to graphic novels. Experience Industries. Socio-Cultural Research Technologies, 2 (15), 17–50. https://doi.org/10.34680/EISCRT-2026-2(15)-17-50

Issue

No. 2 (15) (2026): Experience industries. Socio-Cultural Research Technologies

Section

Traditions