Last week, I wrote about an art project based on the conceit of finding the remains of an Ancient Roman film projector and animation slides. Turns out my intro might not have been that far from the truth.

How would your view of animation change if you found out that it was the original projected film medium? Would you have more respect for it? Would you question how it happened and why we haven’t known this for years?

Technically, the new story isn’t really animated. It’s about creating the illusion of animation.

Science News reports that archaeologists in France believe some cave paintings were designed to create the illusion of animation. The example given is an illustration of a bison superimposed with extra legs in the front and back. The design suggests an attempt to make it look like the legs are leaping forward in mid-gallop.

We’ve known for quite some time that a lot of cave art was based in depicting movement. The novelty here is learning that some of the ancient artists might have been tricking people into seeing movement long before eyes could follow you from within a painting. Who knows what other ancient tricks that parallel modern art and entertainment are lurking in the depths of history?

What do you think? Are we going to find out that boom-splosion action movies were painted on walls long before they could be filmed? Sound off below.