Honestly, the stuff left at work some nights. Last night, I found a book about shamanism that had a lot of illustrations of cave paintings in it. I love, love, love the figures and animals found in ancient cave art. One of the paintings featured in the book is of a weird animal/man known as the “Sorcerer,” found in the Cave of the Trois-Frères in southwestern France. It looked really familiar to me, and I couldn’t think of why. A few hours later, I remembered.
When I was a kid, I collected two book series religiously before Harry Potter. One was Goosebumps, and the other was the Magic Tree House series. The latter was about two kids named Jack and Annie whose treehouse was full of books that could transport them through time and space and all of their adventures involved learning stuff. One of my favorites, after the one with mummies, was the one set in the Ice Age. They run away from sabertooth tigers and stuff, but near the end they take shelter in a cave and meet a weird guy with deer antlers and an animal face who never speaks. It sort of blew my mind that this guy was based on an actual millennia-old illustration.
