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Indeed, although the newly found painting may push back the date for the earliest figurative, therianthropic and narrative art, it reveals little about the driving force behind the emergence of such creative expression.

Similarly we find “therianthropic” forms—half animal, half human—in Egypt or Assyria-Babylonia.

That the religion of ancient Japan—known as Shinto, or "the way of the gods"—had not fully emerged from therianthropic polytheism is proved by the fact that, though the deities were generally represented in human shape, they were frequently conceived as spiritual beings, embodying themselves in all kinds of things, especially in animals, reptiles, or insects.