I can not believe that educated people think you can explore and explain human culture without considering "spiritual" stuff.
Assume that prehistoric people drew pictures all over the place, which, given the inclinations of modern humans seems to be true. Then assume that every easily accessible place is likely to have its art erased over overwritten by later humans. Also a reasonable assumption.
What's left? The only ancient cave art we find is the stuff that's highly inaccessible.
In other words, the cave art we see today doesn't reflect the behavior of the original artists as much as it reflects the behavior of later humans that would intercede.
As for spirituality, people 30k years ago very quite sophisticated. They had paintings, music, maps, religion, porn... But entire population of Europe was like 100k people. And there was no need to crawl into one way death trap, when they had 1000km^2 to explore!
No need for spiritual explanations for something that mundane.
https://www.observatoriodoespacopublico.com/post/olhares-uso...