write an essay on pre historic rock art

• Skip to primary navigation
• Skip to main content
• Skip to primary sidebar

UPSC Coaching, Study Materials, and Mock Exams

Enroll in ClearIAS UPSC Coaching Join Now Log In

Call us: +91-9605741000

Prehistoric Era Art – Rock Paintings (Indian Culture Series – NCERT)

Last updated on September 11, 2023 by ClearIAS Team

We suggest aspirants start from the book published by NCERT on Indian Culture and then move on to other online and offline sources. The book is titled  ‘An Introduction to Indian Art’ – Part 1. Though many aspirants might not be aware, this textbook provides valuable knowledge for a beginner.

Clear IAS is starting a compilation of the important aspects of Indian culture based on the book ‘An Introduction to Indian Art’ – Part 1 so that aspirants can save time.

Table of Contents

What’s inside: An Introduction to Indian Art’ – Part 1

This NCERT textbook for Class XI extensively covers the tradition of cave paintings in the pre-historic era and their continuation in mural paintings of Buddhist era and later on in various parts of the country, Buddhist, Jain, and Hindu sculptural and architectural developments. During the Indo-Islamic period and before the Mughal rule, another era dawned upon India, which saw massive constructions in the form of forts and palaces. Different aspects of all these styles have been discussed to introduce students with the fabric of India’s culture. The approach is mostly chronological , and it extends from the pre-historic period till the Mughals.

Prehistoric Rock Paintings in India

What is prehistoric?

• The distant past when there was no paper or language or the written word, and hence no books or written document, is called as the Prehistoric period.
• It was difficult to understand how Prehistoric people lived until scholars began excavations in Prehistoric sites.
• Piecing together of information deduced from old tools, habitat, bones of both animals and human beings and drawings on the cave walls scholars have constructed fairly accurate knowledge about what happened and how people lived in prehistoric times.
• Paintings and drawings were the oldest art forms practiced by human beings to express themselves using the cave wall as their canvas.

Prehistoric Period: Paleolithic Age, Mesolithic Age, and Chalcolithic Age

The drawings and paintings can be catagorised into seven historical periods. Period I, Upper Palaeolithic; Period II, Mesolithic; and Period III, Chalcolithic. After Period III there are four successive periods. But we will confine ourselves here only to the first three phases.  Prehistoric Era art denotes the art (mainly rock paintings) during Paleolithic Age, Mesolithic Age and Chalcolithic Age.

(1) Paleolithic Age Art

• The prehistoric period in the early development of human beings is commonly known as the ‘Old Stone Age’ or ‘Palaeolithic Age’.
• The Paleolithic period can be divided into three phases: (1) Lower Palaeolithic (2.5 million years-100,000 years ago) (2) Middle Palaeolithic (300,000-30,000 years ago) (3) Upper Palaeolithic (40,000-10,000 years ago)
• We did not get any evidence of paintings from lower or middle paleolithic age yet.
• In the Upper Palaeolithic period, we see a proliferation of artistic activities.
• Subjects of early works confined to simple human figures, human activities, geometric designs, and symbols.
• First discovery of rock paintings in the world was made in India (1867-68) by an Archaeologist, Archibold Carlleyle , twelve years before the discovery of Altamira in Spain (site of oldest rock paintings in the world).
• In India, remnants of rock paintings have been found on the walls of caves situated in several districts of Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Bihar, and Uttarakhand.
• Some of the examples of sites early rock paintings are Lakhudiyar in Uttarakhand, Kupgallu in Telangana, Piklihal and Tekkalkotta in Karnataka, Bhimbetka and Jogimara in Madhya Pradesh etc .
• Paintings found here can be divided into three categories: Man, Animal, and Geometric symbols .
• Human beings are represented in a stick-like form.
• A long-snouted animal, a fox, a multi-legged lizard are main animal motifs in the early paintings (later many animals were drawn).
• Wavy lines, rectangular filled geometric designs and a group of dots also can be seen.
• Superimposition of paintings – earliest is Black, then red and later White.
• In the late historic, early historic and Neolithic period the subjects of paintings developed and figures like Bulls, Elephants, Sambhars, Gazelles, Sheep, Horses, styled human beings, tridents and rarely vegetal motifs began to see.
• The richest paintings are reported from Vindhya range of Madhya Pradesh and their Kaimurean extension into U.P.
• These hills are fully Palaeolithic and Mesolithic remains.
• There are two major sites of excellent prehistoric paintings in India: (1) Bhimbetka Caves, Foothills of Vindhya, Madhya Pradesh. (2) Jogimara caves, Amarnath, Madhya Pradesh.

Bhimbetka Caves

Admissions Open: Join Prelims cum Mains Course 2025 Now

• Continuous occupation of the caves from 100,000 B.C– 1000 A.D
• Thus, it is considered as an evidence of long cultural continuity .
• It was discovered in 1957-58.
• Consists of nearly 400 painted rock shelters in five clusters.
• One of the oldest paintings in India and the world (Upper paleolithic). The features of paintings of three different phases are as follows (even though Bhimbetka contains many paintings of periods later, different from what is explained below, as we are dealing with the prehistoric period only, we are concluding by these three):

 Upper Palaeolithic Period:

• Paintings are linear representations, in green and dark red, of huge animal figures, such as Bisons, Tigers, Elephants, Rhinos and Boars beside stick-like human figures.
• Mostly they are filled with geometric patterns.
• Green paintings are of dances and red ones of hunters.

(2) Mesolithic period Art:

• The largest number of paintings belongs to this period.
• Themes multiply but the paintings are small in size.
• Hunting scenes predominate
• Hunters in groups armed with barbed spears pointed sticks, arrows, and bows.
• Trap and snares used to catch animals can be seen in some paintings.
• Mesolithic people loved to point animals.
• In some pictures, animals are chasing men and in others, they are being chased by hunter men.
• Animals painted in a naturalistic style and humans were depicted in a stylistic manner.
• Women are painted both in nude and clothed.
• Young and old equally find places in paintings.
• Community dances provide a common theme.
• Sort of family life can be seen in some paintings (woman, man, and children).

(3) Chalcolithic period Art:

• Copper age art.
• The paintings of this period reveal the association, contact and mutual exchange of requirements of the cave dwellers of this area with settled agricultural communities of the Malwa Plateau.
• Pottery and metal tools can be seen in paintings.
• Similarities with rock paintings: Common motifs (designs/patterns like cross-hatched squares, lattices etc)
• The difference with rock paintings: Vividness and vitality of older periods disappear from these paintings.

Some of the general features of Prehistoric paintings (based on the study of Bhimbetka paintings)

• Used colours, including various shades of white, yellow, orange, red ochre, purple, brown, green and black.
• But white and red were their favourite.
• The paints used by these people were made by grinding various coloured rocks.
• They got red from haematite (Geru in India).
• Green prepared from a green coloured rock called Chalcedony.
• White was probably from Limestone.
• Some sticky substances such as animal fat or gum or resin from trees may be used while mixing rock powder with water.
• Brushes were made of plant fiber.
• It is believed that these colours remained thousands of years because of the chemical reaction of the oxide present on the surface of rocks.
• Paintings were found both from occupied and unoccupied caves.
• It means that these paintings were sometimes used also as some sort of signals, warnings etc.
• Many rock art sites of the new painting are painted on top of an older painting.
• In Bhimbetka, we can see nearly 20 layers of paintings, one on top of another.
• It shows the gradual development of the human being from period to period.
• The symbolism is inspiration from nature along with slight spirituality.
• Expression of ideas through very few drawings (representation of men by the stick like drawings).
• Use of many geometrical patterns.
• Scenes were mainly hunting and economic and social life of people.
• The figure of flora, fauna, human, mythical creatures, carts, chariots etc can be seen.
• More importance for red and white colours.

Compiled by: Jijo Sudarshan

Aim IAS, IPS, or IFS?

About ClearIAS Team

ClearIAS is one of the most trusted learning platforms in India for UPSC preparation. Around 1 million aspirants learn from the ClearIAS every month.

Our courses and training methods are different from traditional coaching. We give special emphasis on smart work and personal mentorship. Many UPSC toppers thank ClearIAS for our role in their success.

Download the ClearIAS mobile apps now to supplement your self-study efforts with ClearIAS smart-study training.

Reader Interactions

June 22, 2015 at 10:52 pm

Very valuable

July 17, 2015 at 9:59 am

Please give advice on how many questions we can attempt safely in cs preliminary2015 GS paper since CSAT is only a qualifying one.

June 27, 2016 at 2:27 pm

65 to 70 would be good enough without negatives.

July 22, 2015 at 9:15 pm

Seriously! this helps a lot.. thanks a lot

June 20, 2016 at 9:46 am

jogimara is in Chhatisgarh. So plz give right details…

June 24, 2016 at 2:51 pm

Seriously! this helps me a lot.. thanks a lot..!!!! Ambadnya

August 12, 2016 at 6:02 pm

from which site i can download Introduction to Indian Art – PartI book

January 1, 2018 at 7:14 pm

mesolithic people loved to paint animals not point as mentioned above

October 1, 2018 at 9:50 am

Thanku sir…it’s very useful for us…good compilation…

October 25, 2018 at 11:16 pm

February 25, 2019 at 5:57 pm

very nice answer that influenced me a lot

April 24, 2021 at 10:16 pm

It said that the first discovery of rock painting was in 1967-68, but then later said bhimbetka cave was discovered in 1957-58, which crontradict the first statement. Am i misunderstanding, can anyone explain?

January 18, 2022 at 11:43 am

First painting was discovered in 1867-68 not in 1967, read the above details again.. Make sense now?

April 4, 2023 at 12:07 pm

The first discovery of rock paintings in the world was made in India by archaeologist Archibald Carlleyle in 1867 – 68 (in Sohagighat, Mirzapur District, Uttar Pradesh).

January 18, 2022 at 11:44 am

April 4, 2023 at 12:33 pm

Hello Sir/Madam, ” JOGIMARA CAVE PAINTINGS ” are in CHATTISGARH (NOT IN MADHYA PRADESH) Plz do edit…

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Don’t lose out without playing the right game!

Follow the ClearIAS Prelims cum Mains (PCM) Integrated Approach.

Join ClearIAS PCM Course Now

UPSC Online Preparation

• Union Public Service Commission (UPSC)
• Indian Administrative Service (IAS)
• Indian Police Service (IPS)
• IAS Exam Eligibility
• UPSC Free Study Materials
• UPSC Exam Guidance
• UPSC Prelims Test Series
• UPSC Syllabus
• UPSC Online
• UPSC Prelims
• UPSC Interview
• UPSC Toppers
• UPSC Previous Year Qns
• UPSC Age Calculator
• UPSC Calendar 2024
• About ClearIAS
• ClearIAS Programs
• ClearIAS Fee Structure
• IAS Coaching
• UPSC Coaching
• UPSC Online Coaching
• ClearIAS Blog
• Important Updates
• Announcements
• Book Review
• ClearIAS App
• Work with us
• Advertise with us
• Privacy Policy
• Terms and Conditions
• Talk to Your Mentor

Featured on

and many more...

• IAS Preparation
• UPSC Preparation Strategy
• Prehistoric Rock Paintings

NCERT Notes: Prehistoric Rock Paintings

NCERT notes on important topics for the UPSC civil services exam preparation. These notes will also be useful for other competitive exams like bank PO, SSC, state civil services exams and so on .

Prehistoric Rock Paintings (UPSC Notes):- Download PDF Here

• Prehistory: The time period in the past when there was no paper or the written word and hence no books or written accounts of events. Information about such an age is obtained from excavations which reveal paintings, pottery, habitat, etc.
• Drawings and paintings were the oldest form of artistic expression practised by humans. Reasons for such drawings: Either to decorate their homes or/and to keep a journal of events in their lives.
• Lower and Middle Palaeolithic Periods have not shown any evidence of artworks so far. The Upper Palaeolithic Age shows a lot of artistic activities.
• Earliest paintings in India are from the Upper Palaeolithic Age.
• The first discovery of rock paintings in the world was made in India by archaeologist Archibald Carlleyle in 1867 – 68 (in Sohagighat, Mirzapur District, Uttar Pradesh).
• Rock paintings have been found in the walls of caves at Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Karnataka, some in the Kumaon Hills of Uttarakhand.
• Paintings at the rock shelters at Lakhudiyar on the banks of the Suyal River (Uttarakhand) –
• 3 categories of paintings: man, animal and geometric patterns in black, white and red ochre.
• Humans in stick-like forms, a long-snouted animal, a fox, a multiple-legged lizard, wavy lines, groups of dots and rectangle-filled geometric designs, hand-linked dancing humans.
• Paintings in Kupgallu (Telangana), Piklihal and Tekkalkota (both in Karnataka)
• Mostly in white and red ochre.
• Subjects are bulls, sambhars, elephants, sheep, gazelles, goats, horses, stylised humans and tridents.
• Paintings in the Vindhya ranges at Madhya Pradesh extending into Uttar Pradesh –
• About 500 rock shelters at Bhimbetka in the Vindhya Hills at Madhya Pradesh.
• Images of hunting, dancing, music, elephant and horse riders, honey collection, animal fighting, decoration of bodies, household scenes, etc.
• Period I: Upper Palaeolithic
• Period II: Mesolithic
• Period III: Chalcolithic
• Two major sites of prehistoric rock/cave paintings in India: Bhimbetka Caves and Jogimara Caves (Amarnath, Madhya Pradesh).
• Continuous occupation of these caves from 100000 BC to 1000 AD.
• Discovered by archaeologist V S Wakankar in 1957 – 58.
• One of the oldest paintings in India and the world.
• Period I (Upper Palaeolithic)
• Linear representations of animals like bison, tigers, elephants, rhinos and boars; stick-like human figures.
• Paintings in green and dark red. Green paintings are of dancers and red ones are of hunters.
• Period II (Mesolithic)
• The largest number of paintings in this period.
• More themes but paintings reduce in size.
• Mostly hunting scenes – people hunting in groups with barbed spears, arrows and bows, and pointed sticks. Also, show traps and snares to catch animals.
• Hunters wear simple clothes; some men are shown with headdresses and masks. Women have been shown both clothed and in the nude.
• Animals seen – elephants, bisons, bears, tigers, deer, antelopes, leopards, panthers, rhinos, frogs, lizards, fish, squirrels and birds.
• Children are seen playing and jumping. Some scenes depict family life.
• Period III (Chalcolithic)
• Paintings indicate an association of these cave-dwellers with the agricultural communities settled at Malwa.
• Cross-hatched squares, lattices, pottery and metal tools are depicted.
• Colours used in Bhimbetka paintings – white, yellow, orange, red ochre, purple, brown, green and black. Most common colours – white and red.
• Red obtained from haematite (geru); green from chalcedony; white probably from limestone.
• Brushes were made from plant fibre.
• In some places, there are many layers of paintings, sometimes 20.
• Paintings can be seen in caves that were used as dwelling places and also in caves that had some other purpose, perhaps religious.
• The colours of the paintings have remained intact thousands of years perhaps due to the chemical reaction of the oxide present on the rock surface.

Also, See | NCERT Notes for UPSC Exams – Prehistoric age in India

Leave a Comment Cancel reply

Your Mobile number and Email id will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Request OTP on Voice Call

Post My Comment

Please give me important notes about current affairs

Current Affairs

IAS 2024 - Your dream can come true!

Download the ultimate guide to upsc cse preparation.

• Share Share

Register with BYJU'S & Download Free PDFs

Register with byju's & watch live videos.

Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History Essays

Introduction to prehistoric art, 20,000–8000 b.c..

Laura Anne Tedesco Independent Scholar

August 2007

To describe the global origins of humans’ artistic achievement, upon which the succeeding history of art may be laid, is an encyclopedic enterprise. The Metropolitan Museum’s Timeline of Art History , covering the period roughly from 20,000 to 8000 B.C., provides a series of introductory essays about particular archaeological sites and artworks that illustrate some of the earliest endeavors in human creativity. The account of the origins of art is a very long one marked less by change than consistency. The first human artistic representations, markings with ground red ocher, seem to have occurred about 100,000 B.C. in African rock art . This chronology may be more an artifact of the limitations of archaeological evidence than a true picture of when humans first created art. However, with new technologies, research methods, and archaeological discoveries, we are able to view the history of human artistic achievement in a greater focus than ever before.

Art, as the product of human creativity and imagination, includes poetry, music, dance, and the material arts such as painting, sculpture, drawing, pottery, and bodily adornment. The objects and archaeological sites presented in the Museum’s Timeline of Art History for the time period 20,000–8000 B.C. illustrate diverse examples of prehistoric art from across the globe. All were created in the period before the invention of formal writing, and when human populations were migrating and expanding across the world. By 20,000 B.C., humans had settled on every continent except Antarctica. The earliest human occupation occurs in Africa, and it is there that we assume art to have originated. African rock art from the  Apollo 11 and Wonderwerk Caves contain examples of geometric and animal representations engraved and painted on stone. In Europe, the record of Paleolithic art is beautifully illustrated with the magnificent painted caves of Lascaux and Chauvet , both in France. Scores of painted caves exist in western Europe, mostly in France and Spain, and hundreds of sculptures and engravings depicting humans, animals, and fantastic creatures have been found across Europe and Asia alike. Rock art in Australia represents the longest continuously practiced artistic tradition in the world. The site of Ubirr in northern Australia contains exceptional examples of Aboriginal rock art repainted for millennia beginning perhaps as early as 40,000 B.C. The earliest known rock art in Australia predates European painted caves by as much as 10,000 years.

In Egypt, millennia before the advent of powerful dynasties and wealth-laden tombs, early settlements are known from modest scatters of stone tools and animal bones at such sites as Wadi Kubbaniya . In western Asia after 8,000 B.C., the earliest known writing , monumental art, cities , and complex social systems emerged. Prior to these far-reaching developments of civilization, this area was inhabited by early hunters and farmers. Eynan/Ain Mallaha , a settlement in the Levant along the Mediterranean, was occupied around 10,000–8000 B.C. by a culture named Natufian. This group of settled hunters and gatherers created a rich artistic record of sculpture made from stone and bodily adornment made from shell and bone.

The earliest art of the continent of South Asia is less well documented than that of Europe and western Asia, and some of the extant examples come from painted and engraved cave sites such as Pachmari Hills in India. The caves depict the region’s fauna and hunting practices of the Mesolithic period. In Central and East Asia, a territory almost twice the size of North America, there are outstanding examples of early artistic achievements, such as the expertly and delicately carved female figurine sculpture from Mal’ta . The superbly preserved bone flutes from the site of Jiahu in China, while dated to slightly later than 8000 B.C., are still playable. The tradition of music making may be among the earliest forms of human artistic endeavor. Because many musical instruments were crafted from easily degradable materials like leather, wood, and sinew, they are often lost to archaeologists, but flutes made of bone dating to the Paleolithic period in Europe (ca. 35,000–10,000 B.C.) are richly documented.

North and South America are the most recent continents to be explored and occupied by humans, who likely arrived from Asia. Blackwater Draw in North America and Fell’s Cave in Patagonia, the southernmost area of South America, are two contemporaneous sites where elegant stone tools that helped sustain the hunters who occupied these regions have been found.

Whether the prehistoric artworks illustrated here constitute demonstrations of a unified artistic idiom shared by humankind or, alternatively, are unique to the environments, cultures, and individuals who created them is a question open for consideration. Nonetheless, each work or site superbly characterizes some of the earliest examples of humans’ creative and artistic capacity.

Tedesco, Laura Anne. “Introduction to Prehistoric Art, 20,000–8000 B.C.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History . New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/preh/hd_preh.htm (August 2007)

Further Reading

Price, T. Douglas. and Gary M. Feinman. Images of the Past . 5th ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2006.

Scarre, Chris, ed. The Human Past: World Prehistory & the Development of Human Societies . London: Thames & Hudson, 2005.

Additional Essays by Laura Anne Tedesco

• Tedesco, Laura Anne. “ Blackwater Draw (ca. 9500–3000 B.C.) .” (originally published October 2000, last revised September 2007)
• Tedesco, Laura Anne. “ Wadi Kubbaniya (ca. 17,000–15,000 B.C.) .” (October 2000)
• Tedesco, Laura Anne. “ Fell’s Cave (9000–8000 B.C.) .” (originally published October 2000, last revised September 2007)
• Tedesco, Laura Anne. “ Jiahu (ca. 7000–5700 B.C.) .” (October 2000)
• Tedesco, Laura Anne. “ Lascaux (ca. 15,000 B.C.) .” (October 2000)
• Tedesco, Laura Anne. “ Mal’ta (ca. 20,000 B.C.) .” (October 2000)
• Tedesco, Laura Anne. “ Pachmari Hills (ca. 9000–3000 B.C.) .” (October 2000)
• Tedesco, Laura Anne. “ Hasanlu in the Iron Age .” (October 2004)
• Tedesco, Laura Anne. “ Eynan/Ain Mallaha (12,500–10,000 B.C.) .” (October 2000; updated February 2024)

Related Essays

• African Rock Art
• Chauvet Cave (ca. 30,000 B.C.)
• Lascaux (ca. 15,000 B.C.)
• Neolithic Period in China
• Prehistoric Stone Sculpture from New Guinea
• African Rock Art: Game Pass
• African Rock Art: Tassili-n-Ajjer (?8000 B.C.–?)
• African Rock Art: The Coldstream Stone
• Apollo 11 (ca. 25,500–23,500 B.C.) and Wonderwerk (ca. 8000 B.C.) Cave Stones
• Blackwater Draw (ca. 9500–3000 B.C.)
• Cerro Sechín
• Cerro Sechín: Stone Sculpture
• Eynan/Ain Mallaha (12,500–10,000 B.C.)
• Fell’s Cave (9000–8000 B.C.)
• Indian Knoll (3000–2000 B.C.)
• Jiahu (ca. 7000–5700 B.C.)
• Jōmon Culture (ca. 10,500–ca. 300 B.C.)
• Mal’ta (ca. 20,000 B.C.)
• Pachmari Hills (ca. 9000–3000 B.C.)
• Ubirr (ca. 40,000?–present)
• Valdivia Figurines
• Wadi Kubbaniya (ca. 17,000–15,000 B.C.)
• X-ray Style in Arnhem Land Rock Art
• 8th Millennium B.C.
• Agriculture
• Archaeology
• Central and North Asia
• Eastern Mediterranean
• Iberian Peninsula
• Literature / Poetry
• Musical Instrument
• Mythical Creature
• North Africa
• North America
• Painted Object
• Personal Ornament
• Prehistoric Art
• Relief Sculpture
• Sculpture in the Round
• South America
• Wall Painting
• Wind Instrument

Human Relations Area Files

Cultural information for education and research, an introduction to rock art.

Jeffrey Vadala

Figure 1. Aerial view of monkey earth figure, etched into the Nazca Desert sand, Peru. By Diego Delso, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia.

Often considered evidence of humanity’s first artistry, prehistoric rock art has captivated people all over the world. Associated with many different cultures, the meaning and purpose of most forms of prehistoric rock art remain shrouded in mystery. Even the most experienced archaeologists continue to ask basic questions about rock art. What does it depict? What does it mean? Who produced it? When was it produced? What function did it serve?

Here, using eHRAF Archaeology and other sources, I will explore some examples of prehistoric rock art while demonstrating how scholars have attempted to understand the ancient people that produced these mysterious markers of human artistry and creativity.

Defining Rock Art

Most simply put, rock art is artwork done on natural rock surfaces. This means it can be found on the sides or walls of caves, cliffs, sheer standing rocks, and also boulders. Most of the rock art that I encountered while doing an archaeological survey in Southern California was located on the sides of massive granite boulders (for example, see Figure 2). Rock art may also be referred to as “rock carvings,” “rock engravings,” “rock drawings,” and “rock paintings.” There are three categories of rock art that have been studied and defined by archaeologists since a systematic study of rock art began. These include petroglyphs (carved rock art), pictographs (painted rock art), and earth figures (large surface scrapings).

Petroglyphs

The first of these categories is petroglyphs. This category contains all rock art that is considered to be rock engravings or carvings. For this type, a rock’s surface is carved or removed in specific patterns using a hammerstone. This tool is used to peck or hammer artistic details into the surface of a boulder, cave wall, or another natural stone surface. Alternatively, rather than using a hammerstone directly, a hammerstone can be used in tandem with a smaller chisel stone to produce finer details (Whitley 2005). The Hemet Maze Stone pictured below was most likely carved using the latter of these two methods.

Figure 2. The Helmet Maze Stone (a petrogylph) in Southern California. By Devin Sean Cooper, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia.

A commonly found, less complex form of petroglyph is a cupule. A cupule is a simple carving that looks like a cup-shaped hole in the side of a rock surface. Dating to the stone age or earlier, cupules are found all over the world. Many consider them to be the oldest form of rock art. Although they look simple, it is thought that cupules can express ritual or symbolic meaning. In the area near where the Maze stone was found, during several archaeological surveys, my team and I discovered many cupules on large boulders in the area. At one site, a large granite boulder was covered in hundreds of cupules. Given the amount of time carving granite takes, one can easily see how the cupules represent hours and hours of dedication. Why would the native people in this region spend so much time carving cupules all on one boulder?

Although the precise meaning cannot be determined, it has been theorized that they were carved during coming-of-age ceremonies (Hedges 1976:17). Over time, ritual practitioners would have noted that these cupules accumulated. Eventually an accumulation of cupules could come to represent a history of ritual action–a local record of ritual events over time.

Another, rarer form of petroglyph is created through incision or scratching rather than carving or chiseling, with tools like lithic obsidian blades. Given that obsidian blades have fine edges, smaller fine-grained details can be made upon rock surfaces using this method. That said, because such carvings are not very deep and rock surfaces erode over time, this form is often difficult for archaeologists to identify (Whitley 2005).

Pictographs

Figure 3. Negative hand paintings at Gargas caves in France. By José-Manuel Benito. Public Domain.

Pictographs, painted artwork on stone surfaces, are often regarded as the most beautiful rock art. Like the other forms of rock art, pictographs are found worldwide and date deep into the human past. The pigments used to make pictograph paints are ochres, charcoal, ground minerals, natural chalk, kaolinite clays, and even diatomaceous earth. Usually, these substances are mixed with liquids like water, eggs, and blood to make red, black, and white paints. Brushes, stamps, hands and fingers were used to apply these paints to rock surfaces (Whitley 2005). One of the most famous and well-known types of pictographs is the “handprint” type that is found at the Gargas caves in southern France. These paintings date to about 25,000 BCE. At the Gargas caves, the pictographs are negative prints that were created using the human hand as a stencil. A person would put their hand against the rock wall and spit or blow pigment through a bone tube creating a negative image or outline of the hand (Whitley 2005).

Figure 4. Low-relief petroglyph “El Rey” at Chalcatzingo. By Maunus, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia.

Pictographs and petroglyphs can be found together in close proximity. This is the case at the Mesoamerican site of Chalcatzingo. This site is well known for its petroglyphs that are often described as low-reliefs, yet it also has a number of pictographs at the site and nearby. The low-reliefs have been interpreted to be representations of cosmological ideas. More specifically, they represent cycles of nature, fertility, celestial beings, and beliefs about sacred relationships found in nature (Angulo 1987:155). Studied by Alex Apostolides (1987), the pictographs are simpler but harder to correlate with other site activities. The pictographs include “stick figures,” a “triangle and slit” design, a “sunburst,” “plumes,” and spirals. These design elements are combined and found at many places around the site. This includes caves, niches, and rock walls. Apostolides (1987) attempted to characterize patterns in the pictographs grouping them by location, color, and symbols but reached no major conclusions regarding the meaning or function of the artwork. This is because the pictographs were impossible to affirmatively date and often ambiguous in terms of their general form. More recently Julio Amador (2018) has argued that some of these pictographs represent water and or serpent imagery.

Earth Figures

“Earth figure” rock art is created by scraping large pictures or symbols into the surface of the earth. The Nazca lines are probably the most famous of this third category of rock art (see Figure 1). Scraped from the Peruvian desert floor, these massive forms of art have inspired many studies, theories, interpretations, and conspiracies because of their size and because they appear to be made to view from the sky. Today, most scholars agree that the lines were created by systematically removing dark desert top floor minerals which exposed the light soils beneath. Detailing how they look from the sky, astronomer Anthony Aveni (1990) wrote, “from an airplane, the markings appear as a tangled mass overlapping and intersecting one another, rather like the remains of an unerased blackboard at the end of a busy day of classroom activities.” Although many theories pointed to astronomical uses of the Nazca lines, Aveni (1990) found no evidence to support astronomical uses. Aveni speculated that rather than use the lines for astronomy, the Nazca may have used the lines as special ritual paths: “Perhaps one ought to sense the monkey or the hummingbird [shape] not by seeing it from the air, but rather by walking (or running) upon it. Thus one would perceive with the body every sinuous turn in the labyrinthine tail or the delicate curvature of each individual fragment of avian plumage.” Yet, in the early 2000s scholars found another clue as to the use of the lines. David Johnson and colleagues found that the lines may follow important water aquifers in the parched desert (Johnson et al. 2002). Most recently, Italian scholars have argued the lines serve special ritual functions related to calendric events at the nearby temples of Cahuachi (Masini et al. 2016).

There is still no real consensus to the use or meaning of Nazca lines. In many cases around the world, the meaning and function of famous examples of rock art continue to be debated and explored with no end in sight. Using eHRAF Archaeology , scholars can study rock art cross-culturally to find potential answers. Patterns in rock art could be defined and used to solve the mysteries of this most ancient form of human creativity.

Amador, Julio. 2018. Rock art at Chalcatzingo, Morelos: Methodology and Techniques for Recording Documenting and Elaborating Preservation Strategies. Conference Paper. The 82nd Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology

Angulo V., Jorge. 1987. “Chalcatzingo Reliefs: An Iconographic Analysis.” Ancient Chalcatzingo. Austin: University of Texas Press. https://ehrafarchaeology.yale.edu/document?id=nu95-013 .

Apostolides, Alex. 1987. “Chalcatzingo Painted Art.” Ancient Chalcatzingo. Austin: University of Texas Press. https://ehrafarchaeology.yale.edu/document?id=nu92-013 .

Aveni, Anthony F. 1990. “Assessment Of Previous Studies Of The Nazca Glyphs.” Lines Of Nazca. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society. https://ehrafarchaeology.yale.edu/document?id=se51-007.

Hedges, Ken 1976. Roct Art at Hakwin: A Preliminary Report. Pacific Coast Archaeological Society Quarterly 12(1):9-20.

Johnson, D. W., Proulx. D. A., Mabee, S. B. 2002. The correlation between geoglyphs and subterranean water resources in the Rio Grande de Nasca drainage. In Silvermann H. & Isbell W. H. (Ed.), Andean Archaeology II: art, landscape, and society. New York, Kluwer Academic, pp. 307–332.

Masini, Nicola, Orefici, Giuseppe, Danese, M., Pecci, A., Scavone, M., Lasaponara, R. 2016. Cahuachi and Pampa de Atarco: Towards Greater Comprehension of Nasca Geoglyphs. In: Lasaponara R., Masini N., Orefici G. (Eds). The Ancient Nasca World New Insights from Science and Archaeology. Springer International Publishing, pp. 239–278.

Whitley, David S. (2005). Introduction to Rock Art Research. Walnut Creek, California: Left Coast Press. ISBN 978-1598740004.

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

Chapter 1: Prehistoric Art

Introduction to prehistoric art.

The term  Prehistory refers to all of human history that precedes the invention of writing systems (c. 3100 B.C.E.) and the keeping of written records, and it is an immensely long period of time, some ten million years according to current theories. For the purposes of an art history survey, we split our study of Prehistory into two broad periods: Paleolithic  and  Neolithic  (from the Greek “ palaios ” (old) / “ neos ” (new) and “ lithos ” (stone), as these peoples worked with stone tools).

The timeline covered in this area of the survey is vast —c. 32,000 B.C.E. (Chauvet Caves) to 2,000 B.C.E. (Neolithic settlements)—but the question that unites this vast chronology is simple and compelling: what can we find out about objects and the people who made them and how do they connect to our contemporary experiences today?  Geography also is vast – these periods existed on all inhabitable continents, although the chronology is not the same.  Early humans arrived in the Americas much later.

Common questions about dates

B.C. or B.C.E.?

Many people use the abbreviations B.C. and A.D. with a year (for example, A.D. 2012). B.C. refers to “Before Christ,” and the initials, A.D., stand for  Anno Domini , which is Latin for “In the year of our Lord.” This system was devised by a monk in the year 525.

A more recent system uses B.C.E. which stands for “Before the Common Era” and C.E. for “Common Era.” This newer system is now widely used as a way of expressing the same periods as B.C. and A.D., but without the Christian reference. According to these systems, we count time backwards Before the Common Era (B.C.E.) and forwards in the Common Era (C.E.).

Often dates will be preceded with a “c.” or a “ca.” These are abbreviations of the Latin word “circa” which means around, or approximately. We use this before a date to indicate that we do not know exactly when so mething happened, so c. 400 B.C.E. means approximately 400 years Before the Common Era.

Terms to know

The Paleolithic Age 

The  Paleolithic Art, or Old Stone Age, spanned from around 30,000 BCE until 10,000 BCE and produced the first accomplishments in human creativity. Due to a lack of written records from this time period, nearly all of our knowledge of Paleolithic human culture and way of life comes from archaeologic and ethnographic comparisons to modern hunter-gatherer cultures. The Paleolithic lasted until the retreat of the ice, when farming and the use of metals were adopted.

A typical Paleolithic society followed a hunter-gatherer economy. Humans hunted wild animals for meat and gathered food, firewood, and materials for their tools, clothes, or shelters. The adoption of both technologies—clothing and shelter—can not be dated exactly, but they were key to humanity’s progress. As the Paleolithic era progressed, dwellings became more sophisticated, more elaborate, and more house-like. At the end of the Paleolithic era, humans began to produce works of art such as cave paintings, rock art, and jewelry, and began to engage in religious behavior such as burial and rituals.

Dwellings and Shelters

The oldest examples of Paleolithic dwellings are shelters in caves, followed by houses of wood, straw, and rock. Early humans chose locations that could be defended against predators and rivals and that were shielded from inclement weather. Many such locations could be found near rivers, lakes, and streams, perhaps with low hilltops nearby that could serve as refuges. Since water can erode and change landscapes quite drastically, many of these campsites have been destroyed. Our understanding of Paleolithic dwellings is therefore limited.

As early as 380,000 BCE, humans were constructing temporary wood huts. Other types of houses existed; these were more frequently campsites in caves or in the open air with little in the way of formal structure. The oldest examples are shelters within caves, followed by houses of wood, straw, and rock. A few examples exist of houses built out of bones.

Caves are the most famous example of Paleolithic shelters, though the number of caves used by Paleolithic people is drastically small relative to the number of hominids thought to have lived on Earth at the time. Most hominids probably never entered a cave, much less lived in one. Nonetheless, the remains of hominid settlements show interesting patterns. In one cave, a tribe of Neanderthals kept a hearth fire burning for a thousand years, leaving behind an accumulation of coals and ash. In another cave, post holes in the dirt floor reveal that the residents built some sort of shelter or enclosure with a roof to protect themselves from water dripping on them from the cave ceiling. They often used the rear portions of the cave as middens, depositing their garbage there. In the Upper Paleolithic (the latest part of the Paleolithic), caves ceased to act as houses. Instead, they likely became places for early people to gather for ritual and religious purposes.

Tents and Huts

Modern archaeologists know of few types of shelter used by ancient peoples other than caves. Some examples do exist, but they are quite rare. In Siberia, a group of Russian scientists uncovered a house or tent with a frame constructed of mammoth bones. The great tusks supported the roof, while the skulls and thighbones formed the walls of the tent. Several families could live inside, where three small hearths, little more than rings of stones, kept people warm during the winter. Around 50,000 years ago, a group of Paleolithic humans camped on a lakeshore in southern France. At Terra Amata, these hunter-gatherers built a long and narrow house. The foundation was a ring of stones, with a flat threshold stone for a door at either end. Vertical posts down the middle of the house supported roofs and walls of sticks and twigs, probably covered over with a layer of straw. A hearth outside served as the kitchen, while a smaller hearth inside kept people warm. Their residents could easily abandon both dwellings. This is why they are not considered true houses, which were a development of the  Neolithic  period rather than the Paleolithic period.

Paleolithic Artifacts

The Paleolithic is separated into three periods: the Lower Paleolithic (the earliest subdivision), Middle Paleolithic, and Upper Paleolithic. The Paleolithic era is characterized by the use of stone tools, although at the time humans also used wood and bone tools. Other organic commodities were adapted for use as tools, including leather and vegetable fibres; however, due to their nature, these have not been preserved to any great degree. The Paleolithic era has a number of artifacts that range from stone, bone, and wood tools to stone sculptures.

The earliest undisputed art originated in the Upper Paleolithic. However, there is some evidence that a preference for aesthetics emerged in the Middle Paleolithic due to the symmetry inherent in discovered artifacts and evidence of attention to detail in such things as tool shape, which has led some archaeologists to interpret these artifacts as early examples of artistic expression. There has been much dispute among scholars over the terming of early prehistoric artifacts as “art.” Generally speaking, artifacts dating from the Lower and Middle Paleolithic remain disputed as objects of artistic expression, while the Upper Paleolithic provides the first conclusive examples of art-making.

Our earliest technology?

Handaxe, lower paleolithic, about 1.8 million years old, hard green volcanic lava (phonolite), 23.8 x 10 cm, found at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, Africa © The Trustees of the British Museum

Made nearly two million years ago, stone tools such as this are the first known technological invention.

This chopping tool and others like it are the oldest objects in the British Museum. It comes from an early human campsite in the bottom layer of deposits in Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania. Potassium-argon dating indicates that this bed is between 1.6 and 2.2 million years old from top to bottom. This and other tools are dated to about 1.8 million years.

Using another hard stone as a hammer, the maker has knocked flakes off both sides of a basalt (volcanic lava) pebble so that they intersect to form a sharp edge. This could be used to chop branches from trees, cut meat from large animals or smash bones for marrow fat—an essential part of the early human diet. The flakes could also have been used as small knives for light duty tasks.

Deliberate shaping

To some people this artifact might appear crude; how can we even be certain that it is humanly made and not just bashed in rock falls or by trampling animals? A close look reveals that the edge is formed by a deliberate sequence of skillfully placed blows of more or less uniform force. Many objects of the same type, made in the same way, occur in groups called assemblages which are occasionally associated with early human remains. By contrast, natural forces strike randomly and with variable force; no pattern, purpose or uniformity can be seen in the modifications they cause.

Chopping tools and flakes from the earliest African sites were referred to as Oldowan  by the archaeologist Louis Leakey. He found this example on his first expedition to Olduvai in 1931, when he was sponsored by the British Museum.

Handaxes were still in use there some 500,000 years ago by which time their manufacture and use had spread throughout Africa, south Asia, the Middle East and Europe where they were still being made 40,000 years ago. They have even been found as far east as Korea in recent excavations. No other cultural artifact is known to have been made for such a long time across such a huge geographical range.

Handaxes are always made from stone and were held in the hand during use. Many have this characteristic teardrop or pear shape which might have been inspired by the outline of the human hand.

The beginnings of an artistic sense?

Although handaxes were used for a variety of everyday tasks including all aspects of skinning and butchering an animal or working other materials such as wood, this example is much bigger than the usual useful size of such hand held tools. Despite its symmetry and regular edges it appears difficult to use easily. As language began to develop along with tool making, was this handaxe made to suggest ideas? Does the care and craftsmanship with which it was made indicate the beginnings of the artistic sense unique to humans?

Rock art and the origins of art in Africa

Genetic and fossil evidence tells us that Homo sapiens (anatomically modern humans who evolved from an earlier species of hominids) developed on the continent of Africa more than 100,000 years ago and spread throughout the world. But what we do not know—what we have only been able to assume—is that art too began in Africa. Is Africa, where humanity originated, home to the world’s oldest art? If so, can we say that art began in Africa? 

The first examples of what we might term “art” in Africa, dating from between 100,000–60,000 years ago, emerge in two very distinct forms: personal adornment in the form of perforated seashells suspended on twine, and incised and engraved stone, ochre and ostrich eggshell.  Despite some sites being 8,000 km and 40,000 years apart, an intriguing feature of the earliest art is that these first forays appear remarkably similar. It is worth noting here that the term “art” in this context is highly problematic, in that we cannot assume that humans living 100,000 years ago, or even 10,000 years ago, had a concept of art in the same way that we do, particularly in the modern Western sense. However, it remains a useful umbrella term for our purposes here.

Pattern and design

The practice of engraving or incising, which emerges around 12,000 years ago in Saharan rock art, has its antecedents much earlier, up to 100,000 years ago. Incised and engraved stone, bone, ochre and ostrich eggshell have been found at sites in southern Africa. These marked objects share features in the expression of design, exhibiting patterns that have been classified as cross-hatching.

One of the most iconic and well-publicized sites that have yielded cross-hatch incised patterning on ochre is Blombos Cave, on the southern Cape shore of South Africa. Of the more than 8,500 fragments of ochre deriving from the MSA (Middle Stone Age) levels, 15 fragments show evidence of engraving. Two of these, dated to 77,000 years ago, have received the most attention for the design of cross-hatch pattern.

Incised ochre from Blombos Cave, South Africa. Photo by Chris. S. Henshilwood © Chris. S. Henshilwood

For many archaeologists, the incised pieces of ochre at Blombos are the most complex and best-formed evidence for early abstract representations, and are unequivocal evidence for symbolic thought and language. The debate about when we became a symbolic species and acquired fully syntactical language—what archaeologists term ‘modern human behaviour’—is both complex and contested. It has been proposed that these cross-hatch patterns are clear evidence of thinking symbolically, because the motifs are not representational and as such are culturally constructed and arbitrary. Moreover, in order for the meaning of this motif to be conveyed to others, language is a prerequisite.

The Blombos engravings are not isolated occurrences, since the presence of such designs occur at more than half a dozen other sites in South Africa, suggesting that this pattern is indeed important in some way, and not the result of idiosyncratic behavior. It is worth noting, however, that for some scholars, the premise that the pattern is symbolic is not so certain. The patterns may indeed have a meaning, but it is how that meaning is associated, either by resemblance (iconic) or correlation (indexical), that is important for our understanding of human cognition.

Fragments of engraved ostrich eggshells from the Howiesons Poort of Diepkloof Rock Shelter, Western Cape, South Africa, dated to 60,000 BP. Courtesy of Jean-Pierre Texier, Diepkloof project. © Jean-Pierre Texier

Personal ornamentation and engraved designs are the earliest evidence of art in Africa, and are inextricably tied up with the development of human cognition. For tens of thousands of years, there has been not only a capacity for, but a motivation to adorn and to inscribe, to make visual that which is important. The interesting and pertinent issue in the context of this project is that the rock art we are cataloguing, describing and researching comes from a tradition that goes far back into African prehistory. The techniques and subject matter resonate over the millennia.

Blombos Cave

Discoveries of engraved stones and beads in the Blombos Cave of South Africa has led some archaeologists to believe that early  Homo sapiens  were capable of abstraction and the production of symbolic art. Made from  ochre , the stones are engraved with abstract patterns, while the beads are made from Nassarius shells. While they are simpler than prehistoric cave paintings found in Europe, some scholars believe these engraved stones represent the earliest known artworks, dating from 75,000 years ago.

Apollo 11 Cave Stones, Namibia

Approximately 25,000 years ago, in a rock shelter in the Huns Mountains of Namibia on the southwest coast of Africa (today part of the Ai-Ais Richtersveld Transfrontier Park), an animal was drawn in charcoal on a hand-sized slab of stone. The stone was left behind, over time becoming buried on the floor of the cave by layers of sediment and debris until 1969 when a team led by German archaeologist W. E. Wendt excavated the rock shelter and found the first fragment. Wendt named the cave “Apollo 11” upon hearing on his shortwave radio of NASA’s successful space mission to the moon. It was more than three years later however, after a subsequent excavation, when Wendt discovered the matching fragment, that archaeologists and art historians began to understand the significance of the find.

The Apollo 11 rock shelter overlooks a dry gorge, sitting twenty meters above what was once a river that ran along the valley floor. The cave entrance is wide, about twenty-eight meters across, and the cave itself is deep: eleven meters from front to back. While today a person can stand upright only in the front section of the cave, during the Middle Stone Age, as well as in the periods before and after, the rock shelter was an active site of ongoing human settlement.

Seven painted stone slabs of brown-grey quartzite, depicting a variety of animals painted in charcoal, ochre and white, were located in a Middle Stone Age deposit (100,000–60,000 years ago). These images are not easily identifiable to species level, but have been interpreted variously as felines and/or bovids; one in particular has been observed to be either a zebra, giraffe or ostrich, demonstrating the ambiguous nature of the depictions.

Apollo 11 Cave Stones, Namibia, quartzite, c. 25,500–25,300 B.C.E. Image courtesy of State Museum of Namibia.

View across Fish River Canyon toward the Huns Mountains, /Ai-/Ais – Richtersveld Transfrontier Park, southern Namibia (photo:  Thomas Schoch , CC-BY-SA-3.00

Excavation site of the Apollo 11 stones (photo: Jutta Vogel Stiftung)

Inside the cave, above and below the layer where the Apollo 11 cave stones were found, archaeologists unearthed a sequence of cultural layers representing over 100,000 years of human occupation. In these layers stone artifacts, typical of the Middle Stone Age period—such as blades, pointed flakes, and scraper—were found in raw materials not native to the region, signaling stone tool technology transported over long distances. Among the remnants of hearths, ostrich eggshell fragments bearing traces of red color were also found—either remnants of ornamental painting or evidence that the eggshells were used as containers for pigment.

Recently discovered examples of patterned stone, ochre and ostrich eggshell, as well as evidence of personal ornamentation emerging from Middle Stone Age Africa, have demonstrated that “art” is not only a much older phenomenon than previously thought, but that it has its roots in the African continent. Africa is where we share a common humanity.

The cave stones are what archaeologists term art mobilier —small-scale prehistoric art that is moveable. But mobile art, and rock art generally, is not unique to Africa. Rock art is a global phenomenon that can be found across the World—in Europe, Asia, Australia, and North and South America. While we cannot know for certain what these early humans intended by the things that they made, by focusing on art as the product of humanity’s creativity and imagination we can begin to explore where, and hypothesize why, art began.

Paleolithic art, an introduction

                              Replica of the painting from the Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc Cave in southern France (Anthropos museum, Brno)

The oldest art: ornamentation

Humans ( Homo sapiens ) make art. We do this for many reasons and with whatever technologies are available to us. Recent research suggests that Neanderthals also made art.

Extremely old, non-representational ornamentation has been found across Africa. The oldest firmly-dated example is a collection of 82,000 year old Nassarius snail shells found in Morocco that are pierced and covered with red ochre. Wear patterns suggest that they may have been strung beads. Nassarius shell beads found in Israel may be more than 100,000 years old and in the  Blombos cave in South Africa, pierced shells and small pieces of ochre (red Hematite) etched with simple geometric patterns have been found in a 75,000-year-old layer of sediment.

The oldest representational art

Some of the oldest known representational imagery comes from the Aurignacian culture of the Upper Paleolithic period (Paleolithic means old stone age). Archaeological discoveries across a broad swath of Europe (especially Southern France, Northern Spain, and Swabia, in Germany) include over two hundred caves with spectacular Aurignacian paintings, drawings, and sculpture that are among the earliest undisputed examples of representational image-making. Among the oldest of these is a 2.4-inch tall female figure carved out of mammoth ivory that was found in six fragments in the Hohle Fels cave near Schelklingen in southern Germany. It dates to 35,000 B.C.E.

Female Figure of Hohlefels, c. 35,000 B.C.E., ivory, found in cave near Schelklinge, southern Germany (photo: Ramessos, CC BY-SA 3.0)

Warty pig (Sus celebensis), c. 43,900 B.C.E., painted with ocher (clay pigment), Maros-Pangkep caves, Leang Bulu’ Sipong 4, South Sulawesi, Indonesia

The caves at Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc,  Lascaux , Pech Merle, and  Altamira  contain the best known examples of pre-historic painting and drawing. Here are remarkably evocative renderings of animals and some humans that employ a complex mix of naturalism and abstraction. Archaeologists that study Paleolithic era humans, believe that the paintings discovered in 1994, in the cave at Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc in the Ardéche valley in France, are more than 30,000 years old. The images found at Lascaux and Altamira are more recent, dating to approximately 15,000 B.C.E. The paintings at Pech Merle date to both 25,000 and 15,000 B.C.E. The world’s oldest known cave painting was found in Sulawesi,  Indonesia  in 2017 and was made at least 45,500 years ago.

What can we really know about the creators of these paintings and what the images originally meant? These are questions that are difficult enough when we study art made only 500 years ago. It is much more perilous to assert meaning for the art of people who shared our anatomy but had not yet developed the cultures or linguistic structures that shaped who we have become. Do the tools of art history even apply? Here is evidence of a visual language that collapses the more than 1,000 generations that separate us, but we must be cautious. This is especially so if we want to understand the people that made this art as a way to understand ourselves. The desire to speculate based on what we see and the physical evidence of the caves is wildly seductive.

Replica of the painting from the Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc Cave in southern France

Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc

The cave at Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc is over 1,000 feet in length with two large chambers. Carbon samples date the charcoal used to depict the two head-to-head Rhinoceroses (see the image above, bottom right) to between 30,340 and 32,410 years before 1995 when the samples were taken. The cave’s drawings depict other large animals including horses, mammoths, musk ox, ibex, reindeer, aurochs, megaceros deer, panther, and owl (scholars note that these animals were not then a normal part of people’s diet). Photographs show that the drawing at the top of this essay is very carefully rendered but may be misleading. We see a group of horses, rhinos, and bison and we see them as a group, overlapping and skewed in scale. But the photograph distorts the way these animal figures would have been originally seen. The bright electric lights used by the photographer create a broad flat scope of vision; how different to see each animal emerge from the dark under the flickering light cast by a flame.

A word of caution

In a 2009 presentation at University of California San Diego, Dr. Randell White, Professor of Anthropology at New York University, suggested that the overlapping horses pictured above might represent the same horse over time, running, eating, sleeping, etc. Perhaps these are far more sophisticated representations than we have imagined.  In addition to the drawings, the cave is littered with the skulls and bones of cave bear and the track of a wolf. There is also a footprint thought to have been made by an eight-year-old boy.

Two main types of Upper Paleolithic  art have survived. The first we can classify as permanently located works found on the walls within caves. Mostly unknown prior to the final decades of the nineteenth century, many such sites have now been discovered throughout much of southern Europe and have provided historians and archaeologists new insights into humankind millennia prior to the creation of writing. The subjects of these works vary: we may observe a variety of geometric motifs, many types of flora and fauna, and the occasional human figure. They also fluctuate in size; ranging from several inches to large-scale compositions that span many feet in length.

The second category of Paleolithic art may be called portable since these works are generally of a small-scale—a logical size given the nomadic nature of Paleolithic peoples. Despite their often diminutive size, the creation of these portable objects signifies a remarkable allocation of time and effort.

Paleolithic Sculpture

Sculptural work from the Paleolithic consists mainly of figurines, beads, and some decorative utilitarian objects constructed with stone, bone, ivory, clay, and wood. During prehistoric times, rock shelters were  places of dwelling and communal gathering as well as possible spaces for rituals  Unsurprisingly, caves were the locations of many archeological discoveries owing to their secluded locations and protection from the elements.  Paintings were also found in caves – those that have survived were ritual spaces, there is no evidence that the deep and remote caves were inhabited.   All of the surviving sculptures are small and portable – they would easily fit in your pocket.  Surviving sculpture are mostly carved from stone or animal ivory and bones. A few ceramic works have been found (the clay figures were air-dried – firing technology is not known to have existed in the Paleolithic).   The most common subject is the female form, often with exaggerated secondary sexual characteristics and the facial features are minimal.  The best known of these figures is the Woman of Willendorf.

 Woman of Willendorf

The name of this prehistoric sculpture refers to a Roman goddess—but what did she originally represent?

Can a 25,000-year-old object be a work of art?

The artifact known as the  Venus of Willendorf  dates to between 24,000–22,000 B.C.E., making it one of the oldest and most famous surviving works of art. But what does it mean to be a work of art?

The Oxford English Dictionary, perhaps the authority on the English language, defines the word “art” as

the application of skill to the arts of imitation and design, painting, engraving, sculpture, architecture; the cultivation of these in its principles, practice, and results; the skillful production of the beautiful in visible forms.

Some of the words and phrases that stand out within this definition include “application of skill,” “imitation,” and “beautiful.” By this definition, the concept of “art” involves the use of skill to create an object that contains some appreciation of aesthetics. The object is not only made, it is made with an attempt of creating something that contains elements of beauty.

anything made by human art and workmanship; an artificial product. In Archaeol[ogy] applied to the rude products of aboriginal workmanship as distinguished from natural remains.

Again, some keywords and phrases are important: “anything made by human art,” and “rude products.” Clearly, an artifact is any object created by humankind regardless of the “skill” of its creator or the absence of “beauty.”

Click here to go to Sketchfab by the Natural History Museum, Vienna

Artifact, then, is anything created by humankind, and art is a particular kind of artifact, a group of objects under the broad umbrella of artifact, in which beauty has been achieved through the application of skills. Think of the average plastic spoon: a uniform white color, mass produced, and unremarkable in just about every way. While it serves a function—say, for example, to stir your hot chocolate—the person who designed it likely did so without any real dedication or commitment to making this utilitarian object beautiful. You have likely never lovingly gazed at a plastic spoon and remarked, “Wow! Now that’s a beautiful spoon!” This is in contrast to a silver spoon you might purchase at Tiffany & Co. While their spoon could just as well stir cream into your morning coffee, it was skillfully designed by a person who attempted to make it aesthetically pleasing; note the elegant bend of the handle, the gentle luster of the metal, the graceful slope of the bowl.

These terms are important to bear in mind when analyzing prehistoric art. While it is unlikely people from the  Upper Paleolithic   period cared to conceptualize what it meant to make art or to be an artist, it cannot be denied that the objects they created were made with skill, were often made as a way of imitating the world around them, and were made with a particular care to create something beautiful.  They likely represent, for the Paleolithic peoples who created them, objects made with great competence and with a particular interest in aesthetics.

Caves and pockets – permanent and portable

Two main types of Upper  Paleolithic art  have survived. The first we can classify as permanently located works found on the walls within caves. Mostly unknown prior to the final decades of the nineteenth century, many such sites have now been discovered throughout much of southern Europe and have provided historians and archaeologists new insights into humankind millennia prior to the creation of writing. The subjects of these works vary: we may observe a variety of geometric motifs, many types of flora and fauna, and the occasional human figure. They also fluctuate in size; ranging from several inches to large-scale compositions that span many feet in length.

The second category of Paleolithic art may be called portable since these works are generally of a small-scale—a logical size given the nomadic nature of Paleolithic peoples. Despite their often diminutive size, the creation of these portable objects signifies a remarkable allocation of time and effort. As such, these figurines were significant enough to take along during the nomadic wanderings of their Paleolithic creators.

The  Venus of Willendorf  is a perfect example of this. Josef Szombathy, an Austro-Hungarian archaeologist, discovered this work in 1908 outside the small Austrian village of Willendorf. Although generally projected in art history classrooms to be several feet tall, this limestone figurine is petite in size. She measures just under 11.1 cm high, and could fit comfortably in the palm of your hand. This small scale allowed whoever carved (or, perhaps owned) this figurine to carry it during their nearly daily nomadic travels in search of food. 

Naming and dating

Clearly, the Paleolithic sculptor who made this small figurine would never have named it the  Venus of Willendorf . Venus was the name of the Roman goddess of love and ideal beauty. When discovered outside the Austrian village of Willendorf, scholars mistakenly assumed that this figure was likewise a goddess of love and beauty. There is absolutely no evidence though that the  Venus of Willendorf  shared a function similar to its classically inspired namesake. However incorrect the name may be, it has endured and tells us more about those who found her than those who made her.

Dating too can be a problem, especially since Prehistoric art, by definition, has no written record. In fact, the definition of the word prehistoric is that written language did not yet exist, so the creator of the  Venus of Willendorf  could not have incised “Bob made this in the year 24,000 B.C.E.” on the back. In addition, stone artifacts present a special problem since we are interested in the date that the stone was carved, not the date of the material itself. Despite these hurdles, art historians and archaeologists attempt to establish dates for prehistoric finds through two processes. The first is called relative dating and the second involves an examination of the stratification of an object’s discovery.

Relative dating is an easily understood process that involves stylistically comparing an object whose date is uncertain to other objects whose dates have been firmly established. By correctly fitting the unknown object into this stylistic chronology, scholars can find a very general chronological date for an object. A simple example can illustrate this method. The first Chevrolet Corvette was sold during the 1953 model year, and this particular car has gone through numerous iterations up to its most recent version. If presented with pictures of the Corvette’s development from every five years to establish the stylistic development from its earliest model to the most recent (for example, images from the 1953, 1958, 1963, and all the way to the current model), you would have a general idea of the changes the car underwent over time. If then given a picture of a Corvette from an unknown year, you could, on the basis of stylistic analysis, generally place it within the visual chronology of this car with some accuracy. The Corvette is a convenient example, but the same exercise could be applied to iPods, Coca-Cola bottles, suits, or any other object that changes over time.

The second way scholars date the  Venus of Willendorf  is through an analysis of where it was found. Generally, the deeper an object is recovered from the earth, the longer that object has been buried. Imagine a penny jar that has had coins added to it for hundreds of years. It is a good bet that the coins at the bottom of that jar are the oldest whereas those at the top are the newest. The same applies to Paleolithic objects. Because of the depth at which these objects are found, we can infer that they are very old indeed.

What did it mean?

In the absence of writing, art historians rely on the objects themselves to learn about ancient peoples. The form of the  Venus of Willendorf —that is, what it looks like—may very well inform what it originally meant. The most conspicuous elements of her anatomy are those that deal with the process of reproduction and child rearing. The artist took particular care to emphasize her breasts, which some scholars suggest indicates that she is able to nurse a child. The artist also brought deliberate attention to her pubic region. Traces of a  pigment —red ochre—can still be seen on parts of the figurine.

In contrast, the sculptor placed scant attention on the non-reproductive parts of her body. This is particularly noticeable in the figure’s limbs, where there is little emphasis placed on musculature or anatomical accuracy. We may infer from the small size of her feet that she was not meant to be free standing, and was either meant to be carried or placed lying down. The artist carved the figure’s upper arms along her upper torso, and her lower arms are only barely visible resting upon the top of her breasts. As enigmatic as the lack of attention to her limbs is, the absence of attention to the face is even more striking. No eyes, nose, ears, or mouth remain visible. Instead, our attention is drawn to seven horizontal bands that wrap in concentric circles from the crown of her head. Some scholars have suggested her head is obscured by a knit cap pulled downward, others suggest that these forms may represent braided or beaded hair and that her face, perhaps once painted, is angled downward.

If the face was purposefully obscured, the Paleolithic sculptor may have created, not a portrait of a particular person, but rather a representation of the reproductive and child rearing aspects of a woman. In combination with the emphasis on the breasts and pubic area, it seems likely that the Venus of Willendorf had a function that related to fertility.

Without doubt, we can learn much more from the Venus of Willendorf than its diminutive size might at first suggest. We learn about relative dating and stratification. We learn that these nomadic people living almost 25,000 years ago cared about making objects beautiful. And we can learn that these Paleolithic people had an awareness of the importance of the women.

The Venus of Willendorf is only one example dozens of paleolithic figures we believe may have been associated with fertility. Nevertheless, it retains a place of prominence within the history of human art

The Lion Man

The cave lion was the fiercest animal of the ice age, and this mammoth ivory carving combines human with lion.

URL:  https://youtu.be/mJWUPBQpX1c

Cite this page as: The British Museum, “ Lion Man ,” in  Smarthistory , March 30, 2018, accessed December 27, 2023,  https://smarthistory.org/lion-man-2/ .

Paleolithic Cave Painting

We are as likely to communicate using easily interpretable pictures as we are text. Portable handheld devices enable us to tell others via social media what we are doing and thinking. Approximately 15,000 years ago, we also communicated in pictures—but with no written language.

Lascaux II (replica of the original cave, which is closed to the public), original cave: c. 16,000–14,000 B.C.E., 11 feet 6 inches long (photo:  Francesco Bandarin , CC BY-SA 3.0)

The cave of Lascaux, France is one of almost 350 similar sites that are known to exist—most are isolated to a region of southern France and  northern Spain . Both Neanderthals (named after the site in which their bones were first discovered—the Neander Valley in Germany) and Modern Humans (early Homo Sapiens Sapiens) coexisted in this region 30,000 years ago. Life was short and very difficult; resources were scarce and the climate was very cold.

Map showing the location of three well-known prehistoric cave painting sites in France and Spain © Google

Location, location, location!

Detail of Hall of Bulls, Lascaux II (replica of the original cave, which is closed to the public), original cave: c. 16,000–14,000 B.C.E.

How did they do it?

The animals are rendered in what has come to be called “ twisted perspective ,” in which their bodies are depicted in profile while we see the horns from a more frontal viewpoint. The images are sometimes entirely linear—line drawn to define the animal’s contour. In many other cases, the animals are described in solid and blended colors blown by mouth onto the wall. In other portions of the Lascaux cave, artists carved lines into the soft calcite surface. Some of these are infilled with color—others are not.

The cave spaces range widely in size and ease of access. The famous Hall of Bulls is large enough to hold some fifty people. Other “rooms” and “halls” are extraordinarily narrow and tall.

Archaeologists have found hundreds of stone tools. They have also identified holes in some walls that may have supported tree-limb scaffolding that would have elevated an artist high enough to reach the upper surfaces. Fossilized pollen has been found; these grains were inadvertently brought into the cave by early visitors and are helping scientists understand the world outside.

Left wall of the Hall of Bulls, Lascaux II (replica of the original cave, which is closed to the public), original cave: c. 16,000–14,000 B.C.E., 11 feet 6 inches long

Hall of Bulls

Why did they do it.

Many scholars have speculated about why prehistoric people painted and engraved the walls at Lascaux and other caves like it. Perhaps the most famous theory was put forth by a priest named Henri Breuil. Breuil spent considerable time in many of the caves, meticulously recording the images in drawings when the paintings were too challenging to photograph. Relying primarily on a field of study known as  ethnography , Breuil believed that the images played a role in “hunting magic.” The theory suggests that the prehistoric people who used the cave may have believed that a way to overpower their prey involved creating images of it during rituals designed to ensure a successful hunt. This seems plausible when we remember that survival was entirely dependent on successful foraging and hunting, though it is also important to remember how little we actually know about these people.

Disemboweled bison and bird-headed human figure? Cave at Lascaux, c. 16,000–14,000 B.C.E.

Drawn in strong, black lines, bristles with energy, as the fur on the back of its neck stands up and the head is radically turned to face us. A form drawn under the bison’s abdomen is interpreted as internal organs, spilling out from a wound. A more crudely drawn form positioned below and to the left of the bison may represent a humanoid figure with the head of a bird. Nearby, a thin line is topped with another bird and there is also an arrow with barbs. Further below and to the far left the partial outline of a rhinoceros can be identified.

Interpreters of this image tend to agree that some sort of interaction has taken place among these animals and the bird-headed human figure—in which the bison has sustained injury either from a weapon or from the horn of the rhinoceros. Why the person in the image has the rudimentary head of a bird, and why a bird form sits atop a stick very close to him is a mystery. Some suggest that the person is a shaman —a kind of priest or healer with powers involving the ability to communicate with spirits of other worlds. Regardless, this riveting image appears to depict action and reaction, although many aspects of it are difficult to piece together.

Preservation for future study

The Caves of Lascaux are the most famous of all of the known caves in the region. In fact, their popularity has permanently endangered them. From 1940 to 1963, the numbers of visitors and their impact on the delicately balanced environment of the cave—which supported the preservation of the cave images for so long—necessitated the cave’s closure to the public. A replica called Lascaux II was created about 200 yards away from the site. The original Lascaux cave is now a designated UNESCO World Heritage Site. Lascaux will require constant vigilance and upkeep to preserve it for future generations.  Many mysteries continue to surround Lascaux, but there is one certainty. The very human need to communicate in the form of pictures—for whatever purpose—has persisted since our earliest beginnings.

Cave of Altamira and Paleolithic Cave Art of Northern Spain (UNESCO/NHK)

URL: https://youtu.be/qyIfPbn0RDs

The Neolithic revolution

Neolithic art and architecture.

by DR. SENTA GERMAN

A settled life

When people think of the Neolithic era, they often think of Stonehenge, the iconic image of this early time. Dating to approximately 3000 B.C.E. and set on Salisbury Plain in England, it is a structure larger and more complex than anything built before it in Europe.  Stonehenge is an example of the cultural advances brought about by the Neolithic revolution—the most important development in human history. The way we live today, settled in homes, close to other people in towns and cities, protected by laws, eating food grown on farms, and with leisure time to learn, explore and invent is all a result of the Neolithic revolution, which occurred approximately 11,500-5,000 years ago. The revolution which led to our way of life was the development of the technology needed to plant and harvest crops and to domesticate animals.

Before the Neolithic revolution, it’s likely you would have lived with your extended family as a nomad, never staying anywhere for more than a few months, always living in temporary shelters, always searching for food and never owning anything you couldn’t easily pack in a pocket or a sack. The change to the Neolithic way of life was huge and led to many of the pleasures (lots of food, friends and a comfortable home) that we still enjoy today.

Stonehenge, c. 3,000 B.C.E., Salisbury Plain, England

Neolithic art

The massive changes in the way people lived also changed the types of art they made. Neolithic sculpture became bigger, in part, because people didn’t have to carry it around anymore; pottery became more widespread and was used to store food harvested from farms. Alcohol was first produced during this period and architecture, as well as its interior and exterior decoration, first appears. In short, people settled down and began to live in one place, year after year.

It seems very unlikely that Stonehenge could have been made by earlier, Paleolithic, nomads. It would have been a waste to invest so much time and energy building a monument in a place to which they might never return or might only return infrequently. After all, the effort to build it was extraordinary. Stonehenge is approximately 320 feet in circumference and the stones which compose the outer ring weigh as much as 50 tons; the small stones, weighing as much as 6 tons, were quarried from as far away as 450 miles. The use or meaning of Stonehenge is not clear, but the design, planning and execution could have only been carried out by a culture in which authority was unquestioned. Here is a culture that was able to rally hundreds of people to perform very hard work for extended periods of time. This is another characteristic of the Neolithic era.

Skulls with plaster and shell from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B, 6,000-7,000 B.C.E., found at the Yiftah’el archaeological site in the Lower Galilee, Israel

Plastered skulls

The Neolithic period is also important because it is when we first find good evidence for religious practice, a perpetual inspiration for the fine arts. Perhaps most fascinating are the plaster skulls found around the area of the Levant, at six sites, including Jericho. At this time in the Neolithic, c. 7000-6,000 B.C.E., people were often buried under the floors of homes, and in some cases their skulls were removed and covered with plaster in order to create very life-like faces, complete with shells inset for eyes and paint to imitate hair and mustaches.

The traditional interpretation of these the skulls has been that they offered a means of preserving and worshiping male ancestors. However, recent research has shown that among the sixty-one plastered skulls that have been found, there is a generous number that come from the bodies of women and children. Perhaps the skulls are not so much religious objects but rather powerful images made to aid in mourning lost loved ones.

Neolithic peoples didn’t have written language, so we may never know what their creators intended.  (The earliest example of writing develops in Sumer in Mesopotamia in the late 4th millennium B.C.E. However, there are scholars that believe that earlier proto-writing developed during the Neolithic period).

Neolithic Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East

Neolithic sites can be found in Jericho, Catalhuyuk, and Ain Ghazal

Tell es-sultan, Jerico archaeological site from the air (photo:  Fullo88 , public domain)

Biblical reference

The site of Jericho is best known for its identity in the Bible and this has drawn pilgrims and explorers to it as early as the 4th century C.E.; serious archaeological exploration didn’t begin until the latter half of the 19th century. What continues to draw archaeologists to Jericho today is the hope of finding some evidence of the warrior Joshua, who led the Israelites to an unlikely victory against the Canaanites (“the walls of the city fell when Joshua and his men marched around them blowing horns” Joshua 6:1-27). Although unequivocal evidence of Joshua himself has yet to be found, what has been uncovered are some 12,000 years of human activity.

The most spectacular finds at Jericho, however, do not date to the time of Joshua, roughly the Bronze Age (3300-1200 B.C.E.), but rather to the earliest part of the Neolithic era, before even the technology to make pottery had been discovered.

Looking down at the tower at Jericho (photo:  Reinhard Dietrich , public domain)

The site of Jericho rises above the wide plain of the Jordan Valley, its height the result of layer upon layer of human habitation, a formation called a Tell. The earliest visitors to the site who left remains (stone tools) came in the Mesolithic period (around 9000 B.C.E.) but the first settlement at the site, around the Ein as-Sultan spring, dates to the early Neolithic era, and these people, who built homes, grew plants, and kept animals, were among the earliest to do such anywhere in the world. Specifically, in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A levels at Jericho (8500-7000 B.C.E.) archaeologists found remains of a very large settlement of circular homes made with mud brick and topped with domed roofs.

As the name of this era implies, these early people at Jericho had not yet figured out how to make pottery, but they made vessels out of stone, wove cloth and for tools were trading for a particularly useful kind of stone, obsidian, from as far away as Çiftlik, in eastern Turkey. The settlement grew quickly and, for reasons unknown, the inhabitants soon constructed a substantial stone wall and exterior ditch around their town, complete with a stone tower almost eight meters high, set against the inner side of the wall. Theories as to the function of this wall range from military defense to keeping out animal predators to even combating the natural rising of the level of the ground surrounding the settlement. However, regardless of its original use, here we have the first version of the walls Joshua so ably conquered some six thousand years later.

Plastered human skulls

The Pre-Pottery Neolithic A period is followed by the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (7000-5200 BCE), which was different from its predecessor in important ways. Houses in this era were uniformly rectangular and constructed with a new kind of rectangular mud bricks which were decorated with herringbone thumb impressions, and always laid lengthwise in thick mud mortar. This mortar, like a plaster, was also used to create a smooth surface on the interior walls, extending down across the floors as well. In this period there is some strong evidence for cult or religious belief at Jericho. Archaeologists discovered one uniquely large building dating to the period with unique series of plastered interior pits and basins as well as domed adjoining structures and it is thought this was for ceremonial use.

Plastered human skull with shell eyes from Jericho, Pre-Pottery Neolithic B, c. 7200 B.C.E. (The British Museum)

Other possible evidence of cult practice was discovered in several homes of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic town, in the form of plastered human skulls which were molded over to resemble living heads. Shells were used for eyes and traces of paint revealed that skin and hair were also included in the representations. The largest group found together were nine examples, buried in the fill below the plastered floor of one house.

Jericho isn’t the only site at which plastered skulls have been found in Pre-Pottery Neolithic B levels; they have also been found at Tell Ramad, Beisamoun, Kfar Hahoresh, ‘Ain Ghazal and Nahal Hemar. Among the some sixty-two skulls discovered among these sites, we know that older and younger men as well as women and children are represented, which poses interesting questions as to their meaning. Were they focal points in ancestor worship, as was originally thought, or did they function as images by which deceased family members could be remembered? As we are without any written record of the belief system practiced in the Neolithic period in the area, we will never know.

The Jericho Skull

Video from the British Museum  URL: https://youtu.be/bMZWsM687MY

The Jericho Skull   by  The British Museum  on  Sketchfab

Cite this page as: The British Museum, “The Jericho Skull,” in  Smarthistory , March 30, 2018, accessed December 27, 2023,  https://smarthistory.org/jericho-skull/ .

Çatalhöyük after the first excavations by James Mellaart and his team (photo:  Omar hoftun , CC BY-SA 3.0)

Çatalhöyük or Çatal Höyük (pronounced “cha-tal hay OOK”) is not the oldest site of the  Neolithic era  or the largest, but it is extremely important to the beginning of art. Located near the modern city of Konya in south central Turkey, it was inhabited 9000 years ago by up to 8000 people who lived together in a large town. Çatalhöyük, across its history, witnesses the transition from exclusively hunting and gathering subsistence to increasing skill in plant and animal domestication. We might see Çatalhöyük as a site whose history is about one of man’s most important transformations: from nomad to settler. It is also a site at which we see art, both painting and sculpture, appear to play a newly important role in the lives of settled people.

Map of Turkey noting the location of Çatalhöyük (underlying map © Google)

South Excavation Area, Çatalhöyük (photo:  Çatalhöyük , CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Çatalhöyük had no streets or foot paths; the houses were built right up against each other and the people who lived in them traveled over the town’s rooftops and entered their homes through holes in the roofs, climbing down a ladder. Communal ovens were built above the homes of Çatalhöyük and we can assume group activities were performed in this elevated space as well.

From left: A hearth, oven, and ladder cut in Building 56, South Area, Çatalhöyük (photo:  Çatalhöyük , CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Like at  Jericho , the deceased were placed under the floors or platforms in houses and sometimes the skulls were removed and plastered to resemble live faces. The burials at Çatalhöyük show no significant variations, either based on wealth or gender; the only bodies which were treated differently, decorated with beads and covered with ochre, were those of children. The excavator of Çatalhöyük believes that this special concern for youths at the site may be a reflection of the society becoming more sedentary and required larger numbers of children because of increased labor, exchange, and inheritance needs.

Neolithic Wall Painting in Building 80, Çatalhöyük (photo:  Çatalhöyük , CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Art is everywhere among the remains of Çatalhöyük—geometric designs as well as representations of animals and people. Repeated lozenges and zigzags dance across smooth plaster walls, people are sculpted in clay, pairs of leopards are formed in relief facing one another at the sides of rooms, hunting parties are painted baiting a wild bull. The volume and variety of art at Çatalhöyük is immense and must be understood as a vital, functional part of the everyday lives of its ancient inhabitants.

Seated Woman of Çatalhöyük (head is a restoration) (The Museum of Anatolian Civilizations, Ankara, Turkey; photo:  Nevit Dilmen , CC BY-SA 3.0)

Many figurines have been found at the site, the most famous of which illustrates a large woman seated on or between two large felines. The figurines, which illustrate both humans and animals, are made from a variety of materials but the largest proportion are quite small and made of barely fired clay. These casual figurines are found most frequently in garbage pits, but also in oven walls, house walls, floors and left in abandoned structures. The figurines often show evidence of having been poked, scratched or broken, and it is generally believed that they functioned as wish tokens or to ward off bad spirits.

Nearly every house excavated at Çatalhöyük was found to contain decorations on its walls and platforms, most often in the main room of the house. Moreover, this work was constantly being renewed; the plaster of the main room of a house seems to have been redone as frequently as every month or season. Both geometric and figural images were popular in two-dimensional wall painting and the excavator of the site believes that geometric wall painting was particularly associated with adjacent buried youths.

Hunters attack an aurochs, Çatalhöyük (photo:  Çatalhöyük , CC BY-SA 3.0)

Figural paintings show the animal world alone, such as, for instance, two cranes facing each other standing behind a fox, or in interaction with people, such as a vulture pecking at a human corpse or hunting scenes. Wall reliefs are found at Çatalhöyük with some frequency, most often representing animals, such as pairs of animals facing each other and human-like creatures. These latter reliefs, alternatively thought to be bears, goddesses or regular humans, are always represented splayed, with their heads, hands and feet removed, presumably at the time the house was abandoned.

Bull bucrania, corner installation in Building 77, Çatalhöyük (photo:  Çatalhöyük , CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

The most remarkable art found at Çatalhöyük, however, are the installations of animal remains and among these the most striking are the bull bucrania. In many houses the main room was decorated with several plastered skulls of bulls set into the walls (most common on East or West walls) or platforms, the pointed horns thrust out into the communal space. Often the bucrania would be painted ochre red. In addition to these, the remains of other animals’ skulls, teeth, beaks, tusks, or horns were set into the walls and platforms, plastered and painted. It would appear that the ancient residents of Çatalhöyük were only interested in taking the pointy parts of the animals back to their homes!

How can we possibly understand this practice of interior decoration with the remains of animals? A clue might be in the types of creatures found and represented. Most of the animals represented in the art of Çatalhöyük were not domesticated; wild animals dominate the art at the site. Interestingly, examination of bone refuse shows that the majority of the meat which was consumed was of wild animals, especially bulls. The excavator believes this selection in art and cuisine had to do with the contemporary era of increased domestication of animals and what is being celebrated are the animals which are part of the memory of the recent cultural past, when hunting was much more important for survival.

Neolithic Western Europe

Brú na bóinne, ireland, by  unesco, brú na bóinne – archaeological ensemble of the bend of the boyne.

The three main prehistoric sites of the Brú na Bóinne Complex, Newgrange, Knowth, and Dowth, are situated on the north bank of the River Boyne 50 km north of Dublin. This is Europe’s largest and most important concentration of prehistoric megalithic art. The monuments there had social, economic, religious and funerary functions.

Newgrange, a prehistoric tomb in Ireland

Stonehenge, Avebury and Associated Sites

In the south of england, circles of huge stones rose from the plains..

Stonehenge and Avebury, in Wiltshire, are among the most famous groups of megaliths in the world. The two sanctuaries consist of circles of menhirs arranged in a pattern whose astronomical significance is still being explored. These holy places and the nearby Neolithic sites are an incomparable testimony to prehistoric times. Learn more on the  UNESCO World Heritage List  website.

Stonehenge, Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire, England, c. 2550–1600 B.C.E., circle 97 feet in diameter, trilithons: 24 feet high (photo:  Maedin Tureaud , CC BY-SA 3.0)

Stonehenge, on Salisbury Plain in England, is one of the most recognizable monuments of the Neolithic world and one of the most popular, with over one million visitors a year. People come to see Stonehenge because it is so impossibly big and so impossibly old; some are searching for a connection with a prehistoric past; some come to witness the workings of a massive astrological observatory. The people living in the fourth millennium B.C.E. who began work on Stonehenge were contemporary with the first dynasties of  Ancient Egypt,  and their efforts predate the building of the Pyramids. What they created has endured millennia and still intrigues us today.

Aerial view, 2014, Stonehenge, Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire, England, c. 2550–1600 B.C.E., circle 97 feet in diameter, trilithons: 24 feet high (photo:  timeyres , CC BY-SA 2.0)

In fact, what we see today is the result of at least three phases of construction, although there is still a lot of controversy among archaeologists about exactly how and when these phases occurred. It is generally agreed that the first phase of construction at Stonehenge occurred around 3100 B.C.E., when a great circular ditch about six feet deep was dug with a bank of dirt within it about 360 feet in diameter, with a large entrance to the northeast and a smaller one to the south. This circular ditch and bank together is called a henge. Within the henge were dug 56 pits, each slightly more than three feet in diameter, called Aubrey holes, after John Aubrey, the 17th century English archaeologist who first found them. These holes, it is thought, were either originally filled with upright bluestones or upright wooden beams. If it was bluestones which filled the Aubrey holes, it involved quite a bit of effort as each weighed between 2 and 4 tons and were mined from the Preseli Hills, about 250 miles away in Wales.

The second phase of work at Stonehenge occurred approximately 100–200 years later and involved the setting up of upright wooden posts (possibly of a roofed structure) in the center of the henge, as well as more upright posts near the northeast and southern entrances. Surprisingly, it is also during this second phase at Stonehenge that it was used for burial. At least 25 of the Aubrey holes were emptied and reused to hold cremation burials and another 30 cremation burial pits were dug into the ditch of the henge and in the eastern portion within the henge enclosure.

Phase three

The third phase of construction at Stonehenge happened approximately 400–500 years later and likely lasted a long time. In this phase the remaining blue stones or wooden beams which had been placed in the Aubrey holes were pulled and a circle 108 feet in diameter of 30 huge and very hard sarsen stones were erected within the henge; these were quarried from nearby Marlborough Downs. These upright sarsen stones were capped with 30 lintel stones (the horizontal stones).

Interior of the sarsen circle and bluestones in the foreground, Stonehenge, Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire, England, c. 2550–1600 B.C.E., circle 97 feet in diameter, trilithons 24 feet high

Each standing stone was around 13 feet high, almost seven feet wide and weighed around 25 tons. This ring of stones enclosed five sarsen trilithons (a trilithon is a pair of upright stones with a lintel stone spanning their tops) set up in a horseshoe shape 45 feet across. These huge stones, ten uprights and five lintels, weigh up to 50 tons each. Bluestones, either reinstalled or freshly quarried, were erected in a circle, half in the outer sarsen circle and half within the sarsen horseshoe. At the end of the phase there is some rearrangement of the bluestones as well as the construction of a long processional avenue, consisting of parallel banks with exterior ditches approximately 34 meters across, leading from the northeast entrance to Stonehenge, dipping to the south and eventually to the banks of the Avon river.

Stonehenge, Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire, England, c. 2550–1600 B.C.E., circle 97 feet in diameter, trilithons: 24 feet high (photo:  Stonehenge Stone Circle , CC BY 2.0)

All three phases of the construction of Stonehenge pose fascinating questions. The first phase of work required precise planning and a massive amount of labor. Who planned the henge and who organized whom to work together in its construction?  Unfortunately, remains of  Neolithic  villages, which would provide information about who built Stonehenge, are few, possibly because so many lie underneath later Bronze Age, Roman, medieval, and modern cities. The few villages that have been explored show simple farming hamlets with very little evidence of widely differing social status. If there were leaders or a social class who convinced or forced people to work together to build the first phase of Stonehenge, we haven’t found them. It also probably means the first phase of Stonehenge’s construction was an egalitarian endeavor, highly unusual for the ancient world.

Who were the people buried at Stonehenge during its second phase? Recent analysis of these bones has revealed that nearly all the burials were of adult males, aged 25–40 years, in good health and with little sign of hard labor or disease. No doubt, to be interred at Stonehenge was a mark of elite status and these remains may well be those of some of the first political leaders of Great Britain, an island with a ruling tradition extending all the way to the House of Windsor. They also show us that in this era, some means of social distinction must have been desirable.

Conclusions

The work achieved in the long third phase of Stonehenge’s construction, however, is the one which is most remarkable and enduring. Like the first phase of Stonehenge, except on a much larger scale, the third phase involved tremendous planning and organization of labor. But, it also entailed an entirely new level of technical sophistication, specifically in the working of very hard stone. For instance, the horizontal lintel stones which topped the exterior ring of sarsen stones were fitted to them using a tongue and groove joint and then fitted to each other using a mortise and tenon joint, methods used in modern woodworking.

Each of the upright sarsens were dressed differently on each side, with the inward facing side more smoothly finished than the outer. Moreover, the stones of the outer ring of sarsens were subtly modified to accommodate the way the human eye observes the massive stones against the bright shades of the Salisbury plain: upright stones were gently widened toward the top which makes their mass constant when viewed from the ground.

The lintel stones also curve slightly to echo the circular outer henge. The stones in the horseshoe of trilithons are arranged by size; the smallest pair of trilithons are around 20 feet tall, the next pair a little higher and the largest, single trilithon in the south west corner would have been 24 feet tall. This effect creates a kind of pull inward to the monument, and dramatizes the outward Northeast facing of the horseshoe. Although there are many theories, it is still not known how or why these subtle refinements were made to Stonehenge, but their existence is sure proof of a sophisticated society with organized leadership and a lot of free time.

A solar and lunar calendar?

Of course the most famous aspect of Stonehenge is its relationship with the solar and lunar calendar. This idea was first proposed by scholars in the 18th century, who noted that the sunrise of the midsummer solstice is exactly framed by the end of the horseshoe of trilithons at the interior of the monument, and exactly opposite that point, at the center of the bend of the horseshoe, at the midwinter sunset, the sun is also aligned. These dates, the longest and shortest days of the year, are the turning point of the two great seasonal episodes of the annual calendar. Since this discovery, several other theories about astrological observation have been offered but few stand up to scrutiny together with the physical details of the monument.

Orkney Islands

URL:  https://youtu.be/XxxSYc0KHMg

North Africa

Rock Art in the Green Sahara (Neolithic)

Video from The British Museum URL: https://youtu.be/HD_Ot2GaCXo

The Sahara is the world’s largest hot desert, spanning the entire northern part of Africa. Yet it hasn’t always been dry — archaeological and geological research shows that it has undergone major climatic changes over thousands of years. Rock art often depicts extraordinary images of life, landscape and animals that show a time when the Sahara was much greener and wetter than it is now.

This film is in collaborative partnership with the Leverhulme Trust-funded project: “Peopling the Green Sahara. A multi-proxy approach to reconstructing the ecological and demographic history of the Saharan Holocene”, Paul Breeze, Nick Drake and Katie Manning, Department of Geography, King’s College London Modelling and mapping of the Green Sahara ©Kings College London Images ©Trust for African Rock Art (TARA)/David Coulson & ©Kings College London  Cite this page as: The British Museum, “Rock Art in the Green Sahara (Neolithic),” in  Smarthistory , May 14, 2019, accessed December 27, 2023,  https://smarthistory.org/rock-art-in-the-green-sahara/ .

Running Horned Woman, Tassili n’Ajjer, Algeria

Running Horned Woman , 6,000–4,000 B.C.E., pigment on rock, Tassili n’Ajjer, Algeria

“Discovery”

Between 1933 and 1940, camel ­corps officer Lieutenant Brenans of the French Foreign Legion completed a series of small sketches and hand­ written notes detailing his discovery of dozens of  rock art  sites deep within the canyons of the Tassili n’Ajjer. Tassili n’Ajjer is a difficult to access plateau in the Algerian section of the Sahara Desert near the borders of Libya and Niger in northern Africa.

Tassili n’Ajjer is a Tamahaq name meaning “plateau” of the Ajjer people (the Kel Ajjer is group of tribes whose traditional territory was here). Much of the 1,500–2,100 meter ­high plateau is protected by an 80,000 square kilometer National Park. Underlying map © Google.

Brenans donated hundreds of his sketches to the Bardo Museum in Algiers, alerting the scientific community to one of the richest rock art concentrations on Earth and prompting site visits that included fellow Frenchman and archaeologist Henri Lhote. Lhote recognized the importance of the region and returned again and again, most notably in 1956 with a team of copyists for a 16­-month expedition to map and study the rock art of the Tassili. Two years later Lhote published  A la découverte des fresques du Tassili . [1] The book became an instant best­seller, and today is one of the most popular texts on archaeological discovery.

Tassili N’Ajjer National Park (photo:  hanming_huang , CC BY-SA 2.0)

Lhote made African rock art famous by bringing some of the estimated 15,000 human figure and animal paintings and engravings found on the rock walls of the Tassili’s many gorges and shelters it to the wider public. Yet contrary to the impression left by the title of his book, neither Lhote nor his team could lay claim to having discovered Central Saharan rock art: long before Lhote, and even before Brenans, in the late 19th century a number of travelers from Germany, Switzerland, and France had noted the existence of “strange” and “important” rock sculptures in Ghat, Tadrart Acacus, and Upper Tassili. But it was the Tuareg—the Indigenous peoples of the region, many of whom served as guides to these early European explorers—who long knew of the paintings and engravings covering the rock faces of the Tassili.

Running Horned Woman  (detail), 6,000–4,000 B.C.E., pigment on rock, Tassili n’Ajjer, Algeria (photo:  András Zboray,   FJ Expeditions )

The “Horned Goddess”

Lhote published not only reproductions of the paintings and engravings he found on the rock walls of the Tassili, but also his observations. In one excerpt he reported that with a can of water and a sponge in hand he set out to investigate a “curious figure” spotted by a member of his team in an isolated rock shelter located within a compact group of mountains known as the Aouanrhet massif, the highest of all the “rock cities” on the Tassili. Lhote swabbed the wall with water to reveal a figure he called the “Horned Goddess”:

On the damp rock ­surface stood out the gracious silhouette of a woman running. One of her legs, slightly flexed, just touched the ground, while the other was raised in the air as high as it would normally go. From the knees, the belt and the widely outstretched arms fell fine fringes. From either side of the head and above two horns that spread out horizontally was an extensive dotted area resembling a cloud of grain falling from a wheat field. Although the whole assemblage was skillfully and carefully composed there was something free and easy about it . . .

The  Running Horned Woman , the title by which the painting is commonly known today, was found in a massif so secluded and so difficult to access that Lhote’s team concluded that the collection of shelters was likely a sanctuary and the female figure—“the most beautiful, the most finished and the most original”—a goddess:

Perhaps we have here the figure of a priestess of some agricultural religion or the picture of a goddess of such a cult who foreshadow—or is derived from—the goddess Isis, to whom, in Egypt, was attributed the discovery of agriculture.

Lhote’s suggestion that the painting’s source was Egyptian was influenced by a recently published hypothesis by his mentor, the French anthropologist Henri Breuil, the then undisputed authority on prehistoric rock art who was renowned for his work on  Paleolithic cave art  in Europe. In an essay titled, “The White Lady of Brandberg, South-West Africa, Her Companions and Her Guards,” Breuil famously claimed that a painting discovered in a small rock shelter in Namibia showed influences of classical antiquity and was not African in origin, but possibly the work of Phoenician travelers from the Mediterranean. Lhote, equally convinced of outside influence, linked the Tassili painting’s provenance with Breuil’s ideas and revised the title to the “White Lady” of Aouanrhet:

In other paintings found a few days later in the same massif we were able to discern, from some characteristic features, an indication of Egyptian influence. Some features are, no doubt, not very marked in our ‘White Lady’; still, all the same, some details as the curve of the breasts, led us to think that the picture may have been executed at a time when Egyptian traditions were beginning to be felt in the Tassili.

Foreign influence?

Time and scholarship would reveal that the assignment of Egyptian influence on the  Running Horned Woman  was erroneous, and Lhote the victim of a hoax: French members of his team made “copies” of Egyptionized figures, passing them off as faithful reproductions of authentic Tassili rock wall paintings. These fakes were accepted by Lhote (if indeed he knew nothing of the forgeries), and falsely sustained his belief in the possibility of foreign influence on Central Saharan rock art. Breuil’s theories were likewise discredited: the myth of the “White Lady” was rejected by every archaeologist of repute, and his promotion of foreign influence viewed as racist.

The Tassili plateau, hailed as “the greatest center of prehistoric art in the world:” undercuts at cliff bases have created rock shelters with smooth walls ideal for painting and engraving. The Tassili’s unique geological formations of eroded sandstone rock pillars and arches—“forests of stone”—resemble a lunar landscape. (photo:  magharebia , CC BY 2.0)

Yet Breuil and Lhote were not alone in finding it hard to believe that ancient Africans discovered how to make art on their own, or to have developed artistic sensibilities. Until quite recently many Europeans maintained that art “spread” or was “taken” into Africa, and, aiming to prove this thesis, anointed many works with classical­ sounding names and sought out similarities with early rock art in Europe. Although such vestiges of colonial thinking are today facing a reckoning, cases such as the “White Lady” (both of Namibia and of Tassili) remind us of the perils of imposing cultural values from the outside.

Crouching giraffe giving birth, Oued In Djerane, Tassili n’Ajjer National Park, Nigeria (photo:  András Zboray, FJ Expeditions )

While we have yet to learn how, and in what places, the practice of rock art began, no firm evidence has been found to show that  African rock art —some ten million images across the continent—was anything other than a spontaneous initiative by early Africans. Scholars have estimated the earliest art to date to 12,000 or more years ago, yet despite the use of both direct and indirect dating techniques very few firm dates exist (“direct dating” uses measurable physical and chemical analysis, such as radiocarbon dating, while “indirect dating” primarily uses associations from the archaeological context). In the north, where rock art tends to be quite diverse, research has focused on providing detailed descriptions of the art and placing works in chronological sequence based on style and content. This ordering approach results in useful classification and dating systems, dividing the Tassili paintings and engravings into periods of concurrent and overlapping traditions (the  Running Horned Woman  is estimated to date to approximately 6,000 to 4,000 B.C.E.—placing it within the “ Round Head Period “), but offers little in the way of interpretation of the painting itself.

Advancing an interpretation of the  Running Horned Woman

Visible in this reproduction of the original rock painting are two groupings in red ochre of small human figures superimposed onto the horned goddess. Based on  Running Horned Woman , 6,000–4,000 B.C.E., pigment on rock, Tassili n’Ajjer, Algeria

Who was the  Running Horned Woman ? Was she indeed a goddess, and her rock shelter some sort of sanctuary? What does the image mean? And why did the artist make it? For so long the search for meaning in rock art was considered inappropriate and unachievable—only recently have scholars endeavored to move beyond the mere description of images and styles, and, using a variety of interdisciplinary methods, make serious attempts to interpret the rock art of the Central Sahara.

Lhote recounted that the  Running Horned Woman  was found on an isolated rock whose base was hollowed out into a number of small shelters that could not have been used as dwellings. This remote location, coupled with an image of marked pictorial quality—depicting a female with two horns on her head, dots on her body probably representing  scarification , and wearing such attributes of the dance as armlets and garters—suggested to him that the site, and the subject of the painting, fell outside of the everyday. More recent scholarship has supported Lhote’s belief in the painting’s symbolic, rather than literal, representation. As Jitka Soukopova has noted, “Hunter-gatherers were unlikely to wear horns (or other accessories on the head) and to make paintings on their whole bodies in their ordinary life.” [2] Rather, this female horned figure, her body adorned and decorated, found in one of the highest massifs in the Tassili—a region is believed to hold special status due to its elevation and unique topology—suggests ritual, rite, or ceremony.

Archers, Tassili n’Ajjer (photo:  Patrick Gruban , CC BY-SA 2.0)

But there is further work to be done to advance an interpretation of the  Running Horned Woman . Increasingly scholars have studied rock shelter sites as a whole, rather than isolating individual depictions, and the shelter’s location relative to the overall landscape and nearby water courses, in order to learn the significance of various “rock cities” in both image-­making and image ­viewing.

Archaeological data from decorated pottery, which is a dated artistic tradition, is key in suggesting that the concept of art was firmly established in the Central Sahara at the time of Tassili rock art production. Comparative studies with other rock art complexes, specifically the search for similarities in fundamental concepts in African religious beliefs, might yield the most fruitful approaches to interpretation. In other words, just as southern African rock studies have benefitted from tracing the beliefs and practices of the San people, so too may a study of Tuareg ethnography shed light on the ancient rock art sites of the Tassili. [3]

Paintings at Akaham Ouan Elbered, Tassili n’Ajjer National Park, Algeria (photo:  András Zboray, FJ Expeditions )

Afterword: the threatened rock art of the Central Sahara

Tassili’s rock walls were commonly sponged with water in order to enhance the reproduction of its images, either in trace, sketch, or photograph. This washing of the rock face has had a devastating effect on the art, upsetting the physical, chemical, and biological balance of the images and their rock supports. Many of the region’s subsequent visitors—tourists, collectors, photographers, and the next generation of researchers—all captivated by Lhote’s “discovery”—have continued the practice of moistening the paintings in order to reveal them. Today scholars report paintings that are severely faded while some have simply disappeared. In addition, others have suffered from irreversible damage caused by outright vandalism: art looted or stolen as souvenirs. In order to protect this valuable center of African rock art heritage, Tassili N’Ajjer was declared a National Park in 1972. It was classified as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1982 and a Biosphere Reserve in 1986.

[1] Henri Lhote,  A la découverte des fresques du Tassili [The Search for the Tassili Frescos]  (Arhaud, 1958).

[2] Jitka Soukopova, “The Earliest Rock Paintings of the Central Sahara: Approaching Interpretation,”  Time and Mind: The Journal of Archaeology, Consciousness and Culture  4, no. 2 (2011), p. 199.

[3] Read more about how southern African rock studies have benefitted from tracing the beliefs and practices of the San people in Jamie Hampson, “ Discovering Southern African Rock Art .”

Rock-Art Sites of Tadrart Acacus (Libya)

On the borders of Tassili N’Ajjer in Algeria, also a World Heritage site, this rocky massif has thousands of cave paintings in very different styles, dating from 12,000 B.C. to A.D. 100. They reflect marked changes in the fauna and flora, and also the different ways of life of the populations that succeeded one another in this region of the Sahara. Video from UNESCO  URL: https://youtu.be/C_OxZpaOShg

The rock art sites of Tadrart Acacus have survived for 14,000 years in the desert of southern Libya, but they are now under serious threat.  Since 2009 , vandalism has been a continuous problem: graffiti has been spray-painted across the surface of many of the paintings, and people have carved their initials into the rocks. But despite  UNESCO’s  and other organizations’ calls for the government to intervene with restoration and security measures, efforts to protect this precious ancient site have been gravely hampered by armed conflict and political chaos.

Libya experienced a political revolution in 2011 with the ousting of Muammar Gaddafi, and since then the country has been in a state of civil war.  Savino di Lernia , an archaeologist at Sapienza University of Rome who has worked extensively in the Tadrart Acacus mountains, explains how dangerous the area—formerly a tourist destination—has become:

Today, the site is inaccessible: no commercial flight connects Tripoli and Ghat, a nearby town (a weekly military aircraft brings food, essential goods and first-aid equipment). The tarred road between Ghat and Ubari is broken up, and clashes between the Tebu and Tuareg tribes increasingly affect the area….Being a Saharan archaeologist today is a difficult job. Researchers fear being kidnapped or even killed.

Yahya Saleh, a local tour guide , mourns the fact that local hunters now regularly scrawl their names across the art: “People do not know the value of this. There are supposed to be people to protect these areas…because if this issue persists, then they will be gone within two years.”

The ongoing vandalism of the Tadrart Acacus sites is only one of the many overwhelming difficulties Libya faces with regard to cultural heritage protection. As  di Lernia notes ,

Perhaps the greatest threat to Libya’s diverse heritage is the trafficking of archaeological materials, for profit or to fund radical groups….No one has been able to fully assess the situation in Libya. Going to work among the black smoke of grenades, the men and women of the Libyan Department of Antiquities are doing their best. But museums are closed and the little activity left in the field is limited to the north.

Until the fighting in Libya stops and archaeologists can again effectively cooperate with the government and international organizations to restore and protect sites like the rock art at Tadrart Acacus, Libya’s rich trove of monuments and artifacts will continue to be endangered.

Backstory by Dr. Naraelle Hohensee

FURTHER RESOURCES

Paleolithic art.

In our time: cave art

U-Th dating of carbonate crusts reveals Neandertal origin of Iberian cave art

Neanderthal artists made oldest-known cave paintings

World’s oldest known cave painting found in Indonesia

Pig Painting May Be World’s Oldest Cave Art Yet, Archaeologists Say

The cave of Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc

A carved female figurine dating to at least 35,000 years ago recovered from caves in the Hohle Fels region of Germany (video)

Lascaux: a visit to the cave

Lascaux on The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History

Neolithic Art

Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East

Çatalhöyük Research Project.

Çatalhöyük UNESCO World Heritage site.

Cultural heritage at risk: Turkey.

Bushel with ibex motifs at the Louvre

Royal City of Susa: Ancient Near Eastern Treasures in the Louvre (Met publication online)

Susa from UNESCO

Ancient Near East: cradle of civilization

David Stronach, “ EXCAVATIONS i. In Persia ,”  Encyclopaedia Iranica , volume IX, number 1 (originally published December 15, 1998), pp. 88–94.

Robert H. Dyson, Jr., “ Early Works on the Acropolis at Susa ,”  Expedition Magazine  , volume10, number 4 (1968).

Creating an Ancestor: The Jericho Skull at the British Museum

Discover Stonehenge from English Heritage

Virtual tour of Stonehenge , Google Cultural Institute

Who built Stonehenge (video from English Heritage)

Stone working (video from English Heritage)

Stonehenge: bluestones (video from English Heritage)

Stonehenge Clues to the Past (video from English Heritage)

Stonehenge (video from UNESCO)

Stonehenge (description from UNESCO)

Stonehenge (English Heritage site)

Who built Stonehenge? (English Heritage video)

Stonehenge: Clues to the past (English Heritage video)

Who were the people of Stonehenge?  Curators’ Tour (British Museum video)’

History of Stonehenge (BBC)

African Rock Art: Tassili­-n-­Ajjer—Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History.

Tassili n’Ajjer—African World Heritage Sites.

Tassili n’Ajjer, UNESCO.

TARA—Trust for African Rock Art: Algeria gallery.

Jitka Soukopova, “The Earliest Rock Paintings of the Central Sahara: Approaching Interpretation,”  Time and Mind: The Journal of Archaeology, Consciousness and Culture  4, no. 2 (2011), pp. 193­–216.

Another UNESCO video, on  rock art in Tassili n’Ajjer

UNESCO webpage for Tadrart Acacus

UNESCO report on the state of conservation at Tadrart Acacus

Ulf Leassig, “Vandals destroy prehistoric rock art in Libya’s lawless Sahara,”  Reuters , June 3, 2014

Savino di Lernia, “Cultural heritage: Save Libyan archaeology,”  Nature,  January 28, 2015

Report on Tadrart Acacus rock art from the AP Archive, January, 2018

ARTS 101: Art and Architecture from the Prehistoric World through the Medieval World Copyright © 2024 by Karen Brown. All Rights Reserved.

Share This Book

Prehistoric art

Humankind has been making art for at least 100,000 years.

c. 2000 B.C.E.

Paleolithic

- c. 10,000 B.C.E.

• View all content

Humans make art. We do this for many reasons and with whatever technologies are available to us. But can we really know what such ancient images originally meant?

Paleolithic art, an introduction

Apollo 11 Cave Stones

Venus of Willendorf

Hall of Bulls, Lascaux

c. 10,000 B.C.E. - 2000 B.C.E.

The Neolithic Revolution was the most important development in human history. The way we live today—settled in cities, protected by laws, eating food from farms—dates from approximately 10,000 years ago.

The Neolithic Revolution

Running Horned Woman, Tassili n’Ajjer, Algeria

All content | prehistoric.

From painted rock to carved bone, tiny sculptures to monumental stele, prehistoric art gives clues to human creativity.

Bushel with ibex motifs

Newgrange, a prehistoric tomb in Ireland

Bhimbetka cave paintings

Bannerstones, North America

Clovis culture, North America

Carvings and paintings, Kakadu

Rock art on the Iberian coast

Rock carvings in Tanum

Brú na Bóinne

Rock drawings in Valcamonica

Cave of Altamira and Paleolithic Cave Art of Northern Spain (UNESCO/NHK)

Selected contributors.

Dr. Jeffrey A. Becker

Dr. Senta German

Nathalie Hager

Mary Beth Looney

Dr. Bryan Zygmont

Your donations help make art history free and accessible to everyone!

Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology pp 4035–4047 Cite as

Europe: Prehistoric Rock Art

• Georges Sauvet 2 ,
• Cesar González Sainz 3 ,
• José Luis Sanchidrián 4 &
• Valentín Villaverde 5  
• Reference work entry
• First Online: 26 October 2020

39 Accesses

Introduction

In its broadest sense, the term prehistoric rock art covers the whole of graphic manifestations affixed by prehistoric humans on rock surfaces of all kinds. The surfaces can be rocks out in the open air, walls protected by shallow rockshelters, or deep cave walls in total darkness. For deep cave situations, the term “parietal art” is often used, but these two terms cover the same reality. The phenomenon is widespread throughout the world, as it meets the basic needs of preliterate human societies. In Europe, prehistoric rock art extends from northern Norway to Andalusia and covers more than 30,000 years, from the Upper Paleolithic to the Roman conquest. As a result, it responds to an infinite number of motivations depending on beliefs, systems of social organization, and types of subsistence economies. In formal terms, it uses a wide range of techniques (engraving, sculpture, finger strokes in clay, line drawings, monochrome or polychrome painting) and a wide range of...

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution .

Buying options

• Available as PDF
• Read on any device
• Instant download
• Own it forever
• Available as EPUB and PDF
• Durable hardcover edition
• Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
• Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Acosta, P. 1968. La pintura rupestre esquemática en España . Salamanca: Facultad de Filosofía y Letras de la Universidad de Salamanca.

Google Scholar  

Anati, E. 2003. Aux origines de l’art. 50000 ans d’art préhistorique et tribal . Paris: Ed. Fayard.

Baptista, A.M. 2009. O paradigma perdido. O Vale do Côa e a arte paleolítica de ar livre em Portugal [Paradigm lost. Côa Valley and the open-air palaeolithic art in Portugal] . Porto: Ed. Afrontamento.

Beltrán Martínez, A. 1968. Arte rupestre Levantino , Monografías Arqueológicas. Vol. IV. Zaragoza: Universidad de Zaragoza.

Bicho, N., A.F. Carvalho, C. González Sainz, J.L. Sanchidrián, V. Villaverde, and L.G. Straus. 2007. The Upper Paleolithic rock art of Iberia. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 14 (1): 81–151.

Article   Google Scholar  

Breuil, H. 1952. Quatre cents siècles d’art pariétal . Montignac: Centre d’Etudes et Documentation préhistoriques (réédition fac-similé 1974).

Collectif. 2002. Las cuevas con arte paleolítico en Cantabria . Asociación Cántabra para la Defensa del Patrimonio Subterráneo (Segunda edición, 2010).

de Lumley, H. 2011. La Montagne sacrée du Bego . Paris: CNRS Ed.

González Sainz, C., R. Cacho Toca, and T. Fukazawa. 2003. Arte paleolítico en la región Cantábrica. Base de datos multimedia Photo VR . Santander: Universidad de Cantabria y Gobierno de Cantabria.

Leroi-Gourhan, A. 1965. Préhistoire de l’art occidental . Paris: Ed. Mazenod (édition revue et augmentée par B. et G. Delluc, Citadelles et Mazenod, 1995).

Martínez Valle, R., coord. 2006. Arte rupestre en la Comunidad Valenciana . Valencia: Generalitat Valenciana.

Ríos González, S., C. García de Castro Valdés, M. de la Rasilla Vives, and F.J. Fortea Pérez. 2007. Arte rupestre prehistórico del Oriente de Asturias . Oviedo: Consorcio para el Desarrollo rural del Oriente de Asturias.

Villaverde Bonilla, V. 1994. Arte paleolítico de la cova del Parpalló . Valence: Diputació de València.

Further Reading

Lorblanchet, M. 1995. Les grottes ornées de la préhistoire. Nouveaux regards . Paris: Ed. Errance.

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Centre de Recherche et d’Etude de l’Art Préhistorique, Université de Toulouse-II, Toulouse, France

Georges Sauvet

Instituto Internacional de Investigaciones Prehistóricas de Cantabria (IIIPC), Universidad de Cantabria, Santander, Spain

Cesar González Sainz

Area de Prehistoria, Departamento de Geografía y Ciencias del Territorio, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad de Córdoba, Córdoba, Spain

José Luis Sanchidrián

Departamento de Prehistoria y Arqueología, Universitat de València, Valencia, Spain

Valentín Villaverde

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Georges Sauvet .

Editor information

Editors and affiliations.

College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, Flinders University, Adelaide, SA, Australia

Claire Smith

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this entry

Cite this entry.

Sauvet, G., González Sainz, C., Sanchidrián, J.L., Villaverde, V. (2020). Europe: Prehistoric Rock Art. In: Smith, C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30018-0_1278

Download citation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30018-0_1278

Published : 26 October 2020

Publisher Name : Springer, Cham

Print ISBN : 978-3-030-30016-6

Online ISBN : 978-3-030-30018-0

eBook Packages : History Reference Module Humanities and Social Sciences Reference Module Humanities

Share this entry

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Publish with us

Policies and ethics

• Find a journal
• Track your research

• school Campus Bookshelves
• menu_book Bookshelves
• perm_media Learning Objects
• login Login
• how_to_reg Request Instructor Account
• hub Instructor Commons
• Download Page (PDF)
• Download Full Book (PDF)
• Periodic Table
• Physics Constants
• Scientific Calculator
• Reference & Cite
• Tools expand_more
• Readability

selected template will load here

This action is not available.

1.4: Rock Art

• Last updated
• Save as PDF
• Page ID 219953

• Deborah Gustlin & Zoe Gustlin
• Evergreen Valley College via ASCCC Open Educational Resources Initiative

Introduction

The art of cave painting has had a noteworthy impact on the evolution of artistic techniques and materials. Despite the advancements in modern-day art supplies that have ushered in a new level of efficiency, the fundamental components of paint remain unchanged, consisting of a binder and powdered or ground minerals. The early cave artists used charcoal from the fire to sketch out their desired image onto the cave wall. After creating the basic outline, they would fill it with natural pigments, often made from crushed minerals. In certain instances, the artists would even carve into the rock surface to create more permanent lines and then apply pigments to produce more intricate details. The meticulous and skilled work of these early artists has continued to inspire and influence art throughout the course of history.

The earliest art forms were crafted in ancient times using dark charcoal residue from burnt wood. These rudimentary sketches primarily consisted of simple lines and symbols and were created by individuals who had access to an abundant supply of charcoal owing to their reliance on wood as their main fuel source for both heating and cooking. As these artists honed their skills, they began to incorporate natural elements found on the ground or in rocks to add depth and color to their depictions of various animals that adorned the walls of caves.

The colors utilized in the caves are categorized as earth tone colors as the artists made their paint from natural materials found in the earth. The earliest art forms were crafted using dark charcoal residue from burnt wood. These rudimentary sketches primarily consisted of simple lines and symbols and were created by individuals who had access to an abundant supply of charcoal owing to their reliance on wood as their main fuel source for both heating and cooking. As these artists honed their skills, they began to incorporate natural elements found on the ground or in rocks to add depth and color to their depictions of various animals that adorned the walls of caves.

Color has been used by humans since prehistoric times and is still prevalent today. It is believed that early indigenous people did not have knowledge of the color wheel, so they mixed colors they had to create secondary colors. Different hues are created by mixing black, white, or grey with base colors. All colors have three properties: hue, value, and intensity. These properties are altered when artists add black or white to primary colors. Mixing white into red ochre lightens its value or tint while mixing black darkens its value or shade. Mixing a color with grey changes its tone. Adding some black-to-red ochre gives the color more depth and can make cave paintings look more realistic in the soft glow of a fire.

Certain varieties of rocks possess a texture akin to clay and are imbued with mineral-based oxides that imbue them with a multitude of colors. For example, rocks that contain iron oxide may produce a reddish-brown hue. These rocks can be molded into "paint" sticks, like pastel crayons, or crushed into a fine powder and blended with a binding agent. The hues of the "paint" are determined by the availability of raw materials, and artists of yesteryear utilized rocks that contained minerals such as kaolin, manganese, or iron oxide to produce primary hues such as black, brown, white, yellow, and various shades of red. Thus, the use of these mineral-based oxides in the creation of art has been a prevalent practice throughout history, resulting in some of the world's most vibrant and enduring hues in the realm of art.

Throughout the world, diverse pigments and colors were utilized in different regions due to the varying composition of rocks and soil. In Australia, the palette consisted of yellow ochre, red ochre, and charcoal. In Africa, pigments included red, and orange made from ochres, whites from zinc oxides, black from charcoal, browns from hematite, and a unique blue color from iron. Kaolin was commonly used for white in China, while France utilized a variety of blacks made from manganese oxides. Many of the rocks and minerals employed in these paintings were sourced from the local environment, though some were transported from faraway places, indicating the existence of trails. The native cave dwellers also stockpiled minerals for future paintings.

The different colors of “paint” would depend on the raw materials they had on hand. Some of the most common colors are:

Cave dwellers ground the rocks or clay by hand to create paint. Many caves have hollows in the rock floor with stains that indicate places people used to make a fine powder from the minerals. To bind the powder into the paint, the artist had several choices of natural binders; animal fat, blood, bone marrow, spit, or water, making a paste and forming it into sticks to apply the paint directly to the walls. Over time they must have experimented with different types of natural resources to create a paint that would spread, adhere to the wall, and fortunately endure for thousands of years.

Finely ground powdered pigment is mixed with a binder to create pastels. While the indigenous people were the original creators of pastels through experimentation, the modern version of this medium was invented in the 17th century and produced by machines, ensuring a consistent product. Nevertheless, indigenous artists often made use of the mixed color or formed into sticks to draw directly on walls, much like we would today with pastel crayons. Although chalk and pastels may appear similar at first glance, their production processes differ significantly. Pastels are created by pulverizing rocks into a fine powder, while chalk is found in its natural state. Limestone that was once submerged beneath the sea around 100 million years ago is the source of chalk. It is presently mined from the earth and compressed into cylindrical shapes for common classroom use. It's fascinating to learn that ancient cave paintings were often made using naturally occurring chunks of chalk.

The prehistoric artists who adorned the walls of caves with their vivid depictions of life were resourceful and imaginative. Scholars have determined that they employed a variety of methods to apply the paint, including finger dabbing, the use of animal hide pads or moss clumps, and the creation of more refined brushes fashioned from twigs, animal hair, or fur. Additionally, they ingeniously crafted spray tools from hollow bones, which they would blow the paint through, much like a straw, or even directly from their mouths. These techniques were instrumental in producing the iconic stencil handprints that remain visible in numerous caves to this day.

The texture of caves and rocks can differ significantly, ranging from rough and bumpy to smooth and slightly uneven. The key aspect of cave texture is its ability to hold charcoal or pigment, which enables the creation of rough designs etched into the rock. These designs are tactile and lend cave art a distinctive appearance that sets it apart from other art forms. Drawing may have been a means for indigenous people to comprehend their surroundings and converse with one another. Cave drawings vary in complexity, with some being simple and others being intricate and refined.

Pachmarhi Hills (India)

Nestled in the heart of India lies the mesmerizing Pachmarhi Hills, home to breathtaking rock shelters made of weathered sandstone. These magnificent structures were first discovered in 1862, and ever since, they have been a source of wonder and fascination for many. The rugged terrain surrounding the shelters is a testament to nature's raw, untamed beauty, boasting lush greenery, a vast array of flora, and flowing rivers that add to the challenging adventure of reaching the caves. As you delve deeper into the cavernous interiors of the rock shelters, you'll be greeted with a plethora of cave art that dates back centuries. The fascinating artwork depicts typical images of animals and hunters, along with people dancing and playing instruments, offering a glimpse into the rich cultural heritage of the people who once inhabited these caves. The paintings' intricate details and vibrant colors are a testament to the skill and creativity of the ancient artisans who created them, leaving visitors in awe of their talent.

The central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh is home to a remarkable concentration of rock art in the Pachmarhi region and neighboring Mahadeo Hills. These painted shelters, situated at great heights, are a testament to the rich cultural heritage and artistic traditions of the region's ancient inhabitants. The rock art found in Pachmarhi Hills is characterized by a wide range of subjects, including animals, humans, abstract motifs, and geometric designs. Some of the shelters are adorned with a vast number of painted figures, often with superimposed images, while others have only a few. The use of red and white pigments is prevalent, providing a striking contrast against the rocky surfaces. Some paintings also feature yellow hues, adding to the visual richness of the artwork. 

Despite the beauty and historical significance of these paintings, many of them are in a state of gradual decay. The harsh environmental conditions in the region, including sunlight, rain, wind, and human interference, have taken a toll on the rock art's preservation. Some of the paintings have faded or partially erased, leaving them incomplete. The colors of others have merged with the rock, rendering them indistinguishable from the surrounding surface. Some shelters have a thin, whitish layer covering the paintings, further obscuring the artwork's beauty. In summary, the preservation of these ancient paintings varies significantly, depending on the shelter's location, exposure to the elements, and human activity, which is the most destructive factor.

The art in the Pachmarhi Hills is dated to 30,000 BCE, and the type of images found on the walls indicate a more advanced culture than some of the art in older caves. There are images of vegetation, bison, elephants, fish, birds, and humans in the act of hunting. The first artists used pigments were common hematite, iron oxide, and kaolin, often mixed together to form secondary colors. 

Bhimbetka (India)

Located in India, the Bhimbetka Rock Shelters are a testament to the rich history of human civilization. These caves provide a glimpse into the past, with evidence of early human inhabitation dating back to over 30,000 BCE. The rock shelters are home to some of the oldest cave art in the world, showcasing the creativity and artistic abilities of these ancient people. The cave art is divided into five main periods, spanning thousands of years. The earliest paintings (1.4.6) are linear representations of animals, including tigers, bison, and rhinoceros. These paintings merge into small, stylized depictions of animals in hunting scenes, often featuring people playing musical instruments. As time progressed, the paintings began to showcase the various trades and exchanges of goods that took place within the community. These trade scenes are depicted with great detail, highlighting the importance of commerce in the early human society. The final period of the cave art showcases geometric scenes, indicating a possible shift in the artistic style and cultural practices of the people who inhabited the area. Overall, the Bhimbetka Rock Shelters provide a fascinating glimpse into the past, offering a unique opportunity to study the history of human civilization.

The Bhimbetka Rock Shelters are an extraordinary archaeological site located in India, celebrated for their fascinating history. These rock shelters are home to some of the world's earliest cave art, dating back more than 30,000 BCE. It is believed that humans lived in these shelters over thirty millennia ago, providing us a window into the lives of our ancient predecessors. The rock shelters showcase five main periods of art, indicating that they were utilized for thousands of years. The Bhimbetka Rock Shelters exhibit early paintings that feature animals like tigers, bison, and rhinoceros in a linear style. These paintings are believed to be some of the oldest forms of art worldwide and offer us a glimpse into the origins of human creativity. As time passed, the paintings became more intricate, showcasing stylized animals in hunting scenarios, in addition to people, musical instruments, and various hunting tools.

The rock shelters of Bhimbetka contain paintings that depict trade exchanges between tribes, indicating that these caves were not solely a place for artistic expression but also served as a hub for trade and commerce. As for the final period of art, the paintings depict geometric scenes believed to represent religious and spiritual beliefs symbolically. The Bhimbetka Rock Shelters are a vital archaeological site that offers a window into the early stages of human civilization, providing valuable insights into the lives of our ancient ancestors and showcasing their exceptional artistic abilities. The paintings found within these rock shelters reveal a creative society actively engaged in trade and commerce, making it a significant location for historians, scholars, and anyone interested in the history of human civilization.

Adorning the walls are stunning depictions of India's rich cultural heritage, showcasing traditional dances and attire. This art has been preserved for millennia, with early renderings of animals leading to depictions of people and musical instruments before culminating in intricate geometric scenes. The walls and ceilings are adorned with vibrant and captivating paintings, spanning over 30,000 years of daily life. The use of a dark orange paint, made from hematite, iron oxide, and kaolin, combined with animal fat, adds an extra layer of magnificence to this already breathtaking artwork.

7 Wonders of India: Bhimbetka

Located near Bhopal, the caves include scenes from everyday life, depicting household scenes, hunting, dancing, animal fighting, elephant riders, honey collections, body tattooing, and music. The 838 caves are spread on a total area of 1,850 hectares. The Bhimbetka shelters exhibit the earliest traces of human life in India. The oldest rock paintings in the cave date back more than 12,000 years. It is the biggest repository of pre-historic art in India, depicting the life and times of early man.

Damaidi (China)

The nomadic hunter-gatherer transition to a sedentary farming society began in China as early as 7000 BCE. They harvested and stored millet, rice, and pigs, settling on the mouth of the Yangzi River. They collected clay from the yellow silt of the river floodplain and created vessels to hold food and grain. The golden-brown clay was molded into geometric shapes with schematics of animals on the sides. 

Located in a quaint village in central China, the Damaidi Cave is home to an impressive collection of over 3,170 petroglyphs adorning its walls. These petroglyphs (1.4.7), dating back to a staggering 8,000 BCE, boast more than 8,000 individual figures of art, depicting various scenes such as hunting, fighting, and herding animals, as well as celestial bodies like the sun and moon. Interestingly, some of these ancient carvings resemble modern-day Chinese characters, which, if true, could push back the origins of writing to a much earlier date.

The Damaidi Cave features hunting scenes, much like other caves, but it also showcases a unique cultural fascination with the night sky. This cave can be found on a bend of the Yellow River, where nomadic people lived and used the surrounding caves and rock formations to document their daily lives. They etched images into the rock and filled them with pigment to illustrate their living conditions. These carvings could possibly be the earliest form of written language, which would greatly impact our understanding of the origins of writing.

Need picture

Cave art in the tropics

In this Nature Video, we explore a cave in Indonesia that’s home to some of the oldest paintings in the world. The hand stencils and paintings of animals were created between 35,000 and 40,000 years ago – making them at least as old as similar artwork in Europe.

Huashan (China)

  The limestone cliffs (1.4.8) are adorned with extensive paintings dating back to between 14,000 BCE and 200 CE. Most of the paintings were created between the 5th century BCE and the 2nd century CE, and were used by the local people to record their lives. These paintings span an area of 170 meters across and 40 meters high above the water level. It is still a mystery how the artists reached the cliffs located at a height of 30 to 90 meters above the water level. The artists used a mixture of red ochre, animal glue, and blood to create the red color used for painting, which was applied directly to the rock. Historians have discovered 1900 specific images in over 100 groupings scattered across seventy sites. The figures are quite large, varying in size from 60 to 150 centimeters. Along with humans and animals, there are also images of drums, knives, swords, bells, and ships. These images are believed to represent different kinds of worship, including the sun or river god, wars, and totems. The paintings are located in remote areas and are largely protected from modern civilization and environmental destruction. However, the cliff rocks are beginning to deteriorate due to water and erosion.

Zuojiang Huashan Rock Art Cultural Landscape

Located on the west bank of the Mingjiang River in the border regions of southwest China, the Zuojiang Huashan Rock Art Cultural Landscape boasts paintings created from around 5th Century BC to the 2nd Century CE.

Maros-Pangkep Karst (Indonesia)

The Maros-Pangkep Karst region is home to some of the most significant and ancient cave art in the world. The Sulawesi warty pig image (1.4.10), one of the earliest cave paintings found in the area, is estimated to be at least 43,900 years old, based on Uranium-series dating. This region, located on Sulawesi Island in Indonesia, has been inhabited by humans for thousands of years, making it a site of great historical and cultural importance. Most of the cave art discovered in this region consists of handprints (1.4.9) and depictions of various animals. These artworks offer a unique glimpse into the lives and beliefs of our ancestors, providing valuable insights into their way of life, their interactions with the environment, and their artistic expression. Overall, the Maros-Pangkep Karst region is a true treasure trove of ancient art and a testament to the rich cultural heritage of Indonesia. 

Scholars who have studied the ancient paintings have observed that the animals portrayed in those artworks were typically rendered in just one color, either a rich red or a deep purple mulberry hue. The artist responsible for creating these paintings utilized a brush or their fingertips to apply the paint, filling in the outlines of the animals with intricate patterns of dots, lines, or dashes. Although the paintings did not showcase any intricate anatomical details, they did include distinctive features such as spiky crests on the animals' heads, horns, and facial warts that were frequently observed in pigs. Some of the paintings showed individual animals, while others depicted entire scenes, providing an insight into the world of ancient people. To further illustrate the appearance of these images (1.4.11), historians have gone to great lengths to recreate a portion of one scene, which offers a glimpse into the artistry and skill of the creators of these remarkable paintings.

Oldest Cave Art Found in Sulawesi

A team of Griffith University archaeologists has shared in the discovery of what may be the world’s oldest known cave painting, dating back to at least 45,500 years ago. Uncovered in South Sulawesi during field research conducted with Indonesia’s leading archaeological research centre, Pusat Penelitian Arkeologi Nasional (ARKENAS), the cave painting consists of a figurative depiction of a Sulawesi warty pig, a wild boar that is endemic to this Indonesian island.

[1]  Lambert, T. Retrieved from:  https://localhistories.org/a-brief-history-of-russia/

Natural Places

• Air & Tenere Reserves
• Tassili N'Ajjer National Park
• Lakes Of Ounianga
• Namib Sand Sea
• Ennedi Massif
• Vredefort Dome
• Victoria Falls
• Land of the Dogons
• Wadi Al Hitan
• Salonga National Park
• Dja Faunal Reserve
• Okapi Wildlife Reserve
• Tai Forest National Park
• Lope-Okanda Landscape
• Sangha Trinational
• Bwindi Impenetrable
• Virunga National Park
• Kahuzi-Biega National Park
• Lake Malawi National Park
• Lake Turkana
• Kenya Lake System
• Maloti Drakensberg park
• Simien Mountains
• Kilimanjaro National Park
• Mount Kenya National Park
• Rwenzori Mountains
• Mount Nimba reserve
• Strange Worlds
• Potential Sites

Cultural Places

• Awash Valley
• Fossil Hominid Sites (South Africa)
• Tassili n'Ajjer
• Stone Circles of Senegambia
• Rock-Art of Tadrart Acacus
• Chongoni Rock-Art Area
• Twyfelfontein
• Ukhahlamba/Drakensberg
• Kondoa Rock-Art sites
• Ancient Thebes
• Memphis and the pyramids
• Nubian Monuments
• Gebel Barkal
• Leptis Magna 
• Amphitheatre of El Jem
• Dougga/Thugga
• Historic Cairo
• Saint Catherine Area
• Fortified cities of the Maghreb
• Fortified Towns of the Trans-Sahara Trading routes
• Ancient Sub-saharan civilisations
• East Africa's Swahili Coast
• Madagascar & Mauritius
• Ancient Ethiopia

• Bwindi Impenetrable National Park
• Lake Turkana National Parks 
• Madagascar Dry Forests
• Upper Nile Floodplains
• Succulent Karoo
• Lake Tanganyika
• Danakil Depression
• Atlas Mountains
• Bale Mountains
• Eastern Arc Forests
• Kasanka National Park

Rock-art & Pre-history

Evidence of early human artistic expression in Africa commonly takes the form of rock paintings and engravings.  Some of these are thought to date back 12,000 years, but most are much more recent.  They are found across the continent, with the best preserved sites found in the Sahara and the deserts of southern Africa.  In many areas they trace a rich history, providing evidence of environmental change, or recording significant events, such as the introduction of horses and chariots to parts of the Sahara.  Rock art depicts animals, such as elephants, hippos and giraffes that once occurred in the interior of the Sahara but became extinct as the rich savanna ecosystem turned to desert. Across the continent, rock-art subjects include highly revered animals and important aspects of local culture and lifestyle, particularly hunting scenes.  Abstract symbols are also widespread, but much more difficult to interpret. 

Four of the seven ‘prime’ rock-art sites are in desert areas, notably the mountain ranges of southern Algeria ( Tassili n’Ajjer ) and neighbouring parts of Libya ( Tadrart Acacus ). In southern Africa, rock-art in the Namib Desert is best represented by the exposed engravings at Twyfelfontein , and the paintings on the cliffs and rock shelters of the Tsodilo Hills on the fringes of the Kalahari Desert in north-western Botswana.  Elsewhere on the continent, rock-art has survived best in caves, rock shelters and overhangs, where it has been protected from the worst effects of weathering.   There seems to be a concentration of such sites in eastern and southern Africa, where granite hills and outcrops have been occupied by people, providing ideal conditions for the development of such art.  Sites in these wetter parts of the continent include (from north to south) Kondoa in Tanzania, Chongoni in Malawi, the Matobo Hills in Zimbabwe, and the Drakensberg of South Africa.  The paintings in these places are thought to be more recent than those in the deserts, with some little more than a century or two old.  Rock-art discoveries in sub-Saharan West Africa are comparatively rare (perhaps because of a shortage of suitable rocky areas?) but there is a concentration of intriguing ancient rock engravings on exposed rocks in the Lope-Okanda landscape , and rock art is still an important part of Dogon culture at the Cliffs of Bandiagara in Mali.

Other aspects of human pre-history in Africa are represented by the collection of Stone Circles that mark burial sites across a wide area north of the Gambia River in West Africa, and by the engraved rock stelae of Tiya in Ethiopia.  The age of these ancient monoliths remains a mystery, as does their cultural meaning and the broader context in which the people responsible for them developed.

PLEASE HELP SAVE THE THREATENED ROCK ART OF THE SAHARA!  TARA, the Trust for African Rock Art, is based in Nairobi, Kenya and is committed to recording Africa's rich rock art heritage.  TARA's aim is to make this information widely available and accessible and, to the extent possible, preserve today's most threatened sites, however remote, across the African continent. TARA aims to raise $60,000 over 45 days (18th May to 1st July 2015) for urgent work on the Sahara's endangered rock art.  Please donate what you can by clicking here .

Other key places:   There are many other important rock-art sites across the continent and there is a need for a detailed comparative study to determine which of these is of greatest importance in terms of concentration, quality and state of preservation.  There may well be other sites that would warrant world heritage status.

To read more about each of the world heritage sites featuring rock-art and human pre-history, and see a slideshow of each place, follow these links:

© Copyright 2018. All Rights Reserved. African World Heritage, Nairobi, Kenya

Prehistoric Rock Paintings, Types, Features and Significance

Prehistoric art paintings were usually painted on rocks, and these rock carvings were referred to as Petroglyphs. The first prehistoric art paintings were uncovered in Madhya Pradesh's.

Table of Contents

Prehistoric Rock Paintings

Petroglyphs are the name given to prehistoric rock carvings that were typically painted on rocks. The Bhimbetka caves in Madhya Pradesh are where the earliest prehistoric artwork were discovered. The earliest forms of art that people used to express themselves on a cave wall as a canvas were paintings and sketches. In order to prepare for the UPSC Civil Service Exam, you can use this article to understand the ideas around the Prehistoric Rock Paintings.

Prehistoric Rock Paintings Background

The sketches and paintings can be used to identify seven historical eras. In 1957–1958, archaeologist V.S. Wakankar found the Bhimbetaka paintings. These paintings frequently include tigers, bison, and other big game creatures. Because they feature elephants, rhinoceroses, cattle, snakes, spotted deer, barasingha, and other creatures, they are known as the “Zoo Rock Shelter.” Three significant phases can be identified in prehistoric paintings:

• Palaeolithic Period
• Mesolithic Period

Chalcolithic Period

Upper palaeolithic period (40000–10000 bc).

Minerals were used as paints since the walls of the rock shelter caves were made of quartzite. One of the most common minerals was ochre, also known as geru, when combined with lime and water. By adding other minerals to their colour palette, they were able to produce hues like red, white, yellow, and green.

White, dark red, and green were used to depict large animals like bison, elephants, rhinos, tigers, and others. In human sculptures, red was typically utilised for hunters and green for dancers. In Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Bihar, and Uttarakhand in India, remnants of rock paintings have been found on cave walls.

Early rock painting sites include Lakhudiyar in Uttarakhand, Kupgallu in Telangana, Piklihal and Tekkalkotta in Karnataka, Bhimbetka and Jogimara in Madhya Pradesh, among others. These paintings fall into three categories: Man, Animal, and Geometric Symbols.

Upper Palaeolithic Period Features

The human form is portrayed as a stick figure. A long-snouted animal, a fox, and a multi-legged lizard are typical animal motifs in the early paintings (many other creatures were later created). There are more wavy lines, geometric patterns filled with rectangles, and a cluster of dots.Beginning with black, moving through crimson, and ending with white, paintings are layered one on top of the other. One of India’s and the world’s oldest paintings, dating to the Upper Palaeolithic, is Bhimbetka.

Mesolithic Period (10000–4000 BC)

The era with the most artistic remains is the Mesolithic. There are many themes, however the paintings are small. Most of the scenes feature hunters. Groups of hunters used bows, arrows, pointed sticks, and barbed spears. Traps and snares used to catch animals are depicted in certain paintings.

A common past time for Mesolithic inhabitants was animal pointing. In some images, mankind are being chased by animals, while in others, they are being chased by hunters. Throughout this time period, red was frequently used. Compared to the Upper Palaeolithic Period, the size of the paintings decreased at this time. One of the most frequent scenes depicted in these paintings is group hunting, and several others show grazing and riding activities.

During this time, there were a rise in the amount of paintings that featured the colours green and yellow. Most of the paintings are representations of combat situations. Many artworks show men astride horses and elephants. Some of them are equipped with bows and arrows, showing that they are prepared for battle. The idea that man perfected the art of tanning skins for clothing and shelter is supported by the drawings of spotted deer skins drying.

Other pieces of art from this historical period also feature musical instruments like the harp. In several of the paintings, intricate geometrical forms like the spiral, rhomboid, and circle are seen. Some paintings from the later era can be found at the Jogimara caves in the Ramgarh hills in the Surguja district of Chhattisgarh. These were allegedly painted about the year 1000 BCE. Caves like the sanctuary of Udkuda, Garagodi, Khaperkheda, Gotitola, Kulgaon, and others may be found in the Kanker region of Chhattisgarh.

These shelters have images of a more affluent and stationary way of life, including human figurines, animals, palm prints, bullock carts, and other objects. Similar paintings can be seen at the Ghodasar and Kohabaur rock art locations in the Koriya district. Another remarkable site is Chitwa Dongri (Durg district), where we can observe murals of dragons, agricultural themes, and a Chinese figure riding a donkey.

Prehistoric Rock Paintings Significance

The colours utilised included white, yellow, orange, red ochre, purple, brown, green, and black. However, white and crimson were their preferred hues. These people used a variety of coloured pebbles to smash to create their paints. They turned red due to haematite (Geru in India). This green shade was achieved using the green rock chalcedony. White was most likely created by limestone.

Sticky substances like animal fat, gum, or tree resin may be used when combining rock powder with water. The brushes were made of plant fibre. These hues are assumed to have been preserved for thousands of years by the chemical reaction of the oxide that exists on the surface of rocks. There have been paintings found in both active and inactive caves. It implies that these pieces of art have occasionally served as signals, warnings, or other comparable functions.

Many of the new rock art locations feature earlier paintings that have been painted over. At Bhimbetka, paintings are visible stacked one over the other in about 20 layers. It shows how humanity has evolved over time, from one era to the next. In symbology, inspiration from nature is blended with a touch of mystical. Only a few illustrations are utilised to convey ideas (the stick-figure drawings symbolise males). There are several geometrical designs. The majority of the scenes included both hunting and depictions of people’s social and economic situations. There are various figures, including carts, chariots, humans, animals, and legendary monsters. Red and white are more significant colours.

Sharing is caring!

What is prehistoric rock painting?

Prehistoric Paintings - Art and Culture Notes Prehistoric paintings were usually painted on rocks, and these rock carvings were referred to as Petroglyphs.

What are the main features of prehistoric rock paintings?

Paintings are linear representations, in green and dark red, of huge animal figures, such as Bisons, Tigers, Elephants, Rhinos and Boars beside stick-like human figures. Mostly they are filled with geometric patterns. Green paintings are of dances and red ones of hunters.

Which place is famous for prehistoric rock paintings?

Two major sites of prehistoric rock/cave paintings in India: Bhimbetka Caves and Jogimara Caves (Amarnath, Madhya Pradesh).

Who discovered the prehistoric rock painting?

Rock Art (Part-1) Discovery in India: The first discovery of rock paintings in India was made in 1867–68 by an archaeologist, Archibold Carlleyle.

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

• UPSC Online Coaching
• UPSC Exam 2024
• UPSC Syllabus 2024
• UPSC Prelims Syllabus 2024
• UPSC Mains Syllabus 2024
• UPSC Exam Pattern 2024
• UPSC Age Limit 2024
• UPSC Calendar 2024
• UPSC Syllabus in Hindi
• UPSC Full Form

Recent Posts

• UPPSC Exam 2024
• UPPSC Calendar
• UPPSC Syllabus 2024
• UPPSC Exam Pattern 2024
• UPPSC Application Form 2024
• UPPSC Eligibility Criteria 2024
• UPPSC Admit card 2024
• UPPSC Salary And Posts
• UPPSC Cut Off
• UPPSC Previous Year Paper

BPSC Exam 2024

• BPSC 70th Notification
• BPSC 69th Exam Analysis
• BPSC Admit Card
• BPSC Syllabus
• BPSC Exam Pattern
• BPSC Cut Off
• BPSC Question Papers

IB ACIO Exam

• IB ACIO Salary
• IB ACIO Syllabus

CSIR SO ASO Exam

• CSIR SO ASO Exam 2024
• CSIR SO ASO Result 2024
• CSIR SO ASO Exam Date
• CSIR SO ASO Question Paper
• CSIR SO ASO Answer key 2024
• CSIR SO ASO Exam Date 2024
• CSIR SO ASO Syllabus 2024

Study Material Categories

• Daily The Hindu Analysis
• Daily Practice Quiz for Prelims
• Daily Answer Writing
• Daily Current Affairs
• Indian Polity
• Environment and Ecology
• Art and Culture
• General Knowledge
• Biographies

IMPORTANT EXAMS

• Terms & Conditions
• Return & Refund Policy
• Privacy Policy

Prehistoric Art | Discovery, Characteristics, Purpose & More

Prehistoric art is a term used to refer to art made in the distant past, roughly corresponding with the stone age which lasted from 3.3 million years ago to around 2,000 BCE . It is divided into two main categories: rock art , or the art created on rock surface; and portable art , which includes sculptures, beads, pendants, manuports etc. Manuport is an unmodified object transported from its original environment and relocated, due to its aesthetic character. They are considered the earliest examples of art. Here is an overview of prehistoric art including its discovery, characteristics, purpose and more.

Table Of Contents

S1 – prehistoric era, s2 – prehistoric art definition, s3 – prehistoric art types, paleolithic cave art, paleolithic sculpture, mesolithic art, neolithic art, petroglyphs, art for art’s sake, hunting-fertility magic theory, shamanistic interpretation, dialogue between the artist and the cave, a combination of various theories.

Prehistory is the period of human history before the invention writing and keeping of written records. This is a very long period, ten million years according to current theories. The first known use of stone tools by hominins (modern humans, extinct human species and all our immediate ancestors) is dated to around 3.3 million years ago . The first full writing systems appeared in several regions independently. The first among them was in Mesopotamia around 3,400 BCE .

Prehistorians have used the activity of tool-making as the defining feature for measuring time. The Stone Age , which lasted from around 3.3 million years ago to around 2,000 BCE , is generally taken as the time period for Prehistoric art. It is divided into three eras: the Paleolithic , the Mesolithic and the Neolithic ; in other words the Old Stone Age, the Middle Stone Age and the New Stone Age. These periods are marked by change in technology of making stone tools.

Technically, prehistoric art is art made by people in those societies where a writing system has not been developed . There have been societies in recent times which have had no writing system. However, we don’t call their art prehistoric as it is recent. We generally use the term ‘ethnographic arts’ for arts developed by such societies. Moreover, the implication that societies with oral traditions are less cultured than those with writing is not true.

‘Archaeological art’ , or art of past cultures which we study using archaeological methods , may be a more appropriate term. Nonetheless, we will use the term ‘prehistoric art’ as it is widespread and most people relate to it. Moreover, we will limit the term to art made in the stone age as this is in keeping with the classification of prehistoric art in many texts.

Prehistoric art encompasses all art-like manifestations of the distant past. It is divided into two main categories:-

• Rock Art , which consists of markings on rock surfaces the were intentionally produced by members of the genus Homo (human beings or species closely related to humans like Neanderthals).
• Portable Art , which is made up of a diversity of materials, whose key determining feature is that they are small enough to be carried easily by humans, and which in many cases can be worn on the human body.

Rock art can be divided into two principal classes on the basis of the method used to manufacture it: petroglyphs , which are produced by a reductive process ; and pictograms , which are produced by an additive process . Petroglyphs are found in two forms: sgraffiti , defined by color contrast; and relief petroglyphs , defined by relief depth. Both of these types may be made by percussion or abrasion . Pictograms include stencils, paintings, drawings, beeswax figures etc. It is important to note that some rock art has been created using both reductive and additive processes.

Portable prehistoric art includes decorative items like beads and pendants; devices used for retention and retrieval of information, like message sticks; portable engravings and figurines; plaques; objects bearing series of notches and lines; ceremonial objects; and manuports.

S4 – Prehistoric Art Discovery

Apart naturally preserved sites, Prehistoric Rock Art was always known to the locals though they didn’t know its age. The first known mention of rock art in a written text is by Chinese philosopher Han Fei in his book Han Fei Zi . It was written in 3rd century BCE about 2,300 years ago. Numerous other references to rock art may be found in literature from around the world. By mid-19th century CE, as archaeology became established , the great antiquity of humankind and prehistory became accepted. Consequently, the study of prehistoric art became widespread, systematic and better documented.

In the 1860s, Archibald Carlyle , an English archaeologist active in India, discovered rock paintings in shelters at Morhana Pahar , near the village of Hanmana in Bhainsaur, Uttar Pradesh . While numerous other discoveries of prehistoric sites had been made before this, Carlyle was remarkable because he was the first to recognize that some of the paintings discovered must be prehistoric.

Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola was a Spanish jurist and amateur archaeologist. In 1878 , he discovered Paleolithic paintings on a cave on his property, known as the Altamira cave . Due to the sophistication of the art found, experts considered Sautuola’s discovery a hoax . He died in 1888, still not credited for his monumental find.

At the end of the 19th century, there were a number of discoveries of painted/engraved caves in France. These include La Mouthe (1895), Pair-non-Pair (1896), Les Combarelles (1901) and Font-de-Gaume (1901) . As images of long extinct animals were discovered from these sites, doubts over their authenticity as prehistoric art began to mitigate. In 1902, prehistorians of the time declared Altamira to be authentic .

The first Paleolithic female sculpture was discovered at Laugerie-Basse, located in Dordogne, France . It was found in 1864 by Paul Hurault, 8th Marquis de Vibraye, an amateur archaeologist from France. He named it Venus Impudique (“Immodest Venus”) because, unlike in classical depictions of Venus, the depicted female made no attempts to hide her sexuality.

The term “Venus” was then used 30 years later by French archaeologist Édouard Piette in a satirical manner, just like it was used for Venus of Hottentot . Piette used it to describe only what he considered grotesquely obese figures. Since then the term “Venus” was applied to each new find of a Paleolithic female sculpture . Thus the term is not related to fertility or to comparability with classical art. It is a misnomer which reflects European racist attitude at the time.

S5 – Prehistoric Art Characteristics

Geometric arrangements of lines, notches and dots are frequently found in Prehistoric art. Historically these signs were given literal interpretation like spears, traps, nets etc. However, now many of these signs are viewed as symbolic complements to the animal/human imagery. In some cases geometric signs might be pictorial representations of objects. Like the zig-zag shapes at Fornols probably represent lightening, which is frequent in the area. However, in most cases such correspondence is not evident.

• Animals dominate Paleolithic cave paintings.
• Usually, individual images have their distinct space and don’t overlap.
• Natural forms of the caves are exploited to give volume to depicted animals.
• Acoustic qualities of the caves may have played a part in choosing the location for cave art.
• Human representations are few in comparison to animals.
• Pregnant females dominate human depiction with males being a rarity.
• In some cases, the reliefs provide views of characteristic animal behaviors like mating.
• Like the Paleolithic era, rock paintings dominate the surviving examples of Mesolithic art.
• Due to warmer climates, art moved from caves to vertical cliffs or walls of natural rock.
• Humans, not animals, dominate Mesolithic rock art.
• The depicted humans may be seen hunting, dancing, running, playing games, etc.
• Sculpture made a comeback in Neolithic era after being nearly absent in the Mesolithic.
• It was no longer restricted to carving and was now also fashioned out of clay and baked.
• Like the Mesolithic, Neolithic painting depicts more humans than animals.
• These humans became more identifiable unlike their Mesolithic predecessors.

S6 – Prehistoric Art Techniques

Petroglyphs, as mentioned earlier, are rock artworks which are produced by a reductive process. Direct percussion or pounding accounts for most, if not all, percussion petroglyphs. The other type of petroglyphs are made by abrasion. Mur-e is an aboriginal word from the Brooandik language for a tool used for making a petroglyph. Several striking characteristics of mur-e are as follows:-

• They are usually under 150gm and rarely over 250gm. This corresponds to a maximum dimension of 6 to 8cm.
• There is a preference for pieces with a thick end to be held in hand and a pointed end to strike the rock surface. Flat and elongated shapes are also seen. Round pebbles are also used for patina (outer surface of rocks) bruising.
• There is a preference for dense quartzites and crystalline quartz of various types as the material, when available.
• Several types of other materials have been used to produce petroglyphs especially where the rock surface is soft.
• The softest rock used is carbonate speleothem, or moonmilk. It can be marked by the slightest finger touch.

There is a lot of ethnographic information available about the technology of pictograms, mostly from Australia. The various colors are obtained as follows:-

• Red ochre was a widely traded commodity. Substitutes were also used, including yellow or brown limonite, that were roasted to obtain a red color.
• White was frequently obtained from kaolin, huntite, enstatite, carbonate, gypsum or selenite; even from finely grounded minerals like quartz, microline, muscovite and jarosite.
• Black pigments are mostly of charcoal or manganese oxide.
• Yellow and various hues of brown were obtained from iron minerals, clay, from the dust inside termite nests, siderite, and locally from a fungus.
• Glouconite provided the rare bluish colors.

Hard pigments were pounded, ground or eroded into a powder . Ground patches of rock have been found at thousands of rock art sites. Various liquids provided the solvent, suspender or binder required in paint production. These include water, urine, blood, semen, honey, egg-white or fat of various animals. Plants were used to extract numerous other binders.

There is a lot of literature on the Australian use of paintbrushes and the application of paint on rock surfaces. In Arnhem Land, brushes were recently made from tree barks, pandanus leaves, kapok bush, palm leaf fibers or twigs whose ends were chewed. Paints were frequently applied with fingers or whole hands in Australia and elsewhere. Prepared paint was contained in the mouth of the artist or a suitable container , like a seashell or a piece of bark.

Apart from stencils, linear pictograph motifs were also produced by spraying paint directly from the mouth into a narrow gap made by the hand . This is a more effective form of paint application than brushes. This is because sprayed paint tends to have better penetration and adherence, especially on rough and porous surfaces.

Rock drawings were made with hand held pieces of pigment applied dry to the rock surface, like a crayon . This was a widespread technique but its results were less permanent. Drawings can often be distinguished from paintings, especially microscopically. The crayons used for drawings are sometimes found on sites, even in sediment layers.

Sculpting and finishing of prehistoric miniature sculptures would have been a difficult task considering the technology available. Splitting and wedging was followed by scraping, gouging, incising, grinding and polishing. Powered hematite was used as the abrasive for polishing. Among the best known Paleolithic sculptures is Venus of Brassempouy. It is one of the earliest detailed representations of a human face. The well preserved surface of the statue shows remarkably clear traces of several different techniques: cutting, incising, grinding, polishing, scraping, gouging and chiseling. Many of these techniques have been produced by the same tool, a stone burin.

S7 – Prehistoric Art Purpose

With some rare exceptions, there is nothing to tell us reliably what a rock art motif depicts or means. Most rock art interpretations are based on the perception of observers. There is no rational explanation for the traditional assumption that ‘researchers’ have some additional insight into the meaning of rock art acquired by many years of ‘observing’ such art traditions. Thus most theories about the meaning of prehistoric art has no value in scientific study of the subject. Nonetheless, we will cover the most prominent theories about the purpose of prehistoric art.

The simplest view among scholars about the purpose of prehistoric art was that it was merely decorative, i.e. it was “art for art’s sake” . This view persisted at least into the 1920s. While most of the cave paintings and engravings are readily accessible, there are some which have been created in places that are difficult to access . The “art for art s sake” explanation is highly unlikely for these sort of works. Moreover, as ethnographic research provided information about the active hunter-gatherer societies around the world, it became clear that art was anything but for its own sake in these societies .

In the 20th century, it was proposed that prehistoric artworks were magical acts to ensure the success of a hunt or to increase reproduction and fertility . The hunting-fertility magic theory believes that prehistoric humans perceived an image as equal to the animal it depicted. By possessing the image, they thought that they had some control over the animal thus increasing the chance of a successful hunt. This was corroborated by the fact that some animals were depicted with spears cast on them. The reason behind sculptures and paintings of pregnant women and animals was explained as a magical act to control reproduction and fertility.

The hunting-fertility magic theory dominated the scene until 1950s. However, as more prehistoric art was discovered, a flaw in this theory became apparent. The study of food deposits at some sites clearly implied that the artists were not portraying the animals they ate. For example, at Lascaux, 90% of the food remains were that of reindeer but the animal was represented only once. Similarly, at Grotte Chauvet, 72% of the animals depicted were not hunted.

In 19th and 20th century, anthropologists studied the rock art of Southern Africa and found it to be related to shamanistic practices of local bushmen . Scholars drew parallels between this and prehistoric cave art to link shamanism with it. The theory proposed was that cave art was a pursuit to contact a parallel spiritual universe .

In the shamanistic interpretation, geometric signs are seen as representation of hallucinations in a trance state. Moreover, where natural contours are exploited to create an artwork, the shaman is using his power to bring the spirit of the animal to the surface . The spotted horses at Pech-Merle , where the right side of the rock is shaped like a horse’s head, is one example of this. Paintings made in remote areas are seen as exploration of deep underground for spiritual visions.

Some scholars believe that the paintings played a role in early religion as images of worship. Recent researchers have also focused on th e individuality of each cave describing the process of creating art in them as dialogue between the artist and the cave . They study the choice of subject, color and technique in respect to surface, texture, light conditions, preexisting forms and even acoustic qualities of the cave.

There is a tendency of scholars to apply a one-for-all interpretation for Prehistoric art, whether it is “art for art s sake”, “hunting-fertility magic” or “shamanism”. The proponents of these theories present selected images to justify their interpretation , leaving the other majority unexplained . What emerges today is a picture of enormous complexity. Recent scholars thus believe that one explanation is not sufficient for all prehistoric artworks.

S1:- Buis, Alena. “Art and Visual Culture: Prehistory to Renaissance”. “Prehistoric Art” . Clayton, Ewan. “Where did writing begin?” . British Library Board. Janson, H. W., Davies, Penelope J. E. “Janson’s History of Art: The Western Tradition”. p. 9.

S2:- Conkey, M.W. (2001). “Prehistoric Art”. “International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences”.

S3:- Bednarik, Robert G. “Rock Art Science – The Scientific Study of Paleoart”. pp. 1, 5, 177.

S4:- Bahn, Paul G. (1997). “The Cambridge Illustrated History of Prehistoric Art”. pp. 1, 49, 67. White, Randall. (2003). “Prehistoric art: the symbolic journey of humankind.” pp. 45, 54, 55.

S5:- White, Randall. (2003). “Prehistoric art: the symbolic journey of humankind.” pp. 71-120. Esaak, Shelley. (Sep 01, 2018). “Art of the Mesolithic Age” . ThoughtCo. Dotdash Meredith. Unit 3 “Mesolithic Art” . eGyanKosh. Esaak, Shelley. (Aug 26, 2018). “Neolithic Art” . ThoughtCo. Dotdash Meredith.

S6:- Bednarik, Robert G. “Rock Art Science – The Scientific Study of Paleoart”. pp. 37-48. White, Randall. (2003). “Prehistoric art: the symbolic journey of humankind.” pp. 71, 87.

S7:- Bednarik, Robert G. “Rock Art Science – The Scientific Study of Paleoart”. p. 153. Janson, H. W., Davies, Penelope J. E. “Janson’s History of Art: The Western Tradition”. pp. 5, 6. White, Randall. (2003). “Prehistoric art: the symbolic journey of humankind.” pp. 50-58. “Art That Changed the World”. DK. Penguin Random House. p. 13.

Leave a Comment Cancel reply

Privacy overview.

• History Classics
• Your Profile
• Find History on Facebook (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on Twitter (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on YouTube (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on Instagram (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on TikTok (Opens in a new window)
• This Day In History
• History Podcasts
• History Vault

What Prehistoric Cave Paintings Reveal About Early Human Life

By: Becky Little

Published: October 5, 2021

What does the oldest known art in the world tell us about the people who created it? Images painted, drawn or carved onto rocks and cave walls—which have been found across the globe—reflect one of humans’ earliest forms of communication, with possible connections to language development. The earlest known images often appear abstract, and may have been symbolic, while later ones depicted animals, people and hybrid figures that perhaps carried some kind of spiritual significance.

The oldest known prehistoric art wasn't created in a cave. Drawn on a rock face in South Africa 73,000 years ago, it predates any known cave art. However, caves themselves help to protect and preserve the art on their walls, making them rich historical records for archaeologists to study. And because humans added to cave art over time, many have layers—depicting an evolution in artistic expression.

READ MORE: The Prehistoric Ages: How Humans Lived Before Written Records

Early Cave Art Was Abstract

In 2018, researched announced the discovery of the oldest known cave paintings, made by Neanderthals at least 64,000 years ago, in the Spanish caves of La Pasiega, Maltravieso and Ardales. Like some other early cave art, it was abstract. Archaeologists who study these caves have discovered drawings of ladder-like lines, hand stencils and a stalagmite structure decorated with ochre.

Neanderthals, an archaic human subspecies that procreated with Homo sapiens , likely left this art in locations they viewed as special, says Alistair W.G. Pike, head of archaeological sciences at the University of Southampton in the U.K. and co-author of a study about the caves published in Science in 2018. Many of the hand stencils appear in small recesses of the cave that are hard to reach, suggesting the person who made them had to prepare pigment and light before venturing into the cave to find the desired spot.

The markings themselves are also interesting because they demonstrate symbolic thinking. “The significance of the painting is not to know that Neanderthals could paint, it’s the fact that they were engaging in symbolism,” Pike says. “And that’s probably related to an ability to have language.”

The possible connection between cave art and human language development is something Shigeru Miyagawa, a professor of linguistics and Japanese language and culture at MIT, theorized about in a 2018 paper he co-authored for Frontiers in Psychology .

“The problem is that language doesn’t fossilize,” Miyagawa says. “One of the reasons why I started to look at cave art is precisely because of this. I wanted to find other artifacts that could be proxies for early language.”

One particular thing he’s interested in is the acoustics of the areas where cave art is located, and whether its placement had anything to do with the sounds people could make or hear in a particular spot.

READ MORE: How Did Humans Evolve?

Telling Stories With Human and Animal Figures

Over time, cave art began to feature human and animal figures. The earliest known cave painting of an animal, believed to be at least 45,500 years old, shows a Sulawesi warty pig . The image appears in the Leang Tedongnge cave on Indonesia’s Sulawesi island. Sulawesi also has the first known cave painting of a hunting scene , believed to be at least 43,900 years old.

These Sulawesi cave paintings demonstrate the artists’ ability to depict creatures that existed in the world around them, and predate the famous ​​paintings in France’s Lascaux cave by tens of thousands of years. The Lascaux paintings, discovered in 1940 when some teenagers followed a dog into the cave, feature hundreds of images of animals that date to around 17,000 years ago.

Many of the images in the Lascaux cave depict easily -recognizable animals like horses, bulls or deer. A few, though, are more unusual, demonstrating the artists’ ability to paint something they likely hadn’t seen in real life.

The Lasacaux cave art contains something like a “unicorn”—a horned, horse-like animal that may or may not be pregnant. Another unique image has variously been interpreted as a hunting accident in which a bison and a man both die, or an image involving a sorcerer or wizard. In any case, the artist seems to have paid particular attention to making the human figure anatomically male .

READ MORE: Early Humans May Have Scavenged More Than They Hunted

Cave and Rock Art in America

In North America, rock and cave art can be found across the continent, with a large concentration in the desert Southwest, where the arid climate has preserved thousands of petroglyphs and pictographs of ancient puebloan peoples. But some of continent's the oldest currently known cave paintings—made approximately 7,000 years ago—were discovered throughout the Cumberland Plateau, which stretches through parts of Kentucky , Tennessee , Alabama and Georgia . Indigenous peoples continued to create cave art in this region all the way into the 19th century.

Many of the Cumberland Plateau caves feature a spiritual figure who changes from a man into a bird, says Jan F. Simek, an archaeology professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, who has studied and written about cave and rock art in the region.

It’s clear from the way that some paintings in the Cumberland Plateau caves are grouped that the artists were telling a story or narrative.

“There’s a cave that’s actually relatively early in time in middle Tennessee that has a number of depictions of a boxlike human creature…paired with a more normal-looking human,” he says. “And they are interacting with each other in relation to what appears to be a woven textile.”

He continues, “there is a narration there, there’s a story there, even though we don’t know what the story is.”

That’s true of a lot of cave art as well. Even if archaeologists can’t tell what an early artist was saying, they can see that the artist was using images purposefully to create a narrative for themselves or others.

Sign up for Inside History

Get HISTORY’s most fascinating stories delivered to your inbox three times a week.

By submitting your information, you agree to receive emails from HISTORY and A+E Networks. You can opt out at any time. You must be 16 years or older and a resident of the United States.

More details : Privacy Notice | Terms of Use | Contact Us

Related Topics

Prehistoric art essay (401 words).

Academic anxiety?

Get original paper in 3 hours and nail the task

124 experts online

Prehistoric art is art created before written history, often the only record of early cultures. (Thefreedictionary.com) Prehistoric art is in three classifications, Paleolithic, Neolithic and thee Bronze Age. Paleolithic is the Old Stone Age. Neolithic is the New Stone Age. The Bronze Age is when metals such as copper, iron, and gold are used.

An example of Paleolithic art is the cave painting, Hall of the Bulls. The surface on which it is painted is not smooth. The painters used the contours of the cave to give composition. The painters also used the technique “twisted perspective”. This means the heads appear in frontal perspectives. The bodies appear in profile perspectives. Colors in the painting appear in black, red, and brown. Ground ocher pigments and charcoal make these colors.

I believe the purpose of this painting is to show the scene before a hunt. It depicts cows, bulls, horses, and deer in relative peaceful harmony. This observation came to me looking at the painting.

An example of Neolithic art is Stonehenge. Stonehenge is in Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire, England. Stonehenge is an example of Megalithic Architecture also. Built with huge stones about 20 feet tall of gray sarsen. The stones arranged in a circle around an altar. I believe Stonehenge was a monument to celebrate the summer solstice. Observing its size and shape, it would cast various shadows with the sun shining, the altar most likely for offerings to the sun god. I came to this conclusion knowing what I know about the druids and sun worship.

The end of the Neolithic age was the beginning of the Bronze Age. Known also as the Metal Age for its metal working which took place. The metals most used were copper, iron, gold, and tin. Iron was the cheapest and more available of the other metals. Iron used to forge weapons like swards, spears, and shields. Plows for farmers also forged from Iron helped in landscaping their farms. Gold and copper were predominately reserved for royalty and the gods, forming it in the form of golden idols.

Prehistoric art gave a written voice to those whom would not have had one otherwise. We are fortunate for these artists, and the stories their art tells. Prehistoric art was a way of self-expression and necessity, not to mention for people to feel closer to their gods. I wonder if prehistoric art served as a decorative purpose too.

This essay was written by a fellow student. You may use it as a guide or sample for writing your own paper, but remember to cite it correctly . Don’t submit it as your own as it will be considered plagiarism.

Need custom essay sample written special for your assignment?

Choose skilled expert on your subject and get original paper with free plagiarism report

Prehistoric Art Essay (401 words). (2018, Feb 28). Retrieved from https://artscolumbia.org/prehistoric-art-43092/

More related essays

• Words 15854

AP Art History 250 Required Images

Music Appreciation Flashcard

Art History, Online

• Words 18304

Art Renaissance to Modern

Arts flashcard section 6

History of Costume exam 2

BCS Renaissance

• Words 30691

Feb 27st: Early Renaissance Art

MUS 101 – Test 1 Answers

Hi, my name is Amy 👋

In case you can't find a relevant example, our professional writers are ready to help you write a unique paper. Just talk to our smart assistant Amy and she'll connect you with the best match.

TrendyDigests

Ancient Brazilian Rock Art Reveals 2,000-Year-Old Cultural Beliefs

Posted: April 20, 2024 | Last updated: April 20, 2024

In the lush expanses of Brazil's Jalapão region, a stunning archaeological discovery has emerged from the rock faces: a series of ancient engravings and paintings, unveiling the spiritual and cultural life of precolonial societies dating back about 2,000 years.

Researchers have cataloged these remarkable artworks at 16 sites, revealing a shared belief system among the early inhabitants of this biodiverse savanna.

Archaeologist Rômulo Macedo, leading the investigations for Brazil’s National Historical and Artistic Heritage Institute (IPHAN), remarked that the sites are connected by the recurrence of symbols, "demonstrating that the creators of the rock records, especially the engravings, shared the same belief system."

This continuity of themes suggests a complex societal tapestry woven through the common thread of symbolic expression.

The rock art, predominantly engravings with a smaller number of red pigment paintings, features human footprints, animal tracks of deer and wild pigs, and “figures that resemble celestial bodies.”

These motifs point towards a possibly sophisticated understanding of the cosmos, spiritual communication, and territorial demarcation by the region's prehistoric inhabitants.

The purpose and creators of the artworks, however, remain a subject for further research. Macedo suggests that while the engravings might reflect a unified cultural expression, the red paintings could signify an even earlier period, possibly crafted by a different group.

IPHAN's press release emphasized the need for additional study to elucidate the origins and meanings of these artworks.

The recent intensification of archaeological activity in Tocantins has been spurred by infrastructure expansion in the Brazilian Amazon states.

This proactive research approach is crucial as human occupation in the Jalapão region is now known to extend back approximately 12,000 years. The wealth of rock art sites joins a roster of pre-colonial structures, creating a rich tapestry of the area's ancient human footprint.

Despite the promise these sites hold for unraveling precolonial history, they face significant threats from wind erosion, vandalism, forest fires, and deforestation—issues plaguing many archaeological sites worldwide.

According to Global Forest Watch, the Tocantins state lost 19 percent of its humid primary forest between 2002 and 2022.

Conservation efforts, led by IPHAN, aim to shield this invaluable cultural heritage from further damage. Education and heritage protection initiatives are underway, reflecting a growing recognition of the irreplaceable value of these historical markers.

The discovery in Jalapão is a compelling addition to the mosaic of human history etched into the earth, linking us to the ancient peoples whose stories are only beginning to be understood.

As archaeologists continue to peel back the layers of time, each engraved line and pigment stroke offers a silent testament to the enduring human desire to communicate and commemorate our place within the natural world.

More for You

Stephanie Sparks, former pro golfer and Golf Channel host, dead at 50

Top 24 Short Actors Who Made a Big Impact

7 Things To Know If You Withdraw More Than $10,000 From Your Checking Account

Britain shows 'most lethal' tank in history

Why You Should Place Some Orange Peels Around Your Patio

You can buy a home in France or Italy for 'the price of a new truck'—but take these 3 steps before retiring abroad

These Are 10 Smells That Cats Absolutely Hate

Unforgettable Debuts: 25 Actors Who Left a Lasting First Impression

Why You Should Stick to the One-Tenth Rule When Buying a Car

16 Coolest Small Towns in the U.S. You’ve Never Heard Of

Legal Fees Costing Trump Millions as Criminal Trial Begins

Our Gardening Expert Warns To Avoid This Major Mistake When Growing Hostas

How to Clean a Faucet Head to Get Rid of Buildup, According to the Pros

James Bond Trailer Featuring Henry Cavill Receives 2.3M Views Despite Being an AI Fake | THR News Video

Netflix Must-Sees: 25 Series That Keep Viewers Hooked

The 15 Cutest Disney Characters, Ranked

Freeze Weather Warning Issued for 9 States As Temperatures Plummet

The Relaxing Scent That Can Help Keep Rats Out Of Your Yard

Here's How Often You Should Really Be Watering Your Tomatoes, According To An Expert

Trump’s PAC has spent millions on his legal fees. It might be running out of money.