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From the Paleolithic
Age to the Pre-Classical Civilizations
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Prehistoric Art
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Prehistoric people often
represented their world- and perhaps their beliefs- through
visual images. Art emerged with the appearance and
dispersion of fully modern people
through Africa, Europe, Asia, Australasia, and the Americas.
Paintings, sculptures,
engravings, and, later, pottery reveal not only a quest for
beauty but also
complex social systems and spiritual concepts.
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Horse
c. 15,000-10,000 BC
Lascaux, France
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The first art that we can recognize appears in
association with the remains of fully modern people. These
people were just like us, although their lifestyles depended
on hunting and foraging for food or, later, on pastoralism
and subsistence agriculture. It is possible that earlier
peoples might have decorated their bodies and clothes or
marked trees or features in the landscape but, if they did,
evidence of their art has not survived. Recognizable art
dates from at least 38.000BC in Europe. Africa, and
Australia. There are also controversial claims for rock art
of similar age in South America. Works of this early period
are not simple. They do not show development in the manner
of a child's drawing, that is, gaining competence and
accuracy in realistic representation before perhaps
achieving a more mature confidence for abstraction. Instead,
the oldest known works of art, including paintings,
sculptures, and engravings, seem to show all these qualities
at once.

They are the products of minds as intellectually capable and
sophisticated as our own. In Europe and Africa, early works
of art depict animals and humans and include symbols. The
former may be drawn or sculpted realistically or represented
by the clever emphasis of a distinctive characteristic, such
as the tusks of the mammoth or the horn of a rhinoceros.
Paintings, low relief sculptures, and engravings adorned
areas of caves and rock shelters where hunter-foragers
lived. They also covered dark caverns and recesses visited
less frequently where light from fires and lamps illuminated
occasions which probably had special social and spiritual
significance. With the spread of farming as a way of life,
people began to settle in villages, and territories were
defined. Drawings like maps and landscapes appeared, along
with domesticated animals and more human figures. Changing
styles of decorated pottery became the designer labels of
successive generations of prehistoric peoples. Of all the
known prehistoric works of art, some 70 per cent may be
attributed to hunter-foragers, 13 per cent to herders and
stock raisers, and 17 per cent to people with an organized
economy (farmers, livestock breeders, and the like). The
cave art of all social groups consists of five principal
motifs: human figures, animals, tools and weapons,
rudimentary local maps, and symbols or ideograms.These
motifs occur on portable objects (engraved, sculpted or
claymodelled) and immovable surfaces (rock paintings and
engravings).
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Cave engraving with figure of mythical beast
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Cave engraving with figure of mythical beast |
TOPOGRAPHICAL
COMPOSITIONS
Early farming communities depicted their view of the area in
which they lived. So-called topographical compositions
include animal pens and "maps" of villages and, later,
towns. In Valcamonica, several of these constitute the most
ancient maps known in Europe, such as the Bedolina Map. In
this example, it is possible to make out cultivated fields,
access paths, houses, and other topographical details. One
large composition found at Okladnikov on Lake Baikal
(Siberia) includes human figures and areas filled with
squares or circles in solid or dotted lines, which are
suggestive of a harvest scene. The Wall-map of Çatal Huyuk
(Turkey) is unique, showing an urban settlement with an
erupting volcano, the oldest documentation of such an
occurrence. The Topographical Stone of Jebel Amud in the
Jordanian desert, reproduces the layout of a zone comprising
150 settlements (indicated by various shapes) joined to one
another by engraved paths.
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DECORATED VASE
Vase decoration is a typically Neolithic art
form. The first, fairly simple buff-coloured
terracotta vases date from tile Peiligang culture of China
(seventh to sixth millennium вс). Later findings from the
Yang-Shao culture (fifth to fourth millennium вс) include
vases decorated with fish and other animals and tripodal
vessels shaped like owls. The figures not only had symbolic
significance, but also modified the appearance of the vase
by focusing attention on the decoration, the background
colour contrasts, and the rhythm of the outlines. The motifs
shown, although the same as those used for mural art, also
assumed other meanings. By the third millennium вс, the
variety
of form and ornamentation of pottery was already well
developed. Goblets, bowls, and covered dishes had now come
into existence.
In the Near and Middle East, the production of ceramics had
begun by the sixth millennium DC. Simple, rough, burnished
or reddish-coloured wares were made, the mouths of which
formed holes. They were decorated with impressed or rolled
shells and geometrical and figurative motifs.
In Africa, the oldest known pottery has been found in Egypt
at Merimda and then Faiyum (fifth millennium dc), whereas in
southern Europe, it dates from the seventh millennium вс.
The latter was often well finished and painted with red or
black geometric designs. By the sixth millennium вс, banded
pottery known as Bandkeramic had appeared across
Central Europe from France to the Ukraine. It
was decorated witti incised parallel lines, often infilled
with dots or cross-hatching.
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European Cave and Rock Art
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The cave and rock
art of the later Old Stone Age or Upper Paleolithic
(which ended in about 10,000bc) is especially famous and
has certain particular characteristics. In these
oldersites, large pictures of animals are only rarely
associated with human figures, whereas in more numerous.
Within sites, one animal may be more frequently
represented than others. Some animals may be restricted
to certains parts of the cave, others may occur
throughout. Animal associations vary but compositions
including particular pairs of animals, such as bison and
horses in Europe or elephants and giraffes in Africa,
are known. On both continents mythical beasts including
half animal, half human creatures are occasionally
depicted. Portraits of people are rare and landscapes,
plants, fruit, and flowers are unknown. In Africa, south
of the Sahara, and in present-day Tanzania (Kondoa and
Singida in the Rift Valley), ancient hunters left black
and yellow paintings and graffiti in granite caves and
sandstone galleries. Later polychrome works are also
found here, including ideograms, paintings, handprints
and rare human figures, together with the traditional
association of elephants and giraffes. In densely
inhabited North Africa, art is found on rock walls at
the root of mountain massifs such as Tibesti and Tassili,
now surrounded by vast deserts.
In Europe, some 200 caves and rock shelters are known to
contain art. The majority dccur in France and Spain, and
a few in Italy, Portugal. Romania, and Russia. The
oldest sites are attributed to the Aurignacian period
(36,OOO-3O,OOObc). It is notable that paintings and
figurines of this phase often depict dangerous animals
such as lions, bears, hyaenas, and woolly rhinoceroses,
as well as humans, horses, and other food animals.
Handprints and dot motifs also appear. The colours used
were produced from ochre (reds and yellows), manganese
dioxide (violet and black) and charcoal (black). These
minerals were pulverized on stone palettes and mixed
with animal fat to moisten them before they were applied
with the fingers, bone spatulae or brushes. Stone
engraving tools known as burins were used to engrave and
carve portable works. In the later European periods of
the Solutrean-Magdalenian (24,000-12,OOObc), large low
relief sculpture, engravings, clay modelling, and big
compositions including many animals are characteristic
at sites such as Roc-de Sers, Lascaux, and Niaux in
France.
In some sites like Altamira in Spain (the first example
of cave art to be discovered), wooden scaffolding must
have been used to paint the remarkable friezes on high
walls and ceilings. In the Near and Middle East,
Paleolithic art made its first appearance prior to
12,000вс.
Archaic hunter-foragers of central Arabia left art in
the form of shallow to deep engravings, while, in India,
some of the rock paintings of the Vindihya Hills may
date from about 14,000bc. However, many of the earliest
depictions drawn in yellow have been over-painted with
scenes in red dating from the Bronze Age and white
historical pictures. The red paint was obtained from
plant stems and leaves.
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Neolithicfigurine
Clay idol representing an ithyphallic seated man, found in
Thessaly.
4500-3200 B.C. Inv. no. 5894 |
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Bison
c. 15,000-12,000 BC
Altamira, Spain |
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A SENSE
OF CONTINUITY
In temples dating from historic times, structures and images
may be superimposed over one another. The same happened
over periods of
thousands of years with inscriptions and paintings on rocks
in the open air or deep in caves. This may signify a
spiritual need to establish a sense of continuity. In many
sites, there are examples of
multiple superimpositions, dating from prehistory to modern
times. They range from Valcamonica in Italy to sites in
Australia, where ancient compositions are worshipped to this
day and sometimes "freshened up" for new ceremonies.
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ANIMAL IMAGES
Animals are to be found everywhere in prehistoric art.
being the favourite subjects of hunters, herdsmen, and
breeders. We can recognize species and breeds that still
exist today. These pictures also furnish us with
precious contemporary documents of animals now extinct
from the region of the paintings, such as the cave lion,
bear, sabre-toothed tiger, mammoth, Ilomoicerus
(large-horned buffalo), and giant deer.
There are elaborate paintings of animals in the cave
"sanctuaries'' of France and Spain and in open-air
shelters all over the world. In Europe, the animals most
often depicted were horses, bison, mammoth, reindeer,
aurochs, wild boar, fish, eels, birds, and other animals
valued for food and raw materials such as fur, leather,
antlers, and ivory. In Tassili and Tibesti in Africa the
teeming fauna of rivers and lakes (hippopotami,
crocodiles, fish, and birds), the plains (cattle, goats,
and sheep), and the savannah (elephants, giraffes, and
rhinoceros) is brought to life on rock walls. Among the
most prized animal images are those at Altamira, near
Santander in nothern Spain. There are life-size images
of bison, as well as naturalistic portrayals of stags,
wild boar, and wild horses.
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Wounded bison attacking a
man
c. 15,000-10,000 BC
Lascaux, France |
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The Motifs of Rock Art
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In Australia, the Murray culture (20,000-8,000bc) and the
Panaramitee culture (10,000-3, ОООвс) produced notable
ideographic engravings. In Patagonia (the southernmost
region of South America), the "Toldense" people covered
their caves and shelters with handprints.
After about 12,000вс, a new sryle derived from Africa and
depicting numerous humans and smaller animals appears in the
Spanish Levant and Italy. This coincides with a phase known
in Europe as the Mesolithic, a period sometimes regarded as
transitional between Paleolithic hunting and foraging and
the earliest phases of farming referred to as Neolithic.
Scandanavian pictures of this period and the Neolithic
include depictions of boats and skis. In North Africa, the
period 12,000-бОООвс also sees the introduction of branches,
fruit, and leaves into paintings with people and animals.
Drawings changed to reflect the change of environment which
caused the spread of the desert and the extinction from
these areas of elephants, giraffes, lions, rhinoceroses, and
crocodiles. They also show the introduction of domesticated
dogs, cattle, sheep, and goats as the hunter-forager
economies were replaced. South of the Sahara between 5,000
and 1,000bc, representations became more naturalistic and
identifiable. The outlines are particularly precise and
expressive, but the figures of elephants, deer, giraffes,
and other wild animals still represent archetypes rather
than particular individuals of the species. As a part of an
unbroken artistic tradition, rock art in sub-Saharan Africa
continued into comparitively recent times. The tradition has
also persisted in Australia where it still fulfills
important social and spiritual functions.
Prehistoric art, in general, can be seen as the
representation of a symbolic system that is an integral part
of the culture that creates it. It is therefore not readily
intelligible or accessible to other cultures. The symbols
often appear ambiguous, and it is likely that they have also
changed in meaning within the same culture that originally
produced them.
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Cave Painting
c. 15,000-10,000 BC
Lascaux, France |

Cave Painting
c. 15,000-10,000 BC
Lascaux, France |
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HANDPRINTS
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Cave
painting with negative and positive handprints of
female left hands
Rio Pinturas, Chubut, Patagonia
Toldense culture (tenth millennium bc) |
Hands arc frequently
encountered in Upper Paleolithic cave art.
Prints were obtained either "in positive", by
pressing the hands, smeared with red, white, or
black, over the wall surface; "in negative", by
outlining the hands in colour; or in
"pseudo-positive", by outlining the hands in one
colour and pressing them
against
the wall, which was painted with a different
colour. They are almost always left hands (the
right hand was used for painting) and often
female (for example, at Patagonia), with the
fingers sometimes appearing mutilated (Laussel
and Gargas in France, El Castillo in Spain) or
confined to the nails at the end of a long arm
(for example, Santian in Spain). At times, the
hands are of children (for example, at Gargas,
Les Combarelles, and Le Postel in France and
Altamira in Spain) or of babies (Lascaux in
France). Interpretations vary: they may be
symbols of possession or marks of rituals and
ceremonies. Handprints dating from the early
Neolithic have been found at Catal Huyuk in
Turkey.
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ABSTRACT SYMBOLS
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In all cave art, from the Aurignacian onwards,
abstract motifs are found alongside human and animal
figures, and are given equal prominence. Abstraction
arose from the need to represent, in a sign, an idea
with a meaning unknown to outsiders, and it -was
achieved either simply or symbolically. Paleolithic
people practised abstraction in the form of
repetitive symbols, which represented primitive
logical constants that were widely shared and
diffused. These included schematic figures of
animals, signs of vulvas and phalluses, handprints,
series of dots and notches, which possibly had a
numerical significance, and the occasional stylized
anthropomorphic symbol. Other representations were
grouped in similarly associated sequences. These
take various forms: pictograms, mythograms,
schematic figures or barely indicated figures of
humans and animals, ideograms, abstract repetitive
signs - such as arrows, sticks, tree shapes, discs,
crosses and "V" shapes, parallel lines, series of
dots - and psychograms, signs that have no obvious
reference to objects or symbols.
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Female Figurine
23,000-21,000 BC
Limestone |
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Portable Art
The oldest portable art from Russia and central
and western Europe includes carvings of animals
such as bears, lions, and mammoth, as well as
remarkable human figures, including one with a
lion's head from Hohlensteinstadel, Germany.
These figures were made from bone, antler,
ivory, and stone. Spearthrowers were the most
effective hunting devices before the development
of the bow, and carved and decorated examples of
these have been found, The technique of working
in these materials gradually became more
accurate. Simple incised and dot decoration
began to appear on equipment and personal
ornaments, such as pins and pendants, which
began to appear more often. The period between
30,000 and 20,000bc is most noted for images of
women. Generally characterized by large breasts,
stomachs, buttocks, and thighs and exaggerated
pudenda, these figures represent women in all of
the stages of their lives: pubescence,
pregnancy, childbirth, and the obesity of later
life.
Only rarely do they have faces, such as the
lovely portrait head on the Brassempouy "Venus",
found in France, although they often show
individual touches in their hairstyles and
jewellery.
"Venuses", as archaeologists have called the
more detailed female sculptures, are more common
outside France, especially across Russia, and
some particularly fine examples have also been
found in Germany and Italy. Later portable art
is noted for its more naturalistic
representations of animals on items of everyday
equipment and personal ornaments.
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