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Pre-Historic Art
2,500,000 BC
LOWER PALEOLITHIC ERA BEGINS
The first of three time periods of the Paleolithic - an era
which witnessed several Ice Ages and glaciations, and
during which early hominids like Australopithecus
afarensis, Australopithecus africanus, and Paranthropus
robustus, developed first into Homo habilis and Homo
rudolfensis, then into Homo erectus, Homo ergaster,
Homo erectus, and Homo heidelbergensis, before
metamorphosing into Homo sapiens, Homo
neanderthalensis and ultimately anatomically modern
man (eg. Cro-Magnon man). Human evolution is defined
via the development of stone tools, a process which
impacts on the development of ancient art.
290, 000
Earliest art: The Petroglyphs of Bhimbetka cupules and other rock art found at Auditorium
Cave, Bhimbetka and at Daraki-Chattan Cave,
both in Madhya Pradesh, Central India, and both
dated c.290,000 - 700,000 BCE or later. These
are the oldest known prehistoric works of art, and
the first examples of art from India.
Cupule and meander
petroglyph on
a boulder at the
Auditorium Cave,
Bhimbetka, Madhya
Pradesh, India
Acheulian Prehistoric
Site.
(c.290,000-700,000
BCE)
What Are Cupules?
Cupules are the earliest known prehistoric art, have
been found on every continent except Antarctica, and
were produced during all three eras of the Stone Age Paleolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic - as well as in
historical times. They have been described as "the most
common motif type in world rock art". The actual term
"cupule" was invented recently by the world-famous
archeologist Robert G. Bednarik, in an attempt to
provide a consistent name for a phenomenom which
hitherto had been called "pits", "hollows", "cups",
"cupels", "cup stones", "pitmarks", "cup marks" - even
"pot-holes". Much of the information about cupules
contained in this article is gratefully derived from
Bednarik's cogent analysis of the existing manifestations
of this extraordinary art form.
Rock Art from Bhimbetka
- 7000 BCE
Created over 250,000
years after the
first petroglyphs and
cupules were
produced at the
Auditorium Cave.
What are Petroglyphs? - A Definition
The term "petroglyph" stems from two Greek
words ("petros" meaning rock, and "glyphein"
meaning to carve) and means simply "rock
carving."
230, 000
Venus of Berekhat Ram, rock figurine, (dated
c.230,000 - 700,000 BCE). This is the oldest
known Stone Age figurine.
Venus of Berekhat Ram,
dated from
230,000 to 500,000 BCE.
Venus of Berekhat Ram
The early Stone Age figurine of Berekhat Ram
(Birkat Ram), discovered in hills north of Israel, is
believed to be one of the oldest pieces of
prehistoric sculpture known to archeology.
Although initially highly controversial - as
paleontologists preferred to see it more as a
product of natural erosion rather than a deliberate
human act of creativity - its status now seems
more secure following the discovery of a second
similar and contemporaneous figurine - the Venus
of Tan-Tan, in Morocco.
The Venus of Berekhat Ram was found by
archeologist N. Goren-Inbar (Hebrew University
of Jerusalem) during archeological excavations on
the Golan Heights between Syria and Israel during
the summer of 1981. The lithic figure comprises a
tuff pebble made of basalt, containing marks
suggestive of the head, body, and arms of a
female human.
Microscopic analysis by Alexander Marshack
appears to confirm that humans were responsible
for the figurine.
200, 000
MIDDLE PALEOLITHIC ERA BEGINS
100, 000
High point of Levallois culture, an advanced
flint-knapping culture. Earliest African art
appears, the Venus of Tan-Tan, quartzite figurine,
(dated c.200,000 - 500,000 BCE)
Venus of Tan Tan
70, 000
Blombos Cave engravings with cross-hatch
designs on two pieces of ochre rock. Possibly the
very earliest form of Tribal Art.
One of the engraved
stones at Blombos
dating from about
70,000 BCE.
Blombos
Cave Snail
Beads
(75,000 BCE)
The prehistoric archeological site known as
Blombos Cave is located in a limestone cliff,
some 100 metres from the sea on the southern
coast of South Africa, about 180 miles east of
Cape Town.
Ochre is a naturally occurring red iron oxide,
commonly used by prehistoric hunter-gatherers as
a colouring pigment for body-painting. In the
Blombos caves, archaeologists discovered
hundreds of lumps of this material, including
pieces which had been ground into crayons.
Their honed points suggested they were
employed for design purposes, although as yet no
cave painting has been discovered.
70, 000- 40, 000
Oldest prehistoric art of Europe: the La Ferrassie
cave cupules.
40, 000
UPPER PALEOLITHIC ERA BEGINS
Anatomically modern man replaces Neanderthal
man.
33, 000- 30, 000
Swabian Jura ivory carvings, Vogelherd, Hohle
Fels Caves, SW Germany. These sculptures are
the first known figurative sculptures of the
Stone Age.
Ivory Carving of Mammoth, Vogelherd
Cave, from about 33,000 BCE.
Ivory Carving of Horse, Vogelherd
Cave, from about 33,000 BCE.
In 2006, archeologists from the Department of
Early Prehistory and Quaternary Ecology at the
German University of Tübingen unearthed the first
completely intact mammoth ivory figurine from
the Upper Paleolithic era of the old Stone Age.
Dated to 33,000 BCE, it is the oldest figurative
carving known to archeology, the oldest piece
of European sculpture and one of the most
outstanding examples of late Stone Age art.
Archeologists and art historians have always
considered the creation of figurative art to be a
key indicator in human evolution. These new
finds reveal the outstanding artistry of the Stone
Age inhabitants of the Swabian Jura and chronicle
an aesthetically-appreciative culture that was
far from primitive.
30, 000
Venus of Kostenky, mammoth ivory carving,
earliest of the venus figurines and the oldest
known Russian sculpture. Venus figurines are
European miniature carvings (in ivory, bone, stone
or clay) of obese female figures with exaggerated
body parts and genitalia.
Venus of Kostenky
(30,000 BCE)
The bone Venus of Kostenky is the oldest
known piece of figurative sculpture in Russia
and the earliest example of 3-D fine art from the
Upper Paleolithic Stone Age - the period dating
roughly from 40,000 to 10,000 BCE during which
Homo sapiens neanderthalensis was replaced by
anatomically modern man. One of a large number
of "Venus Figurines" created during this period, it
should not be confused with its sister figurine, the
limestone Venus of Kostenky, which was found at
the same site but dates from a later period.
Because this sculpture is much more true-to-life
than many of its counterparts, it does not easily fit
the usual fertility or supernatural explanations,
given for the cultural significance of venus
figurines. Instead, one feels that the sculptor was
simply trying to portray a real person.
First known cave painting appears in France.
Chauvet cave painting and ideomorphs,
France. Chauvet is the earliest known example of
Stone Age cave paintings, although they are
monochrome in composition.
Horses Heads from
Chauvet Cave
dating to about
30,000 BCE.
Fighting
Animals from
Chauvet
dating to about
30,000 BCE.
Grotto Chauvet, near Vallon-Pont-d'Arc in France, was
discovered quite by chance in the Ardeche gorge in
1994, by three speleologists - Jean-Marie Chauvet,
Eliette Brunel-Deschamps and Christian Hillaire while they were surveying another cave nearby. Inside
the Chauvet grotto, the trio found a huge network of
galleries and rooms, about 400 metres in length,
whose floor was littered with palaeontological remains,
including the skulls of bears two wolves. Some of
these bones had been arranged in special position by the
previous human inhabitants. Amazingly, the entire
labyrinth had remained untouched and undisturbed
since Paleolithic times, due to a landslide that had
blocked the entrance.
Paleolithic experts still don't understand the
purpose or functionality of prehistoric parietal art.
One of the more common theories - based on
the subject matter of the murals, and the fact that
Chauvet, like many caves, was not used as a
place of regular habitation - is that it functioned as
a centre of ritual or magical ceremony. Chauvet
doesn't contain the earliest art of prehistory, but it
does house the earliest cave murals and
exemplifies the rising cultural level of man during
the last period of the Stone Age.
25, 000
Venus of Willendorf, obese female oolitic
limestone sculpture, Austria.
Venus of Willendorf
(c.25,000 BCE)
The carving was discovered in 1908 by Austrian
archeologist Josef Szombathy during
systematic investigations of the local Gravettian
settlements in lower Austria, near Krems.
This "celebration" of what would have been rare
corpulence, might be a factor in the work's
interpretation. In other words, such a body shape
might have been worth ritualization. The fact that
no equivalent male figures have been unearthed
need not undermine this theory. First because few
male Stone Age figures of any description have
been discovered, second because female bodies
have traditionally been hallowed as fertility
symbols, not unlike the Virgin Mary of modern
Christianity.
17, 000
Lascaux painted caves featuring "Hall of the
Bulls", France.
Cave Painting in
"Hall of the Bulls"
dating from about
17,000 BCE.
Painting of Auroch in
"Hall of the Bulls"
dating from about
17,000 BCE.
A Cave Mural of
Lascaux located in
the Shaft of the Dead
Man (15,000 BCE).
Discovered by teenagers Marcel Ravidat,
Jacques Marsal, Georges Agnel, and Simon
Coencasin in September 1940, the Lascaux
subterranean complex is situated close to the
village of Montignac, in the Dordogne region of
southwestern France.
Containing some of the finest prehistoric
polychrome cave paintings, dating from 17,000
BCE, the Lascaux caves were designated a
UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979. Famous
display chambers include The Great Hall of the
Bulls, the Shaft of the Dead Man, the Lateral
Passage, the Painted Gallery, the Chamber of
Engravings, and the Chamber of Felines.
What makes the prehistoric painting at Lascaux so
different, is the huge scale of some of the animal
pictures, and their exceptionally realistic
portrayal. One of the bulls (aurochs) in the
Cave of the Bulls is 17 feet (5.2 m) wide - the
biggest animal image ever found in a Stone
Age cave. In total, there are some 2,000
figurative pictures, including 900 animal forms,
of which some 600 have been identified. In
addition, there are many abstract images and
symbols.
As is the case in most Upper Paleolithic painted
caves, there are almost no images of human
figures at Lascaux. Only one appears to exist a prone stick-like figure, in the Shaft of the Dead
Man.
15, 000
Altamira cave paintings: "Sistine Chapel of
Stone Age Art", Spain.
Painting of a Bison
(c.15,000 BCE)
Polychrome Cave
Painting from
Altamira (c.15,000
BCE)
Discovered in 1879, by paleo-archaeologist
Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola, Altamira is the only
painted cave in which signs of domestic human
habitation are evident in a chamber with
paintings. Usually, only the initial entrance area of
the cave was used as a shelter, with the rest of
the cave being reserved for art only.
The focus of these paintings is bison. Possibly
this is because of the unique contribution made
by this animal to Paleolithic life, which included
its meat for food, its fur and hide for clothing
and foot-coverings, and its horns, teeth and
hooves for use as tool making equipment. The
caves's main ceiling display features a herd of
multi-coloured bison in different poses. Other
animals portrayed in the cave's murals include
reindeer, wild boar and goats - all native to
Cantabria - with, as usual, no accompanying
flora, vegetation or landscape.
10, 000
MESOLITHIC ERA BEGINS
This is associated with a wide variety of races, including
the Azilian Ofnet Man (Bavaria); several types of CroMagnon Man, brachycephalic humans (shortskulled), dolichocephalic humans (long-skulled). The
Mesolithic is a transitional era between the huntergatherer culture of the Upper Paleolithic, and the
farming culture of the Neolithic. In areas with no ice
(eg. the Middle East), people transitioned quite rapidly
from hunting/gathering to agriculture. Their Mesolithic
period was therefore short, and often referred to as the
Epi-Paleolithic or Epipaleolithic. In 10,000 BCE we
witness the end of the Pleistocene geological epoch
and the beginning of Holocene Epoch.
Start of Chinese Pottery.
Chinese pottery
Ever since the Stone Age, China has
led the world in ceramic art and
design. Its pottery workshops have
inspired us with their modelling,
glazes, firing techniques, painting
and enamelling, and its porcelain
remains the finest ever made.
Despite the discovery of unfired Chinese
pottery, supposedly dating from 33,000 BCE,
during the Paleolithic era, most scholars believe
that the earliest known ceramic ware produced
in China dates from Mesolithic times (c.10,0005,500 BCE) and was strictly functional
earthenware, hand-made (by coiling) and fired
in bonfires. Decoration was achieved by
stamping, impressing and other simple
methods. However, based on archeological
excavations at Xianrendong, in Jiangxi province, it
seems that early Chinese potters soon began to
produce a range of delicate, polished and
coloured vessels for more ceremonial purposes.
9, 500
Cuevas de las Manos (Cave of the Hands),
stencils, paintings, Argentina, the earliest known
prehistoric art of the American continent.
7, 000
Jiahu turquoise carvings, bone flutes, Henan
Province China.
Oven-fired pottery appears in Mesopotamia
where farming begins. Pigs domesticated.
People settle on the banks of the River Nile.
Six complete bone flutes excavated from Jiahu
Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology of Henan Province, Zhengzhou, China
The archaeological site of Jiahu in the Yellow
River basin of Henan Province, central China, is
remarkable for the cultural and artistic remains
uncovered there. These remains, such as houses,
kilns, pottery, turquoise carvings, tools made from
stone and bone—and most remarkably—bone
flutes, are evidence of a flourishing and complex
society as early as the Neolithic period, when
Jiahu was first occupied.
Fragments of thirty flutes were discovered in the
burials at Jiahu and six of these represent the
earliest examples of playable musical
instruments ever found. The flutes were carved
from the wing bone of the red-crowned crane,
with five to eight holes capable of producing
varied sounds in a nearly accurate octave. The
intended use of the flutes for the Neolithic
musician is unknown, but it is speculated that they
functioned in rituals and special ceremonies.
5, 000
Linear Ceramic culture emerges in France,
Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Czech Republic.
Thinker of Cernavoda, terracotta fine art
sculpture, Romanian Hamangia culture.
Fish God of Lepenski Vir, sandstone carving of
therianthropic figure, Serbia.
Sculpture from
Lepinski Vir
Fish-God, Lepinski Vir
. All the sculptures were carved from round
sandstone cobbles found on the river banks.
The sculptures can be separated in two distinct
categories, one with simple geometric patterns
and the other representing humanoid figures. All
of these figural sculptures were modelled in a
naturalistic and strongly expressionistic manner.
Only the head and face of the human figures were
modelled realistically, with strong brow arches, an
elongated nose, and a wide, fish-like mouth. Many
fish-like features can be noticed. Along with the
position which these sculptures had in the house
shrine, they suggest a connection with river
gods.
Thinker of Cernavoda
This male figurine was found in the lower
Danube in Cernavoda, Romania. The end of the
Ice Age at around 10,000 BC and the warmer
climate that followed brought about the end of
the highly developed hunting culture.
Deep in thought, the Thinker is unique in that it
does not appear to be a hunting or fertility
idol, but rather a reflection of human
introspection.
4, 000
NEOLITHIC ERA
Mesolithic Era ends in Europe, superceded by the
Neolithic (New Stone Age), a much more settled
form of existence, based on farming and rearing
of domesticated animals. (Light plough
introduced in Europe.) The major art form of the
Neolithic art was ceramic pottery.
Silk production begins in Asia.
4, 000- 2, 500
Earliest megalithic architecture, like: the
megalithic arrangement at Évora, in Portugal
(from 5,000); Breton Cairn of Barnenez (from
4,450); the tombs and monuments of
Carrowmore, Cúil Irra Peninsula, Ireland (from
4,300). UN World Heritage site of Newgrange
(from 3,300) and Stonehenge (stonework dated
c.2,800 BCE).
Front view of Newgrange with white quartz facade
The Megalithic Passage Tomb at Newgrange
was built about 3200 BC. The kidney shaped
mound covers an area of over one acre and is
surrounded by 97 kerbstones, some of which are
richly decorated with megalithic art. The 19 metre
long inner passage leads to a cruciform chamber
with a corbelled roof. It is estimated that the
construction of the Passage Tomb at Newgrange
would have taken a work force of 300 at least 20
years.
The passage and
chamber of Newgrange
are illuminated by the
winter solstice
sunrise. A shaft of
sunlight shines through
the roof box over the
entrance and
penetrates the passage
to light up the chamber.
The dramatic event
lasts for 17 minutes at
dawn on the Winter
Solstice and for a few
mornings either side of
the Winter Solstice.
Megalithic mounds such as Newgrange entered
Irish mythology as sídhe or fairy mounds.
Newgrange was said to be the home of
Oenghus, the god of love. The Passage Tomb at
Newgrange was re-discovered in 1699 by the
removal of material for road building. A major
excavation of Newgrange began in 1962; the
original facade of sparkling white quartz was
rebuilt using stone found at the site.
Stonehenge, UK
Summer solstice at Stonehenge
3, 500
Mesopotamian civilization begins (Iraq).
Emergence of Uruk, first city-state. First
wheeled vehicles appear in Europe. Ancient
Persian art includes the intricate ceramics from
Susa and Persepolis. Oldest known prehistoric
bronze sculptures produced in the Maikop
culture of the Russian North Caucasus around
3,500, using simple arsenic bronze process.
3, 500- 1, 750
Sumerian civilization (S. Iraq). First writing
system (hieroglyphs). Cuneiform script 3200.
3, 300
Egyptian art and civilization begins. First walled
city. Pharoah Namer unites Egypt 3100.
3, 200
Sumerian civilization develops its own
monumental architecture - a type of stepped
pyramid called a ziggurat, built from clay-fired
bricks, finished with coloured glazes.