Prehistoric Art: Paleolithic Origins

Humans make art. We do this for many reasons and with whatever technologies are
available to us. Prehistoric art refers artifacts made before there was a written record. Long
before the oldest written languages were developed, people had become expert at creating
forms that were both practical and beautiful. The earliest art comes from the Paleolithic era
(the Old Stone Age), but it was in the Neolithic era that we see the most important
developments in human history. The way we live today—settled in cities, protected by laws,
eating food from farms—all this dates back approximately 10,000 years ago to the Neolithic
era.

Types
Archeologists have identified 4 basic types of Stone Age art, as follows: petroglyphs
(cupules, rock carvings and engravings); pictographs (pictorial imagery, ideomorphs,
ideograms or symbols), a category that includes cave painting and drawing; and prehistoric
sculpture (including small totemic statuettes known as Venus Figurines, various forms of
zoomorphic and therianthropic ivory carving, and relief sculptures); and megalithic art
(petroforms or any other works associated with arrangements of stones). Artworks that are
applied to an immoveable rock surface are classified as parietal art; works that are portable
are classified as mobiliary art.

Characteristics
The earliest forms of prehistoric art are extremely primitive. The cupule, for instance -
a mysterious type of Paleolithic cultural marking - amounts to no more than a hemispherical
or cup-like scouring of the rock surface. The early sculptures known as the Venuses of Tan-
Tan and Berekhat Ram, are such crude representations of humanoid shapes that some
experts doubt whether they are works of art at all. It is not until the Upper Paleolithic (from
roughly 40,000 BCE onwards) that anatomically modern man produces recognizable
carvings and pictures. Aurignacian culture, in particular, witnesses an explosion of rock art,
including the El Castillo cave paintings, the monochrome cave murals at Chauvet, the Lion
Man of Hohlenstein-Stadel, the Venus of Hohle Fels, the animal carvings of the Swabian
Jura, Aboriginal rock art from Australia, and much more. The later Gravettian and
Magdalenian cultures gave birth to even more sophisticated versions of prehistoric art,
notably the polychrome Dappled Horses of Pech-Merle and the sensational cave paintings at
Lascaux and Altamira.

Paleolithic Period
(c.2,500,000 - 10,000 BCE)

Traditionally, this period is divided into three sub-sections: the Lower Paleolithic,
Middle Paleolithic and Upper Paleolithic, each marking advances (especially in tool
technology) among different human cultures. In essence, Paleolithic Man lived solely by
hunting and gathering, while his successors during the later Mesolithic and Neolithic times
developed systems of agriculture and ultimately permanent settlements.
Stone tools were the instruments by which early Man developed and progressed. All
human culture is based on the ingenuity and brainpower of our early ancestors in creating
ever more sophisticated tools that enabled them to survive and prosper. After all, fine art is
merely a reflection of society, and prehistoric societies were largely defined by the type of
tool used. In fact, Paleolithic culture is charted and classified according to advancing tool
technologies.
The earliest recorded examples of human art were created during the Lower
Paleolithic in the caves and rock shelters of central India. They consisted of a number of
petroglyphs (10 cupules and an engraving or groove) discovered during the 1990s in a
quartzite rock shelter (Auditorium cave) at Bhimbetka in central India. This rock art dates
from at least 290,000 BCE. However, it may turn out to be much older (c.700,000 BCE).
Archeological excavations from a second cave, at Daraki-Chattan in the same region, are
believed to be of a similar age.

The next oldest prehistoric art from the Lower Paleolithic comes almost at the end of the
period. Two primitive figurines - the Venus of Berekhat Ram (found on the Golan Heights)
and the Venus of Tan-Tan (discovered in Morocco) were dated to between roughly 200,000
and 500,000 BCE (the former is more ancient).

Mesolithic Culture
c. 10,000 - 4,000 BCE - Northern and Western Europe
c. 10,000 - 7,000 BCE - Southeast Europe
c. 10,000 - 8,000 BCE - Middle East and Rest of World

The Mesolithic period is a transitional era between the ice-affected hunter-gatherer

culture of the Upper Paleolithic, and the farming culture of the Neolithic. The greater the
effect of the retreating ice on the environment of a region, the longer the Mesolithic era
lasted. So, 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. By comparison, in areas undergoing the
change from ice to no-ice, the Mesolithic era and its culture lasted much longer.

Mesolithic Rock Art

Mesolithic art reflects the arrival of new living conditions and hunting practices
caused by the disappearance of the great herds of animals from Spain and France, at the
end of the Ice Age. Forests now cloaked the landscape, necessitating more careful and
cooperative hunting arrangements. European Mesolithic rock art gives more space to human
figures, and is characterized by keener observation, and greater narrative in the paintings.
Also, because of the warmer weather, it moves from caves to outdoor sites in numerous
locations.

Neolithic Culture
c. 4,000 - 2,000 BCE: Northern and Western Europe
c. 7,000 - 2,000 BCE: Southeast Europe
c. 8,000 - 2,000 BCE: Middle East & Rest of World

The Neolithic era saw a fundamental change in lifestyle throughout the world. OUT
went the primitive semi-nomadic style of hunting and gathering food, IN came a much more
settled form of existence, based on farming and rearing of domesticated animals. Neolithic
culture was characterized by stone tools shaped by polishing or grinding, and farming (staple
crops: wheat, barley and rice; domesticated animals: sheep, goats, pigs and cattle), and led
directly to a growth in crafts like pottery and weaving. All this began about 9,000 BCE in the
villages of southern Asia, from where it spread to the Chinese interior - see Neolithic Art in
China - and also to the fertile crescent of the Tigris and Euphrates in the Middle East
(c.7,000), before spreading to India (c.5,000), Europe (c.4,000), and the Americas
(independently) (c.2,500 BCE).

The establishment of settled communities (villages, towns and in due course cities)
triggered a variety of new activities, notably: a rapid stimulation of trade, the construction of
trading vehicles (mainly boats), new forms of social organizations, along with the growth of
religious beliefs and associated ceremonies. And due to improvements in food supply and
environmental control, the population rapidly increased. For tens of millennia before the
advent of agriculture, the total human population had varied between 5 million and 8 million.
By 4,000 BCE, after less than 5,000 years of farming, numbers had risen to 65 million.

Neolithic Art
In general, the more settled and better-resourced the region, the more art it
produces. So it was with Neolithic art, which branched out in several different directions. And
although most ancient art remained essentially functional in nature, there was a greater
focus on ornamentation and decoration. For instance, jade carving - one of the great
specialities of Chinese art - first appeared during the era of Neolithic culture, as does
Chinese lacquerware and porcelain. See: Chinese Art Timeline (18,000 BCE - present.)