Paleolithic Period

32,000 years ago

 The earliest known
rock paintings are dated
to the Upper Paleolithic,
40,000 years
ago, while the
earliest European
cave paintings
date to 32,000
years ago.
Cave arts are
often in areas of
caves that aren't
easily accessed.
Some theories
hold that they may have been
a way of transmitting information, while
other theories ascribe them a religious or
ceremonial purpose.
The most common
themes in cave
paintings are large
wild animals, such
as bison, horses,
aurochs, and deer,
and tracings of
human hands.
Cave art is the painting or drawing of
figures called pictographs and petroglyphs
to portray a story or
to record known history.
It is sometimes even used to
design plans for hunting or
gathering.
Altimira, Spain
 The first cave paintings were found in
1870 in Altimira, Spain by Don Marcelino
and his daughter. They were painted by
the Magdalenian people between
16,000-9,000 BC. This would have been
11,000-19,000 years ago.

These paintings are sometimes called

“The Sistine Chapel of Paleolithic Art”.
Lascaux, France
Four boys searching for a lost dog discovered
paintings at Lascaux Cave, France in 1940. These
paintings were created around 15,000 BC, which
would make them about 17,000 years old. There
are seven chambers in the Lascaux cave; the
Great Hall of the Bulls, the Painted Gallery, the
Lateral Passage, the Chamber of Engravings, the
Main Gallery, the Chamber of Felines, and the
Shaft of the Dead Man.
The Great Hall of the Bulls
Lascaux, France
Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc
Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc cave in the South of France is
the newest cave painting to be discovered. Jean-
Marie Chauvet, Christian Hillaire and Heliette
Brunel-Deschamps discovered the cave on
December 18, 1994. Many of the animals like the
ones in Lascaux were painted over each other. The
oldest were probably painted around 30,000 BC,
making them about 32000 years old.
 Paleolithic art is intricately bound to anthropological
and archaeological studies.
It concerned itself with either food (hunting scenes,
animal carvings).
Its predominant theme was animals.
It is considered to be an attempt, by Stone Age
peoples, to gain some sort of control over their
environment, whether by magic or ritual. It
represents a giant leap in human cognition: abstract
thinking.
There are three general themes that tend to appear in cave paintings:

Humans
Humans are rarely depicted in caves. When they are shown, they
are drawn as a cartoon-like silhouette.
Animals
The most abundant animal depictions are those of horses. A
quarter of all the animal images painted in caves in Western
Europe are horses. Images of Bison are also very common.
The animals tend to be painted larger than the other images.
Signs
Signs are abstract symbols that are difficult to interpret because
of their ambiguity. Signs are commonly associated with hunting
equipment and the female form.
 Humans had not know how to write during the
prehistoric time period. So, they communicated
through cave paintings.
Prehistoric humans were basically hunters. Thus,
most paintings are of animals. Early paintings are
believed to be of social and religious significance.

The painting of the animal sends a message to its

spirit, that great respect is intended and that only
those needed for survival will be hunted and killed.
• Cro-Magnons
– Cro-magnons were the first species of the Homo
Sapiens Sapiens. They lived in Europe during the
period before the emergence of Indo-Europeans,
from 40,000 to 8,000 BCE.
– The Magdalenian civilization of cro-magnons, which
populated Spain and France, were responsible for
the cave paintings found in Lascaux, France dating
about 17,000 years ago and Altamira, Spain dating
about 12,000 years ago.
• Shamans
– The shaman would retreat into the darkness of the caves,
enter into a trance state and then paint images of their
visions, perhaps with some notion of drawing power out
of the cave walls themselves. Shamanism is a form of
worship based on direct, personal interaction between a
shaman and the spirit world. Typically, this interaction
occurred when the shaman entered a trance, or altered
state of consciousness,
sometimes referred to as
“dreaming.” In this altered
state, the shaman could obtain
supernatural power in the form
of a spirit helper.
• Prehistoric people would have used natural objects to
paint the walls of the caves. To etch into the rock, they
could have used sharp tools or a spear.

• The paint or color that they probably used was from

berries, clay, soot, charcoal or animal fat.

• The tools used to apply the paint could have been made
by attaching straw, leaves, moss, or hair to sticks. They
might have used hollow bones or reeds to spray the color
on, similar to an airbrush technique.
painting,
drawings,
engravings, and
handprints