Paleolithic or "Old Stone Age" is a term used to define the oldest period in the human history. The Paleolithic or Palaeolithic literally means ‘old stone’ from the Greek word ‘paleos’ meaning old and ‘lithos’ meaning stone (Hoffecker, 82). It began approximately about 2.
5 million years ago, from the use of first stone tools until the end of the last glacial period about 13,000 years ago. The people of this period are classified as hunter and gatherers because agricultural cultivation was only developed until 8,000 years ago.Although human beings learned how to stand up and walk on two feet about 4 million years ago, it was not until 40,000 years ago that art was probably invented. The first art objects were not created just to adorn the human body or to beautify the caves that humans lived in.
The oldest surviving art objects are tiny sculptures of animals and people made from bone, ivory, stone or antlers, and they were created to control or appease the forces of nature. These objects are so accomplished and artistically created that scholars believe they must be the result of an artistic tradition that was already existing thousands of years before.Paleolithic Art, produced from about 32,000 to 11,000 years ago, falls into two main categories: Portable Pieces and Cave Art. The portable art was carved out of bone, antler, or stone, or modeled in clay.
It has been found in much of Europe, in Northern Africa, and in Siberia. The other category, cave art, was discovered primarily in northern Spain and southern France. It takes the form of paintings, drawings, and engravings on cave walls. This research paper aims to present Paleolithic Cave Art Drawings, in particular, the caves of Altamira, Spain and Lascaux, France.
The earliest discoveries of Paleolithic Art were made around 1835 in France and Switzerland. At first it was believed that the paintings and artifacts were created by the Celts because it was then thought that humans had only existed on earth about 4,000 years. In the 1860s, French paleontologist Edouard Lartet found portable decorated objects in caves and rock shelters in southwestern France (Riffert, 1997). The objects were recognized as ancient by their proximity to Stone Age tools and the bones of Ice Age animals.
The discoveries triggered a craze for digging in caves in search of objects, but little attention was paid to the drawings on the walls. When more and more artifacts and cave paintings were discovered, it was recognized that some of the animals depicted, such as the wooly rhino and the mammoth, had long been extinct in Europe. The carved bones, artifacts and engraved representations were found in the same rock layers with bone remains of the animals represented.Thus scientists concluded that the human race is much older than they first thought because the people who had created these cave paintings and artifacts must have existed at the same time when those animals were actually hunted. A local landowner’s discovery in 1880 of Paleolithic paintings in the Spanish cave of Altamira was greeted at first with skepticism by archaeologists.
In 1895 walls covered with engravings were discovered in the cave of La Mouthe, in the Dordogne region of southwestern France.Rubble had previously blocked the entrance to this cave, and Paleolithic deposits in the rubble indicated that the cave paintings were of considerable age. In 1901 engravings and paintings were found in the cave of Les Combarelles in the same region of France. In 1902 archaeologists publicly recognized the existence of cave art. Thereafter, numerous new sites were revealed, and discoveries continue, especially in France and Spain.
In 1994 a Frenchman named Jean-Marie Chauvet discovered a cave in the Ardeche Valley of southeastern France.The Chauvet cave contains paintings of a wide variety of animals that date back 32,000 years, making them the oldest cave paintings yet discovered (Hoffecker,87). However, the French prehistorian Abbe Henri Breuil pioneered the study of Paleolithic art only during the first half of the 20th century. He made detailed studies in the caves of southern France, northern Spain, Ethiopia, and southern Africa.
Most of the cave art documented by Breuil was painted between 17,000 and 12,000 years ago (Brodrick, 97) Altamira is one of the most famous Paleolithic caves in Spain.Constituting as it does a world-famed monument, Altamira Cave is perhaps the most popular of the Spanish contributions to the heritage of mankind. Such universal repute has led the cave to earn its place in the select ensemble of artistic manifestations that, wherever one may be in the world, Altamira inevitably serves to identify Spain. Located on Monte Vispieres, Altamira Cave is found at the top of one the gently rising elevations flanking the small valley in which the town of Santillana lies. The only entrance to the cave faces north and stands at 156 meters above the present sea level.
Stretching out over a total length of 270 meters, the cave features a main passage whose height varies from 2 to 12 meters and whose width rages from 6 to 20 meters. Its ceiling is very near to the land surface, the average distance separating it from the latter along the entire length of the cave being approximately 11 meters (Grand, 221). The dramatic history of its first investigator, Don Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola, the owner of the land, where the cave is located, is not so familiar. The cave was found by a local hunter, Modesto Peres in 1868.That time, everybody in the neighborhood knew about the cave except the landowners. Even herdsmen and hunters found refuge in it during bad weather.
Only 11 years later, in 1879, when Maria, Don M. de Sautuola's daughter, walking in the estate, turned her father's attention on the strange images on the ceiling of one of the "halls", barely discernible in the darkness of the cave (Sieveking,78). Engraved depictions of bisons, were among them. That made de Sautuola guess that the paintings of Altamira cave dated back to the Stone Age.
He began excavations in the cave and invited his friend, a well-known specialist in the field of prehistoric archaeology, professor of the Madrid University Juan Vilanova y Piera for a consultation. The latter supported de Sautuola's conjecture. Soon they published the first information about that unique monument, which evoked general interest and even made king Alfonso XII visit the marvel cave. However, all the prominent specialists in archaeology, especially the French archeologist, Gabriel de Mortillet, admitting the Paleolithic age of the finds, made during excavations in Altamira, rejected flatly Piera and M. Sanz de Sautuola’s arguments in favor of the Paleolithic dating of the paintings. And what is more, de Sautuola was accused in deliberate distortion.
They considered that the paintings had been made by one of his friends, an artist, who stayed in his castle. Only almost 15 years after M. de Sautuolas death that his opponents had to admit that the Altamira paintings are really Paleolithic In 1902, Hermilio Alcalde del Ri'o, conducted a series of excavations in the cave together with French historians Cartailhac and Breuil, both pioneer figures in Cantabrian prehistoric studies.His findings were published both in one of his own works and as an additional chapter to that of the two French historians.
The excavations have revealed the existence of two very rich archaeological levels. The lowest lying and oldest of these belongs to the Solutrean culture and was formed as a result of the human occupation of the cave around 18,500 years ago. Amongst the stone tools found at this level are a wide variety of characteristic flintwork points featuring a concave base or a notch with a projecting lip on one side to make it even easier to affix the point to a wooden shaft.Each of the various types of points found appear in a range of sizes and caliber’s, the smallest of which can be associated with arrowheads and the use of bows.
Lying just above the Solutrean level is the Magdalenian. This new period of human occupation of the cave has been dated as having occurred about 15,500 years ago. On observing this level one is first of all struck by the lack of lithic industry and the practical disappearance of flint points that seem to have been replaced by those made from antler and bone.Working tools are well represented (needles, spatulas, instruments for smoothing leather, wedges, pierced antler rods, etc) and perhaps the most outstanding feature of this level is the abundance of harpoons and the sheer variety of their decoration (Ingold, 386). On the basis of the data provided by archaeological excavations with regard to both the natural environment and the material culture at Altamira, we can now venture a portrayal of the human groups who lived here about 14,000 to 18,000 years ago.On analyzing the superimposed paintings and engravings, it was discovered, at the part of the ceiling farthest away from the entrance, a number of monochrome red figures.
Identifiable amongst the latter are four outlined or monochrome-shaded horses, a goat, and several hands, which likewise are drawn either as outlines or as shaded figures. It would appear, therefore, that the said mysterious figures are the oldest creations to be seen in this varied and colorful ensemble. Next to the living area of the cave and bathed in the dim natural light from the mouth of the northward facing cave, we come across the renowned Ceiling of the Polychromes.In the rest of the cave, the use of red is repeated only once, in a little chamber featuring a group of signs, the most outstanding example of which measures two meters in length. This chamber is indeed a most extraordinary place, one that invites us to ponder the true purpose of its paintings, since in order to appreciate the said sign one has to practically lie down on the ground. Furthermore, it is virtually impossible for more than two or three people to observe it at the same time.
Lascaux in southwestern France is situated near Montignak at the end of a plateau on the left bank of the Vezer river.An old legend says that there were hidden treasures in an underground passage from the Montignak castle under the Vezer to the Lascaux estate. On the 12th of September 1940, four teen-agers named Marcel Ravidat, Jacques Marsal, Georges Agnel, and Simon Coencas were looking for these treasures. What they had found instead was a small entrance into a cave, which concealed real riches - magnificent rock paintings with depictions of different animals(Ruspoli, 1996). Unlike the figures in other caves, which, at first sight look static and almost lifeless, those in Lascaux are full of motion and harmony.
The painted walls of the interconnected series of caves are among the most impressive artistic creations of Paleolithic humans. Although there is one human image, most of the paintings depict animals found in the surrounding landscape, such as horses, bison, mammoth, ibex, aurochs, deer, and felines. No vegetation or illustration of the environment is portrayed around the animals, which are represented in profile and often standing in an alert and energetic stance. Their vitality is achieved by the broad, rhythmic outlines around areas of soft color.One panel shows four horses running side by side, another depicts ten lions moving toward some bison, and yet another has two rhinoceroses squared off to fight.
The cave has a panel with five deer swimming across a river and beyond it is a remarkable deer with nine-point antlers, painted with red ocher from iron oxide. Lascaux cave is best known for its Hall of the Bulls, a fifty-foot-long semicircular frieze that was painted seventeen thousand years ago. The animals are aurochs, the wild ancestors of contemporary cattle, and the artist needed scaffolding to paint them on the ceiling.One bull is sixteen feet long. Picasso, after visiting Lascaux, commented: “We have invented nothing! ” (Ingold, 384).
The pigments were derived from readily available minerals and include red, yellow, black, brown, and violet. No brushes have been found, so in all probability the broad black outlines were applied using mats of moss or hair, or even with chunks of raw color. The surfaces appear to have been covered by paint blown directly from the mouth or through a tube; color-stained, hollowed-out bones have been found in the caves.Images of animals are superimposed on top of earlier depictions, which suggests that the motivation for the paintings may have been in the act of portraying the animals rather than in the artistic effect of the final composition. However, their purpose remains obscure. Most of the paintings are located at a distance from the cave's entrance, and many of the chambers are not easily accessible.
This placement, together with the enormous size and compelling grandeur of the paintings, suggests that the remote chambers may have served as sacred or ceremonial meeting places.Scholars first thought cave art was purely decorative, with no complex meanings. As they made further discoveries, meaningful patterns began to emerge, raising certain questions. Why did artists depict a limited range of species? Why do so many paintings, drawings, and engravings appear in inaccessible places within caves? Why were some caves decorated but apparently not inhabited? Mysterious symbols, figures that are purposely incomplete or ambiguous, and certain associations of figures all seem to indicate that there is some underlying meaning to this art.
Although most of these questions remain unanswered, scholars have explored a number of theories. According to a theory popular in the early 20th century, Stone Age people drew pictures of animals for the purpose of affecting real animals in some way. Those who supported this theory saw ritual and magic in every aspect of Paleolithic art. They concluded, that ritual destruction was the reason for the large number of broken decorated objects found on cave floors, and that superimposing darts or other weapons on the images of some animals may have been intended to ensure successful hunting (Torrey,26).However this is still a debatable theory due to the absence of any clear hunting scenes and the fact that animal bones found in many decorated caves are not of the same species as those depicted on the walls.
Another popular theory proposes that cave art served as fertility magic. According to this theory, humans drew pictures of animals that they hoped would reproduce and provide food in the future. Yet artists very seldom indicated the gender of the animals shown, and genitalia are rarely emphasized in the drawings. Copulation appears in only one or two questionable examples.Some scholars are exploring a variation on this theory: that cave art was created in a ritual of renewal and that redrawing a picture each year, sometimes directly on top of an old drawing, was intended to ensure the return of that species each spring.
Two French scholars, Annette Laming-Emperaire and Andre Leroi-Gourhan, put forth a theory in the late 1950s that cave art had been created in carefully composed configurations within each cave (Grand, 125). They saw the animal pictures not as portraits of animals, but as symbols.Because images of horses and bison, the most common by far, were typically concentrated in central panels, they concluded that these two dominant images represented a basic duality, which they understood to be male and female. Many other theories are under investigation, but no single explanation is likely to apply to all Paleolithic art, since it comprises artwork created over a period of at least 20,000 years and from widely varying parts of the world For many years scholars have searched for the reason underlying the cave art of the Paleolithic.At the present point in time the view is held that for such an extensive cultural manifestation as this, both in terms of time - (stretching out over 20. 000 years) and space (encompassing Portugal, Spain, France and Italy) - there simply cannot be a single common cause or just one interpretation.
Today, therefore, we are witnessing a time of profound reevaluation and detailed analysis of the phenomenon of cave art, a process that has to include Altamira and Lascaux and which must be carried out before other syntheses can be put forward.Whatever the purpose of their paintings, the people who created them were gifted artists by any standards. Their work is important not just because it is old or because it is beautiful, but because it documents the artist's earliest efforts to express his observations of the world around him. The paintings, engravings and sculptures of the Paleolithic can --without challenge-- be called "the beginning of art.
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