SPOT THE DIFFERENCE !

The above images demonstrate two radically different representations of how we view our "cave man" ancestors. On the left is the stereotypical view of 'cave man' as a brainless brute surviving on instinct alone. On the right is a painting made by Charles R. Knight under the direction of the palaeontologist Henry Fairfield Osborn for the American Museum of Natural History in 1925, showing Cro-Magnon cave painters illustrating their homes.

When we discuss Stone Culture, it is important for us to emphasise the word 'culture' and remember that although little knowledge about our most ancient ancestors except for a few small fossilised remnants of that era, from the cave paintings of that culture we having the beginnings of both ART and SCIENCE. The artistry used in creating these paintings attempt to tell us stories of that time and are therefore at the root of all narration and illustration. But these paintings which depict animals are often attempts to study, record and classify them and are therefore at the very beginnings of science.

Images from: http://www.indiana.edu/~jah/teaching/2001_03/teaching.shtml

Explore the history of Art by clicking on the image below :

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Great Moments in Art History

A Whirlwind Tour. Part One: Prehistoric to Roman

By Guide Andrea Mulder-Slater

1. 30,000-10,000 B.C.: During the Paleolithic Period or Old Stone Age, cave paintings, and small sculptures like the Venus of Willendorf, c.30,000-25,000 B.C.E. (a limestone fertility carving of a woman with exaggerated bits) begin popping up in places like present day France and Spain.

2. 10,000-8000 B.C.: The Mesolithic Period or Middle Stone Age sees people beginning to settle in pseudo-farming communities. Cliff faces become canvases as people who are driven by thoughts of magic and hunting, paint with dirt and animal fat.

3. 8000-3000 B.C.: As the New Stone Age or the Neolithic Period arrives; folks are living in village-like settings. They grow things and keep animals within their sight as simple architectural structures are built and richly decorated pottery is created. Stonehenge and other megaliths (big things) are constructed in what are now England and Scotland. Prehistoric art continues in various parts of the globe including North and South America.

4. 3500-331 B.C.: In Mesopotamia (roughly between present day Iran and Turkey) people construct ziggurats (palaces) as bronze sculptures, rock carvings and wooden musical instruments adorned with gold are created. Sumerians, Assyrians and Persians leave their artistic mark as they float in and out of the area.

5. 3200-1070 B.C.: In the land we call Egypt, people with a strong belief in the afterlife create paintings and elaborate sculptures used to decorate tombs. The Great Sphinx is constructed from sandstone while limestone forms the base of the pyramids and temples.

6. 3000-1100 B.C.: The Minoans on the island of Crete and the Mycenaeans of Greece create what we now call Aegean art. Gorgeous wall murals, and dazzling ceramic ware are created in between natural disasters and wars.

7. 800-323 B.C.: After creating simplified kouros (male) and kore (female) figures, the Greeks go wild portraying perfectly proportioned bodies of young men and women. The Parthenon is built, columns have personality and vase painting flourishes.

8. 323-150 B.C.: The Hellenistic Period begins when Alexander the Great expires and his empire is liquefied. The art of this time is symbolic of the breakdown as pain, suffering, ecstasy and some other emotions are expressed. Later, the Etruscans fabricate pottery and sculpture as funerary offerings - not unlike the Egyptians.

10. 509 B.C.-337 A.D.: The Romans conquer Greece and proceed to lop off the heads of many Greek sculptures. Even so, the Romans appreciate the art of Greece and begin to "borrow" their artistic concepts. Large scale works are common, as are mosaics, fresco paintings and arches.

Cave paintings have been found all over the world, but the largest concentration have been found in Europe (from Spain up to the Ural). Naturally, on the walls of neglected caves with the entrances firmly blocked up thousands years ago, the paintings are in a good condition. During centuries the same temperature and humidity have been kept up in them. That is why, together with the cave paintings, other numerous evidences of the human activity are perfectly preserved, among them - distinct footprints of adults and, what is more impressive, of children on the wet floor of some caves.

Lascaux is situated near Montignak ( Dordogne, 40 kms from Perigueux), at the end of a plateau on the left bank of the Vezer river. An old legend says, there was an underground passage from the Montignak castle under the Vezer and the Lascaux estate with hidden treasures. Four teen-agers were looking for these treasures when on the 12th of September 1940 they had found a small entrance into a cave which concealed real riches - magnificent rock paintings dated by the late Palaeolithic. These are depictions of different animals (horses, bisons, deer, bulls and others) and unlike figures in other caves which, at first sight, look static and almost lifeless, those in Lascaux are full of motion and harmony. The area around Périgueux features many such cave paintings, although the 17,000-year-old images of bulls, horses and reindeer are believed to be some of the best.

"Dating back some 17,000 years, the cave was evidently a sanctuary for the performance of sacred rites and ceremonies." says Mario Ruspoli author of The book "The Cave of Lascaux- The Final Photographic Record"

After the discovery of the cave, the increasing levels of carbon dioxide emitted by visitors were found to be damaging the paintings and, as a result, the caves were sealed in 1963, following an order from the French Ministry of Cultural Affairs. In order to compensate for the closure, a precise cement replica of the original caves, known as Lascaux II, was opened to the public in 1983; these caves feature the two most important parts of the original caves, the Great Hall of the Bulls and the Painted Gallery. Visitors can also see a replica of the Shaft of the Dead Man, the Chamber of Felines and the Chamber of Engravings.

The Official Web Site is full of interactive multimedia material:

http://www.culture.fr/culture/arcnat/lascaux/en/index.html

Lascaux Bison

Lascaux Stags

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Cave of Lascaux by K. Crylen and M. Stedt

This article deals with the dicovery of the cave and includes a map of the cave and some sample illustrations.

http://www.richeast.org/htwm/las/las.html

Audio Lecture on cave paintings at Lascaux

http://sunsite.queensu.ca/memorypalace/parlour/caves/

The cave was discovered on the 18th of December 1994 by three speleologists - Jean-Marie Chauvet, Eliette Brunel Deschamps and Christian Hillaire. The discovery caused a shock. Specialists and non-specialists alike immediately recognized its importance and originality for several reasons. First, the nature of the bestiary represented is very unusual, with rhinoceroses, lions and bears. The animals most often depicted in Paleolithic caverns are the same as those that were hunted, even if their proportions do not exactly match those represented by the faunal remains found at habitation sites. At Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc, dangerous animals, who did not figure on Paleolithic menus, are largely dominant (more than 60% of identified species if we count mammoth). The techniques utilized to represent the animals are also surprising, especially the use of shading and perspective. These refinements contrast greatly with the images that we are accustomed to seeing.

The cave paintings were decorated with beautiful colors. To make colored paint, the artists used a mineral called ochre. Ochre could be crushed into a powder to make shades of red, brown, and yellow. Black paint was made from powdered charcoal. The colors were either rubbed on to the wall with the hands, or mixed with animal fat, and applied with crude paint brushes. Sometimes the artists would blow powdered paint on to the wall, using a hollow bone. The colors in the cave art are still bright, even after 15,000 years!

There is a succession of four big "vestibules" with about or more than 300 paintings. They are in a remarkable state of preservation. At present the paintings are the oldest known on the Earth (about 32 millenia). Even the first investigations shook the established notions concerning the art of the Upper Palaeolithic period and pushed its beginning almost 5 millenia to the back.

http://www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/arcnat/chauvet/en/

This site includes illustrations of images of animals from the cave walls and compares them with photographs of the real thing.

http://www.harcourtschool.com/activity/cavepaintings/vallon.html

Direct radiocarbon dating of prehistoric cave paintings by accelerator mass spectrometry

Hélène Valladas

Abstract. Advances in radiocarbon dating by accelerator mass spectrometry now make it possible to date prehistoric cave paintings by sampling the pigment itself instead of relying on dates derived from miscellaneous prehistoric remains recovered in the vicinity of the paintings. Presented below are some radiocarbon dates obtained at the 'Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement' for charcoal used in the execution of prehistoric paintings decorating two French caves: Cosquer and Chauvet. The presentation of the dates will be preceded by a short discussion of the experimental procedure used in our laboratory (pigment sampling, chemical treatment, etc). The ages obtained so far have shown that the art of cave painting appeared early in the Upper Palaeolithic period, much earlier than previously believed. The high artistic quality of the earliest paintings underlines the importance of absolute chronology in any attempt to study the evolution of prehistoric art.

Available in PDF at (6 pages);

http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/-ffissn=0957-0233/-ff30=all/0957-0233/14/9/301/e30901.pdf

Footprints in the Sand

On Christmas Eve, 1994 -- three speleologists, or cave explorers, went cave hunting in southern France. They discovered a cavern that probably hadn't been entered in some 20,000 years. Chauvet Cave -- named after Jean-Marie Chauvet, one of the discoverers -- contains hundreds of spectacular Paleolithic paintings of lions, bears, mammoths, rhinos, hyenas, and many other animals. Carbon dating has shown that some of the paintings in Chauvet Cave are over 30,000 years old. That makes them 3,000 years older than the oldest cave paintings previously known.

Some fossil footprints were also found on the floor, but they weren't carefully studied until last month. The floor is criss-crossed with fossil footprints of animals and ancient human artifacts. But 25 or 30 thousand years ago, a barefoot boy -- thought to be about 9 years old -- probably wasn't paying too much attention when he walked in the moist clay that lined the cave floor. He left behind four footprints that are probably the oldest human footprints in Europe, according to researchers at the French research institution CNRS

http://www.earthsky.com/Features/News/footprint.html

Selected Links:

Cave Paintings of India

Stone Culture Ritual

Anthropology defines 'ritual' as an expression of shared feelings and attitudes through more or less formally ordered actions of an essentially symbolic nature performed on appropriate occasions. A ritual involves stereotyped bodily movements, often in relation to objects possessing symbolic meaning. For example, people bow or genuflect, tip hats, present arms, slaughter cattle, salute flags, and perform a myriad of other actions. Rituals express, perpetuate, and transmit elements of the value and sentiment system and aim at preserving such values and sentiments from doubt and opposition; moreover, they intensify the solidarity of the participants. Rituals are found in all societies. Fundamentally, rituals are preparations that alter your state of mind and lend greater significance and focus to a tool or event. Certainly, prayers and signs that we do in front of an altar are rituals, nonetheless, not all rituals are strictly spiRITUAL in nature.

I am the Shaman

• How the world has changed
• My people collect food
• My people build our homes
• Our life at home
• Our art and adornment
• Our ceremonies

http://museums.ncl.ac.uk/flint/shaman.html

The prehistory of Finland

 

http://www.nba.fi/NATMUS/Julkais/Prehist/text.htm

The Anthropology of Ritual

A wonderful series of simple slides explaining the fundemental concepts of ritual

http://www.swt.edu/~rw04/religion/functions/anthropology_of_ritual.htm

Burial and Mysticism in Prehistory

http://museums.ncl.ac.uk/flint/archrit.html

Culture in Prehistory

http://www.koreainfogate.com/beautykorea/cultural/cultural.asp?src=prehis&title=Prehistory

Healing in Prehistoric Times

Stone Circles as Ritual Spaces

http://www.geocities.com/kerrdelune/stones.html

Abstracts from the Theoretical Archaeology Group Conference:

The Interpretation and Structure of Ritual Space