Oldest Historical Image of Agadez Cross in Rock Art

Prehistoric Cupules
The oldest cultural miracle,
found throughout the prehistoric
world, the cupule remains one of the
least understood types of rock art.

NOT "Fine art FOR ART'Due south SAKE"
A large proportion Stone Age art
was created to express ideas or
information. This applies to nigh
creature cave paintings, hand stencils
and all abstruse symbols. To put it
another way, all these types of art
functioned equally "pictographs", and
probably served as a backdrop for
a variety of prehistoric ceremonies.

Prehistoric Art of the Stone Historic period
Types, Characteristics, Chronology

Contents

• Introduction
• Types
• Characteristics
• Dating & Chronology
• Prehistoric Culture
• Human Evolution: From Axes to Art
• Paleolithic Period
• Lower Paleolithic (c.ii.5 million - 200,000 BCE)
• Centre Paleolithic (c.200,000 - 40,000 BCE)
• Upper Paleolithic (c.40,000-ten,000 BCE)
• Mesolithic Culture
- x,000 - iv,000 BCE - Northern and Western Europe
- 10,000 - 7,000 BCE - Southeast Europe
- x,000 - 8,000 BCE - Heart East and Residuum of World
• Neolithic Culture
- 4,000 - two,000 BCE: Northern and Western Europe
- vii,000 - ii,000 BCE: Southeast Europe
- viii,000 - 2,000 BCE: Eye East & Residuum of World
• Bronze Age Art (In Europe, 3000-1200 BCE)
• Fe Age Art (In Europe, 1500-200 BCE)

Venus of Willendorf (25,000 BCE)
One of the famous Venus Figurines
of the Upper Paleolithic.

Stone Age lions watching prey.
Chauvet Cave (c.thirty,000 BCE)
Franco-Cantabrian cave art from
the Late Aurignacian.

Introduction to Prehistoric Fine art

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 cavern painting and drawing; and prehistoric sculpture (including small-scale totemic statuettes known every bit Venus Figurines, diverse forms of zoomorphic and therianthropic ivory etching, 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 equally parietal fine art; works that are portable are classified every bit mobiliary art.

Characteristics
The earliest forms of prehistoric art are extremely primitive. The cupule, for instance - a mysterious blazon 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 dubiety whether they are works of art at all. It is not until the Upper Paleolithic (from roughly twoscore,000 BCE onwards) that anatomically modern man produces recognizable carvings and pictures. Aurignacian civilization, in detail, witnesses an explosion of stone art, including the El Castillo cave paintings, the monochrome cave murals at Chauvet, the King of beasts Man of Hohlenstein-Stadel, the Venus of Hohle Fels, the brute carvings of the Swabian Jura, Ancient rock art from Australia, and much more than. The subsequently Gravettian and Magdalenian cultures gave birth to even more than sophisticated versions of prehistoric art, notably the polychrome Dappled Horses of Pech-Merle and the sensational cave paintings at Lascaux and Altamira.

Dating and Chronology of Prehistoric Art
A number of highly sophisticated techniques - such as radiometric testing, Uranium/Thorium dating and thermoluminescence - are now bachelor to help establish the date of ancient artifacts from the Paleolithic era and later. All the same, dating of ancient art is not an verbal scientific discipline, and results are often dependent on tests performed on the 'layer' of earth and debris in which the artifact was lying, or - in the case of rock engraving - an assay of the content and style of the markings. (Animal drawings using regular side-profiles, for instance, are typically older than those using three-quarter profiles.) For a chronological list of dates and events associated with Stone Age culture, run into: Prehistoric Fine art Timeline.

PREHISTORY
The main geological epochs include:
PLIOCENE (c.5,300,000 BCE)
This epoch begins roughly with the
emergence of upright early hominids.
They were as well busy trying to stay live
to create art. This period used to end
2.v million years ago when humans
commencement started making tools, merely
geologists extended it to 1.six million
BCE, trapping the early on Lower
Paleolithic menses in it.
PLEISTOCENE (c.1.6m - 10,000 BCE)
This is a geologic flow that covers
the earth's about recent glaciations.
It includes the later on part of the
Lower Paleolithic besides equally the
Middle and Upper Paleolithic periods.
It witnessed the emergence of modern
man and the great works of Paleolithic
stone art, like cupules, petroglyphs,
engravings, pictographs, cave murals,
sculpture and ceramics. The term
pleistocene comes from Greek words
(pleistos "nigh") and (kainos "new").
For fact-addicts, the Pleistocene is the
third stage in the Neogene period or
6th epoch of the Cenozoic Era.
HOLOCENE (c.ten,000 BCE - now)
During its prehistory department this
geological menstruation saw the birth of
Human culture, equally well every bit a
range of sophisticated paintings,
statuary sculptures, exquisite pottery,
pyramid and megalithic monomental
compages. Like its predecessor the
Pleistocene, the Holocene epoch is
a geological period, and its name
derives from the Greek words ("holos",
whole or entire) and ("kainos", new),
meaning "entirely recent". It is
divided into 4 overlapping periods:
the Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age),
the Neolithic (New Stone Age),
the Bronze Age and Iron Age.

Prehistoric Civilization

The longest phase of Stone Historic period culture - known as the Paleolithic period - is a hunter-gatherer culture which is usually divided into three parts:

(one) Lower Paleolithic (2,500,000-200,000 BCE)
(2) Heart Paleolithic (200,000-40,000 BCE)
(three) Upper Paleolithic (xl,000-10,000 BCE).

After this comes a transitional phase called the Mesolithic period (sometimes known as epipaleolithic), ending with the spread of agriculture, followed by the Neolithic period (the New Rock Historic period) which witnessed the establishment of permanent settlements. The Stone Historic period ends as stone tools become superceded past the new products of statuary and atomic number 26 metallurgy, and is followed past the Statuary Age and Iron Age.

WARNING: All periods are approximate. Dates for specific cultures are given as a crude guide only, as disagreement persists as to classification, terminology and chronology.

Paleolithic Era (c.two,500,000 - ten,000 BCE)

Characterized by a Stone Age subsistence civilization and the evolution of the homo species from primitive australopiths via Homo erectus and Homo sapiens to anatomically modernistic humans. See: Paleolithic Art and Culture.

Lower Paleolithic (2,500,000 - 200,000 BCE)

- Olduwan civilization (2,500,000 - 1,500,000 BCE)
- Acheulean culture (1,650,000 - 100,000 BCE)
- Clactonian culture (c.400,000 – 300,000 BCE)

Center Paleolithic (200,000 - 40,000 BCE)

- Mousterian civilization (300,000 - thirty,000 BCE)
- Levallois Chip Tool culture (dominant c.100,000 - 30,000 BCE)

Upper Paleolithic (40,000-8,000 BCE)

- Aurignacian culture (40,000 - 26,000 BCE)
- Perigordian (Chatelperronian) civilization (35,000-27,000 BCE)
- Gravettian civilisation (26,000 - xx,000 BCE)
- Solutrean culture (19,000 – 15,000 BCE)
- Magdalenian civilization (16,000 - eight,000 BCE)

Annotation: Neither Perigordian (aka Chatelperronian) nor Solutrean cultures are strongly associated with creative achievements. Artworks created during their eras are believed to have been influenced by other cultures.

Mesolithic Era
(From 10,000 BCE)

This era joins the Ice Age culture of the Upper Paleolithic with the ice-gratuitous, farming culture of the Neolithic. It is characterized by more advanced hunter-gathering, fishing and rudimentary forms of tillage.

Neolithic Era
(From eight,000-four,000 BCE to 2000 BCE)

This era is characterized by farming, domestication of animals, settled communities and the emergence of important ancient civilizations (eg. Sumerian, Egyptian). Portable fine art and awe-inspiring architecture dominate.

Homo Evolution: From Axes to Art

How did prehistoric human being manage to leave backside such a rich cultural heritage of stone art? Reply: by developing a bigger and more than sophisticated brain. Brain performance is directly associated with a number of "higher" functions such as linguistic communication and creative expression.

The consensus among most well-nigh paleontologists and paleoanthropologists, is that the human species (Homo) split away from gorillas in Africa most eight million BCE, and from chimpanzees no later than 5 one thousand thousand BCE. (The discovery of a hominid skull [Sahelanthropus tchadensis] dated about 7 million years ago, may point an earlier divergence). The very early on hominids included species like Australopithecus afarensis and Paranthropus robustus (encephalon chapters 350-500 cc).

Nearly 2.five 1000000 years BCE, some humans began to make rock tools (like very crude choppers and paw-axes), and newer species similar Homo habilis and Homo rudolfensis emerged (encephalon capacity 590-690 cc). By 2 million years BCE more species of humans appeared, such every bit Homo erectus (brain capacity 800-1250 cc). During the following 500,000 years, Homo erectus spread from Africa to the Middle E, Asia and Europe.

Between 1.5 million BCE and 500,000 BCE, Homo erectus and other variants of humans engendered more highly developed types of Human, known as Archaic Homo sapiens. It was a group of artists from one of these Primitive Homo sapiens species that created the Bhimbetka petroglyphs and cupules in the Auditorium cave situated at Bhimbetka in Republic of india, and at Daraki-Chattan. These cupules are the oldest art on earth.

From 500,000 BCE onwards, these new types morphed into Human being sapiens, as exemplified by Neanderthal Homo (from 200,000 BCE or earlier). Neanderthals had a encephalon size of about 1500 cc, which is actually greater than today'due south modern human being, so conspicuously cranial capacity is not the just guide to intellect: internal brain compages is important also. In all probability Neanderthal sculptors (or their contemporaries) created the famous figurines known as the Venus of Berekhat Ram and the Venus of Tan-Tan, likewise as the ochre stone engravings at the Blombos cave in South Africa, and the cupules at the Dordogne rock shelter at La Ferrassie.

Finally, near 100,000 BCE, "anatomically modern man" emerged from somewhere in sub-Saharan Africa, and, like his predecessors, headed n: reaching North Africa by nearly 70,000 BCE and condign established in Europe no subsequently than the first of the Upper Paleolithic (40,000 BCE). Painters and sculptors belonging to modernistic homo (eg. Cro-Magnon Man, Grimaldi Man) were responsible for the glorious cave painting in France and the Iberian peninsular, as well as the miniature "venus" sculptures and the ivory carvings of the Swabian Jura, found in the caves of Vogelherd, Hohle Fels, and Hohlenstein-Stadel.

Note: Traditionally, prehistoric painting and sculpture is not classified as primitivism/primitive fine art - a category which is unremarkably reserved for later tribal art.

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

Traditionally, this period is divided into three sub-sections: the Lower Paleolithic, Centre Paleolithic and Upper Paleolithic, each marking advances (particularly in tool applied science) amidst unlike man cultures. In essence, Paleolithic Man lived solely by hunting and gathering, while his successors during the afterward Mesolithic and Neolithic times developed systems of agriculture and ultimately permanent settlements.

Survival wasn't easy, not least because of numerous adverse climatic changes: on four split occasions the northern latitudes experienced water ice ages resulting insuccessive waves of freezing and thawing, and triggering migrations or widespread death. In fact, the development of human culture during Paleolithic times was repeatedly and profoundly affected past environmental factors. Paleolithic humans were nutrient gatherers, who depended for their subsistence on hunting wild animals, fishing, and collecting berries, fruits and nuts. It wasn't until about eight,000 BCE that more than secure methods of feeding (agriculture and beast domestication) were adopted.

Stone Tools – The Key to Culture, Culture and Art

Rock tools were the instruments past which early on Man developed and progressed. All man civilisation is based on the ingenuity and brainpower of our early ancestors in creating ever more sophisticated tools that enabled them to survive and prosper. Afterward all, fine fine art is merely a reflection of order, and prehistoric societies were largely defined by the type of tool used. In fact, Paleolithic civilisation is charted and classified according to advancing tool technologies.

Incidentally, many of the earliest archeological finds of Rock Historic period artifacts were made in France, thus French identify-names have long been used to chart the various Paleolithic subdivisions, despite the huge regional differences that be.

Stone Historic period Tool Technology

The first stone tools, (eoliths) were made more than two million years agone - non just from stone but from all types of organic materials (wood, os, ivory, antler). However, most archeological finds comprise the more durable rock variety. The oldest human tools were unproblematic stone choppers, such as those unearthed at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania.

According to paleoanthropologists, Paleolithic Man produced iv types of better and better tools. These were: (1) Pebble-tools (with a single sharpened edge for cutting or chopping); (2) Bifacial-tools (eg. hand-axes); (iii) Flake-tools; and (iv) Blade-tools. All types eventually came into use, and new tool techniques were created to produce them, with the older technique persisting as long as it was needed for a given purpose.

The Lower Paleolithic Era
(2,500,000 - 200,000 BCE)

This is the earliest menses of the Paleolithic Historic period. It runs from the get-go advent of Homo as a tool-making mammal to the advent of important evolutionary and technological changes which marked the start of the Middle Paleolithic. Information technology witnessed the emergence of iii different tool-based cultures: (one) Olduwan civilisation (2,500,000-1,500,000 BCE); (ii) Acheulean culture (ane,650,000-100,000 BCE); and (3) Clactonian culture (c.400,000–300,000 BCE). In a sense, stone tools represented the "fine art" of this menses - the primal form of creative human expression.

Lower Paleolithic Tool Cultures

Oldowan Civilization (2,500,000 - 1,500,000 BCE)

Oldowan describes the offset rock tools used by prehistoric Man of the Lower Paleolithic. Oldowan culture began about 2.five meg years ago, appearing commencement in the Gona and Omo Basins of Ethiopia. The fundamental feature of Oldowan tool manufacture was the method of chipping stones to create a chopping or cutting edge. Nigh tools were fashioned using a single strike of one rock against another to create a sharp-edged flake.

Acheulean Culture and Art (i,650,000 - 100,000 BCE)

Acheulean culture was the most important and dominant tool-making tradition of the Lower Palaeolithic era throughout Africa and much of Asia and Europe. Named later on the type-site hamlet of Saint Acheul in northern France, and associated with Homo ergaster, Human being heidelbergensis and western Homo erectus, Acheulean tool users with their signature style oval and pear-shaped hand-axes were the first humans to aggrandize successfully across Eurasia. Judging by the sophisticated design of these implements, it is no surprise that the earliest art past Stone Age man dates from Acheulean Culture. Also, archeologists now believe that Acheulean peoples were the first to feel fire, (effectually 1.4 million years BCE), every bit a result of lightning, although amazingly it wasn't until nearly 8,000 BCE that homo learned exactly how to control information technology.

Clactonian Culture (c.400,000 – 300,000 BCE)

Clactonian describes a culture of European flint tool industry or "art", associated with Man erectus, dating from the early on period of the interglacial catamenia known equally the Hoxnian, the Mindel-Riss or the Holstein interglacial (approx 300,000 – 200,000 BCE).

It was named after blazon-sites located at Clacton-on-Sea, on the SE coast of England and at Swanscombe in Kent. The latter besides provided bear witness for the existence of a sub-species of Man erectus known equally Swanscombe Man. Clactonian tools were sometimes notched, indicating they were fastened to a handle or shaft.

Lower Paleolithic Rock Art

The primeval recorded examples of homo art were created during the Lower Paleolithic in the caves and rock shelters of cardinal Republic of india. They consisted of a number of petroglyphs (ten cupules and an engraving or groove) discovered during the 1990s in a quartzite rock shelter (Auditorium cavern) at Bhimbetka in cardinal Republic of india. This rock art dates from at least 290,000 BCE. Yet, 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 exist of a like age.

The adjacent oldest prehistoric art from the Lower Paleolithic comes about 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 Kingdom of morocco) were dated to between roughly 200,000 and 500,000 BCE (the former is more ancient).

Middle Paleolithic Era
(200,000 - forty,000 BCE)

The Heart Paleolithic period is the 2nd stage of the Paleolithic Era, as practical to Europe, Africa and Asia. The dominant Paleolithic culture was Mousterian, a scrap tool manufacture largely characterized by the point and side scraper, associated (in Europe) with Homo neanderthalensis. This was not a catamenia of cracking invention - evidently hand-axes, for instance, were nonetheless regularly employed - but major improvements were made in the basic process of tool-making, and in the range and proper utilization of manufactured implements. Towards the terminate of the period, Mousterian tool technology was enhanced past some other civilization known as Levallois, and practised in North Africa, the Heart East and equally far afield as Siberia.

Mousterian Culture (300,000 - 30,000 BCE)

The name Mousterian derives from the type-site of Le Moustier, a cave in the Dordogne region of southern France, although the same technology was practised across the unglaciated zones of Europe and also the Middle E and Northward Africa. Tool forms featured a wide multifariousness of specialized shapes, including barbed and serrated edges. These new bract designs helped to reduce the need for humans to use their teeth to perform certain tasks, thus contributing to a diminution of facial and jaw features amid later humans.

The Tool-Making Procedure

Mousterian Man was able to standardize the tool-making process and thus innovate greater efficiency, possibly through segmentation and specialization of labour. Tool-makers went to great efforts to create blades that could be regularly re-sharpened, thus endowing tools with a greater lifespan. Their production of serrated edge blades, special animal-hide scrapers and the like, together with a range of os instruments such as needles (suggesting the utilize of animal furs and skins as body coverings and shoes) reveal a growing improvement in cognitive ability - something illustrated past Neanderthal Man's success in hunting large mammoths, an activity which required much greater social organization and cooperation.

Levallois Flake-Tool Culture (c.100,000 - xxx,000 BCE)

Named afterwards a suburb of Paris, the Levalloisian is an important flintstone-knapping civilization characterized past an enhanced technique of producing flakes. This involved the preliminary shaping of the core stone into a convex tortoise shape in guild to yield larger flakes. Levallois culture influenced many other Middle Paleolithic stone tool industries.

Middle Paleolithic Fine art

One of the few works of art dating from the Middle Paleolithic, is the pair of ochre rocks decorated with abstract cross-hatch patterns found in the Blombos Caves east of Cape Town. (See also: Prehistoric Abstruse Signs.) They are one of the oldest examples of African art, and have been dated to lxx,000 BCE. After Blombos, comes the Diepkloof eggshell engravings, dated to 60,000 BCE. Information technology is probable that towards the finish of the Upper Paleolithic, human artists began producing primitive forms of Oceanic art in the SW Pacific area, and very early on types of Tribal fine art throughout Africa and Asia, although little has survived. See as well the cupules at the La Ferrassie Neanderthal cave in France.

Upper Paleolithic Era
(40,000 - 8,000 BCE)

The Upper Paleolithic is the final and shortest stage of the Paleolithic Age: less than fifteen percentage of the length of the preceeding Center Paleolithic. When referring to Africa it is more commonly known as the belatedly Stone Age. In addition to more specialized tools and a more sophisticated way of life, Upper Paleolithic culture spawned the get-go widespread appearance of human painting and sculpture, which appeared simultaneously in well-nigh every corner of the globe. Too, from the outset of the Upper Paleolithic period, the Neanderthal Man sub-species of Human being sapiens was replaced by "anatomically modern humans" (eg. Cro-Magnon Homo, Chancelade Homo and Grimaldi Man) who became the sole hominid inhabitants across continental Europe. Merely see for instance the Neanderthal engraving at Gorham's Cave, Gibraltar (37,000 BCE).

Rock Tool Cultures

The five main tool cultures of the Upper Paleolithic were (one) Perigordian (aka Chatelperronian; (2) Aurignacian; (3) Gravettian; (4) Solutrean; and (5) Magdalenian.

Upper Paleolithic Guild

The era saw the construction of the earliest human-fabricated dwellings (more often than not semi-subterranean pit houses), while the location of settlements indicates a more complex pattern of social interreaction, involving collective hunting, organized line-fishing, social stratification, ceremonial events, supernatural and religious ritual. Other developments included the beginning of private belongings, the utilise of needle and thread, and clothing.

Upper Paleolithic Art

The Upper Paleolithic period witnessed the beginning of fine art, featuring drawing, modelling, sculpture, and painting, too as jewellery, personal adornments and early forms of music and dance. The 3 principal art forms were cave painting, rock engraving and miniature figurative carvings.

Upper Paleolithic Cave Painting

During this period, prehistoric gild began to accept ritual and anniversary - of a quasi-religious or shaman-type nature. As a issue, sure caves were reserved as prehistoric art galleries, where artists began to pigment animals and hunting scenes, besides equally a diverseness of abstract or symbolic drawings.

Cave art first appeared during the early on Aurignacian civilization, as exemplified by the dots and hand stencils of the El Castillo Cave paintings (c.39,000 BCE), the stencils and animal images in the Sulawesi Cave fine art (c.37,900 BCE), the figurative Fumane Cave paintings (c.35,000 BCE) and the fabulous monochrome Chauvet Cavern paintings (c.30,000 BCE) of animals. A recent discovery is the Coliboaia Cavern Art (thirty,000 BCE) - now radiocarbon dated - in north-w Romania.

Examples of Gravettian art include the prehistoric hand stencils at the (now underwater) Cosquer Cave (c.25,000 BCE) and Roucadour Cave (24,000 BCE), and the polychrome charcoal and ochre images at Pech-Merle (c.25,000 BCE) and Cougnac Cave (c.23,000 BCE). Merely without dubiousness, the most evocative art of the period is the Gargas Cave hand stencils (25,000 BCE), featuring a spooky assortment of mutilated fingers.

During the Solutrean period, prehistoric painters (influenced past late Gravettian traditions) began work on their magnificent polychrome images of horses, bulls and other animals in the Lascaux Cave (from 17,000 BCE), and the Castilian Cantabrian Cave of La Pasiega (from sixteen,000 BCE).

Magdalenian cave painting is well represented by the polychrome images of bison and deer at Altamira Cavern in Spain (from fifteen,000 BCE), the reindeer pictures on antlers plant at the French Lortet Cave (from xv,000 BCE), the painted engravings at Font de Gaume Cave (14,000 BCE), the black paintings of mammoths at Rouffignac Cavern (14,000 BCE), the scarlet and blackness paintings in the Tito Bustillo Cavern (14,000 BCE) and the Russian Kapova Cave paintings (c.12,500 BCE) in Bashkortostan.

In Australia, the oldest cave art is the Nawarla Gabarnmang charcoal drawing in Arnhem Country, Northern Territory, which is carbon-dated to 26,000 BCE. The Koonalda Cave Fine art (finger-fluting) dates to 18,000 BCE, while the figurative Bradshaw paintings accept been carbon-dated to 15,500 BCE. In Africa, the animate being figure paintings in charcoal and red ochre on the Apollo eleven Cave Stones in Namibia date from 25,500 BCE, while in the Americas the hand stencil images at the Cueva de las Manos (Cavern of the Hands) in Argentine republic, engagement from around 9,500 BCE.

For details of the colour pigments used past Rock Historic period cave painters, run into: Prehistoric Colour Palette.

Upper Paleolithic Rock Engraving

Upper Paleolithic rock engraving is exemplified by the following sites: Abri Castanet (35,000 BCE), Grotte des Deux-Ouvertures (26,500), Cussac Cave (25,000), Cosquer Cavern (25,000) Le Placard Cavern (17,500), Roc-de-Sers Cave (17,200), Lascaux Cave (17,000), Rouffignac Cavern (14,000), Trois Freres Cave (thirteen,000) and Les Combarelles Cave (12,000).

Further afield, Aboriginal rock fine art began in the north of Australia, where the first 'modern' humans arrived from SE Asia. Ubirr rock fine art and Kimberley rock fine art are both believed to date from as early on every bit 30,000 BCE, as are the ancient Burrup Peninsula stone engravings in the Pilbara, Western Australia. All these Australian Paleolithic sites are famous for their open air engraved drawings, whereas about all the European engravings were created inside caves: the leading exception being the Coa Valley Engravings, Portugal (22,000 BCE).

Upper Paleolithic Sculpture

Upper Paleolithic artists produced a vast number of small sculptures of female figures, known every bit Venus Figurines. During Aurignacian times, they included: the Venus of Hohle Fels (ivory, 35,500 BCE), and the Venus of Galgenberg (likewise known equally the Stratzing Figurine) (c.30,000 BCE). During the post-obit Gravettian culture, more appeared, such as: the Venus of Dolni Vestonice (ceramic clay figurine: c.26,000 BCE); the Venus of Monpazier (limonite carving: c.25,000 BCE); the Venus of Willendorf (oolitic limestone sculpture: c.25,000 BCE); the Venus of Savignano (serpentine sculpture: c.24,000 BCE); the Venus of Moravany (mammoth ivory carving: c.24,000 BCE); the Venus of Laussel (limestone sculpture: c.23,000 BCE); the Venus of Brassempouy (mammoth ivory: c.23,000 BCE); the Venus of Lespugue (mammoth ivory: c.23,000 BCE); the Venus of Kostenky (mammoth ivory carving: 22,000 BCE), the Venus of Gagarino (volcanic rock: c.22,000 BCE), the Avdeevo Venuses (ivory: c.twenty,000 BCE), the Zaraysk Venuses (ivory: c.20,000 BCE) and the Mal'ta Venuses (ivory: 20,000 BCE), to name but a few. Other not-female examples include the ivory Lion Human being of Hohlenstein-Stadel (c.38,000 BCE). For later sculptures from the Magdalenian period, please see: Venus of Eliseevichi (14,000 BCE), the German language Venus of Engen ("Petersfels Venus") (thirteen,000 BCE) and the Venus of Monruz-Neuchatel (c.10,000 BCE), the last of the Upper Paleolithic figurines.

Upper Paleolithic Relief Sculpture

Stone Historic period relief sculpture is exemplified by the Dordogne limestone relief known every bit the Venus of Laussel (c.23,000-20,000 BCE); the cute Perigord carving of a salmon/trout in the Abri du Poisson Cavern (c.23,000-20,000 BCE); the infrequent frieze at Roc-de-Sers Cavern (17,200 BCE) in the Charente; the Cap Blanc Frieze (15,000 BCE) in the Dordogne; the Tuc d'Audoubert Bison reliefs (c.13,500 BCE) found in the Ariege; and the limestone frieze at Roc-aux-Sorciers (c.12,000 BCE), uncovered at Angles-sur-l'Anglin in the Vienne.

Upper Paleolithic Tool Technology

Tool-making received something of an overhaul. Out went the old hand axes and flake tools, in came a wide range of diversified and specialized tools fabricated from specially prepared stones. They included spear and arrow points, and a signature figure-8 shaped bract. Hafted tools appeared, as did the harpoon, specialist angling equipment and a range of gravers (or burins) and scrapers. In addition to flint, materials like bone, ivory, and antlers were utilized extensively.

Art and Tool Cultures During the Upper Paleolithic

Aurignacian Civilisation (nigh 40,000 - 26,000 BCE)

One of several cultures which co-existed in Upper Paleolithic Europe, it was too practised as far away as south west Asia, its name derives from the type-site near the village of Aurignac in the Haute Garonne, France. Its tools included sophisticated os implements like points with grooves cut in the bottom for attachment to handles/spears, scrapers (including nose-scrapers), burins, chisels, and armed forces-mode batons.

Aurignacian art also witnessed the first significant manifestations of fine fine art painting and sculpture: a phenomenom which continued throughout the balance of the Upper Paleolithic era. Notable examples include the red abstract symbols at El Castillo, the monochrome cave murals at Chauvet and Coliboaia, and the early on venus figurines from across Europe. Other Aurignacian rock art included hand stencils, finger tracings, engravings, and bas-reliefs.

In improver, Aurignacian humans produced the first personal ornaments made from decorated bone and ivory, such every bit bracelets, necklaces, pendants and beads. This growing self-awareness, together with the birth of fine art, marks the Aurignacian as the first modern civilisation of the Stone Age.

Perigordian/Chatelperronian Culture: (well-nigh 33,000-27,000 BCE)

Châtelperronian was an important Upper Paleolithic civilization of central and southern France. Derived from the before Mousterian, practised by Man neanderthalensis, it employed Levallois flake-tool engineering, producing toothed and serrated stone tools as well as a signature flint blades (perchance used to make jewellery) with blunted backs known as "Châtelperron points". No detail art is associated with this culture.

Gravettian Culture (near 26,000 - twenty,000 BCE)

The Gravettian was a European Upper Palaeolithic culture whose name derives from the type-site of La Gravette in the Dordogne department of French republic. Practised in eastern, central and western Europe, its signature tool (derived from the Châtelperron point) was a small pointed bract with a blunt but straight dorsum - called a Gravette Bespeak. Personal jewellery continued to be manufactured, and more personal holding is evident, indicating an increasing degree of social stratification.

Gravettian art is immensely rich in both cave painting and portable sculptural works. The onetime is exemplified by the wonderful stencil art at Cosquer cave and the coloured charcoal and ochre pictures at Pech-Merle cavern. The well-nigh famous Gravettian sculpture consists of venus figurines, such as the Venuses of Dolni Vestonice (Czech republic), Willendorf (Republic of austria), Savignano (Italian republic), Kostenky (Russia), Moravany (Slovakia), Laussel (France), Brassempouy (France), Lespugue (France), and Gagarino (Russia).

Solutrean Civilization (about twenty,000 – fifteen,000 BCE)

This culture comes from the type-site of Solutré in the Mâcon district of eastern French republic. Curiously, Solutrean tool-makers appear to have developed a number of uniquely advanced techniques, some of which were not seen for several thousand years after their departure. In any event, Solutrean people produced the finest Paleolithic flint craftsmanship in western Europe.

However, effectually fifteen,000 BCE, Solutrean culture mysteriously vanishes from the archeological record. Some paleoanthropologists believe there are affinities between Solutean and the later Due north American Clovis culture (every bit evidenced by artifacts plant at Blackwater Draw in New Mexico, USA), indicating that Solutreans migrated beyond the frozen Atlantic to America. Other experts believe that Solutrean culture was overcome by a moving ridge of new invaders.

Solutrean Art

Perhaps because of its focus on tool technology, Solutrean art is noted to a higher place all for its achievements in engraving and relief sculpture - see, for example the fabulous rock engravings and frieze at the Roc-de-Sers Cavern (c.17,200 BCE) - even though the glorious Lascaux cave paintings date from the period. Experts believe that the artists who created the cave murals at Lascaux and La Pasiega were influenced either by tardily Gravettian or early on Magdalenian civilization.

Ancient pottery also appeared at this time in East Asia. The oldest known sherds come from the Xianrendong Cave Pottery (c.18,000 BCE), discovered in northeast Jiangxi Province, Mainland china. Later this comes Yuchanyan Cave Pottery (c.16,000 BCE) from Communist china's Hunan province, and Amur River Bowl Pottery (14,300 BCE). Meanwhile, in Nihon, ceramics began with Jomon Pottery (from 14,500 BCE). For more chronological details, see: Pottery Timeline.

Magdalenian Culture (almost 15,000 - 8,000 BCE)

Magdalenian is the final culture of the catamenia and the apogee of Paleolithic art, of the Old Stone Age. Its name comes from the type-site of La Madeleine nigh Les Eyzies in the French Dordogne. Magdalenian tool technology is defined past the production of smaller and more sophisticated tools (from barbed points to needles, well-crafted scrapers to parrot-beak gravers) made from fine flint-flakes and animal sources (bone, ivory etc), whose specialized functions and delicacy testify to the culture'due south advanced nature.

Magdalenian Art

Magdalenian civilization fastened a growing importance to aesthetic objects, such as personal jewellery, ceremonial accessories, clothing and especially fine art. Ceramics also appeared in Europe - see Vela Spila pottery (15,500 BCE), for example, from Croatia.

Indeed, the cultural horizons of Magdalenian people are easily appreciated by studying the upsurge of drawing, painting, relief sculpture of the catamenia, exemplified by the Altimira Cave paintings - whose symbolism in particular represents the offset attempt by humans to impose their ain sense of pregnant on a relatively uncertain earth - too every bit the Addaura Cave engravings (eleven,000 BCE) whose mode is remarkably mod. This unstoppable trend would - within only a few millennia - pb to the appearance of pictographs, hieroglyphics and written language. For details, see: Magdalenian Art.

[Note: Dates for the next iv periods of prehistory are strictly approximate. In the instance of Mesolithic and Neolithic, this is because their defining characteristics appeared at differing times according to the ice weather of the region or land. In the case of the Statuary and Iron Ages, this is because sure civilizations developed metallurgical skills at different times. Thus, there are no universal dates for the beginning and end of these eras, and so our focus is on Europe.]

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

The Mesolithic flow is a transitional era between the water ice-afflicted hunter-gatherer culture of the Upper Paleolithic, and the farming civilization 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 menstruum 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.

NOTE: The term "Mesolithic" is no longer used to denote a worldwide period in the evolution of European cultural evolution. Instead, it describes only the state of affairs in northwestern Europe - Scandinavia, U.k., France, Netherlands, Denmark, Germany - and primal Europe.

European Mesolithic Humans

Archeological discoveries of Mesolithic remains prove to a great variety of races. These include the Azilian Ofnet Man (Bavaria); several later types of Cro-Magnon Homo; types of brachycephalic humans (short-skulled); and types of dolichocephalic humans (long-skulled).

European Mesolithic Cultures

As the ice disappeared, to be replaced by grasslands and forests, mobility and flexibility became more of import in the hunting and acquisition of food. Every bit a result, Mesolithic cultures are characterized by modest, lighter flintstone tools, quantities of line-fishing tackle, stone adzes, bows and arrows. Very gradually, at to the lowest degree in Europe, hunting and angling was superceded by farming and the domestication of animals. The three master European Mesolithic cultures are: Azilian, Tardenoisian and Maglemosian. Azilian was a stone manufacture, largely microlithic, associated with Ofnet Man. Tardenoisian, associated with Tardenoisian Homo, produced modest flint blades and small flint implements with geometrical shapes, together with bone harpoons using flint flakes as barbs. Maglemosian (northern Europe) was a bone and horn culture, producing flint scrapers, borers and core-axes.

Mesolithic Stone Fine 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 stone art gives more space to human figures, and is characterized by keener observation, and greater narrative in the paintings. Too, considering of the warmer weather, it moves from caves to outdoor sites in numerous locations.

Famous Works of Art From the Mesolithic Period

Famous works of painting and sculpture created by Mesolithic artists include the following:

Artwork: Cueva de las Manos (Cave of the Hands) (c.9500 BCE)
Type: Stencils of Hands; Pigments on Rock
Local Menses: Upper Paleolithic/Neolithic
Location: Rio de las Pinturas, Argentina

Artwork: Bhimbetka Rock Art (c.nine,000-7,000 BCE)
Type: Paintings and Stencil Art
Local Flow: Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic
Location: Madhya Pradesh, Republic of india

Artwork: Paintings on Pachmari Hills (9000–3000 BCE)
Type: Pigments on Sandstone
Local Period: Mesolithic
Location: Satpura Range of Central India

Artwork: Wonderwerk Cave Engravings (c.8200 BCE)
Type: Geometric Designs and Representations of Animals
Local Period: African Neolithic
Location: Wonderwerk Cave, Northern Greatcoat Province, South Africa

Artwork: Tassili-northward-Ajjer Rock Fine art (c.8000 BCE)
Type: Paintings and Engravings
Local Period: Primitive Tradition
Location: Tassili-northward-Ajjer, Algeria, Northward Africa

Artwork: The Shigir Idol (seven,500 BCE)
Type: Forest carving of an anthropomorphic effigy.
Local Period: Late Mesolithic, Early on Neolithic
Location: Peat bog nigh Sverdlovsk in Russia.

Neolithic Culture
c. iv,000 - 2,000 BCE: Northern and Western Europe
c. 7,000 - ii,000 BCE: Southeast Europe
c. eight,000 - 2,000 BCE: Middle Due east & Balance of World

The Neolithic era saw a fundamental change in lifestyle throughout the world. OUT went the primitive semi-nomadic way of hunting and gathering food, IN came a much more settled grade of beingness, based on farming and rearing of domesticated animals. Neolithic civilization was characterized by stone tools shaped past 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 well-nigh 9,000 BCE in the villages of southern Asia, from where it spread to the Chinese interior - run into Neolithic Art in Communist china - and likewise to the fertile crescent of the Tigris and Euphrates in the Middle East (c.vii,000), before spreading to Bharat (c.5,000), Europe (c.4,000), and the Americas (independently) (c.two,500 BCE).

The establishment of settled communities (villages, towns and in due form 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 nutrient supply and ecology control, the population rapidly increased. For tens of millennia before the appearance of agriculture, the total homo population had varied between v million and 8 million. Past 4,000 BCE, afterwards less than five,000 years of farming, numbers had risen to 65 million.

Neolithic Fine art

In general, the more than settled and better-resourced the region, the more art it produces. And then it was with Neolithic art, which branched out in several different directions. And although near aboriginal fine 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 - outset appeared during the era of Neolithic culture, every bit does Chinese lacquerware and porcelain. See: Chinese Art Timeline (eighteen,000 BCE - present.)

Portable Art

With greater settlement in villages and other pocket-sized communities, rock painting begins to be replaced by more portable art. Discoveries in Catal Huyuk, an ancient village in Asia Minor (modern Turkey) include beautiful murals (including the globe's first landscape painting), dating from 6,100 BCE. Artworks become progressively ornamented with precious metals (eg. copper is beginning used in Mesopotamia, while more than advanced metallurgy is discovered in South-Eastward Europe). Gratuitous standing sculpture, in rock and wood begins to be seen, as well as bronze statuettes (notably by the Indus Valley Civilization, ane of the early engines of painting and sculpture in Republic of india), primitive jewellery and decorative designs on a multifariousness of artifacts.

Ceramics

However, the major medium of Neolithic civilization was ceramic pottery, the finest examples of which (mostly featuring geometric designs or beast/plant motifs) were produced around the region of Mesopotamia (Iran, Iraq) and the eastern Mediterranean.

Other Cultural Developments

Other important fine art-related trends which surface during the Neolithic art include writing and religion. The appearance of early hieroglyphic writing systems in Sumer heralds the arrival of pictorial methods of communication, while increased prosperity and security permits greater attention to religious formalities of (eg) worship (in temples) and burial, in megalithic tombs.

Architecture and Megalithic Art

The emergence of the first city land (Uruk, in Mesopotamia) predicts the institution of more than secure communities around the world, many of which volition compete to constitute their own contained cultural and creative identity, creating permanent architectural megaliths in the procedure. (Come across: History of Compages). The Neolithic age also saw the emergence of monumental tomb buildings like the Egyptian pyramids and individual monoliths like the Sphinx at Giza - run across Ancient Egyptian Architecture for details. For details of tomb architecture and decorative engravings in Ireland during this period, delight see Irish Stone Age art.

Other Famous Works of Fine art From the Neolithic Period

Famous works of painting and sculpture created past Neolithic artists include the following:

Artwork: Jiahu Carvings (c.7000–5700 BCE)
Blazon: Turquoise Carvings, Os Flutes
Local Period: Chinese Neolithic
Location: Yellowish River Bowl of Henan Province, Cardinal China

Artwork: Coldstream Burial Stone (c.6,000 BCE)
Type: Pigments on Quartzite Pebble
Local Period: African Neolithic
Location: Lottering River, Western Cape Province, Due south Africa

Artwork: The Seated Woman of Catal Huyuk (c.6000 BCE)
Blazon: Terracotta Sculpture
Local Period: Neolithic
Location: Catal Huyuk, Anatolia, Turkey

Artwork: Egyptian Naquada I Female Figurines (c.5500-3000 BCE)
Type: Small Carved Figures: Os, Ivory, Stone (Ornamented w. Lapis Lazuli)
Local Menstruum: Egyptian Predynastic Period (Naquada I Period, 4000-3500 BCE)
Location: Egypt

Artwork: Western farsi Chalcolithic Pottery (c.5000-3500 BCE)
Type: Ceramic Ware painted with Human being, Bird, Plant or Animal Motifs
Local Period: Chalcolithic Civilisation
Location: Iran (Persia)

Artwork: Thinker of Cernavoda (c.5,000 BCE)
Blazon: Terra cotta
Local Period: Neolithic Hamangia Culture
Location: Romania

Artwork: Fish God of Lepenski Vir (c.5000 BCE)
Type: Sandstone Carving
Local Menstruum: Neolithic
Location: Danube Settlement of Lepenski Vir, Serbia

Artwork: Iraqi Samarra and Halaf Ceramic Plates (c.5000)
Type: Ceramic Dish with Figurative or Geometric Decoration
Local Period: Samarra/Halaf Style, Neolithic
Location: Iraq and Syria

Artwork: Dabous Giraffe Engravings (c.4000 BCE)
Type: Saharan Rock Engravings
Local Menstruum: Taureg Culture
Location: Agadez, Niger, Africa

Artwork: Artwork: Valdivia Figurines (c.4000–3500 BCE)
Type: Starting time representational images in the Americas, in limestone and marble
Local Menstruation: Neolithic
Location: Real Alto and Colina Alta sites, Republic of ecuador

Artwork: Grunter Dragon Pendant (Hongshan Culture) (c.3800 BCE)
Type: Jade Etching
Local Period: Hongshan Civilization
Location: Tomb four, Niuheliang, Jianping, Liaoning Province, NE Red china

Bronze Age (In Europe, 3000 BCE - 1200 BCE)

Characterized by the development of metallurgy, in detail copper mining and smelting, forth with tin can-mining and smelting, as reflected in the exquisite statuary, gold and silver sculptures. Emergence of Egyptian architecture, metallurgy, encaustic painting and rock sculpture. See: Bronze Age Art.

Bronze Age Masterpiece: Ram in a Thicket (c.2500 BCE)

This boggling 18-inch high sculpture (British Museum, London) features a ram standing on its hind legs, peering through a symbolic slice of undergrowth. The minimalist depiction of the thicket and the focused, forlorn look on the face up of the animal, demonstrates an amazing artistic sensibility and makes it a masterpiece of Sumerian art of the time.
Type: Sculpture in aureate-leaf, copper, lapis lazuli, crimson limestone
Local Menstruum: Early Dynastic
Location: Great Death Pit, Ur, Mesopotamia (Iraq)

Artwork: Maikop Gold Balderdash (c.2500 BCE)
Type: Gold Sculpture (Lost-Wax Casting Method) (Found with three more; ane silver, 2 gold)
Local Flow: Maikop Civilisation
Location: North Caucasus, Russia

Atomic number 26 Age (In Europe, 1500 BCE - 200 BCE)

Characterized by the processing of iron ore to produce iron tools and weapons. In northern Europe, Hallstatt and La Tene styles of Celtic art flourished, while effectually the Mediterranean there emerged the great schools of Greek art and Persian fine art as well as the culture and architecture of the Minoan, Mycenean, and Etruscan civilizations. Meet: Fe Age Art.

In India, around 200 BCE, the kickoff paintings appeared in the Ajanta Caves. For more, see: Classical Indian Painting (upwards to 1150 CE).

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Source: http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/prehistoric-art.htm

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