The Oldest Examples of Cave Art in Europe Date Approximately to?

Polychrome cave painting of
a bison head. (c.15,000 BCE)
Altamira cave chief gallery.

Large Horn Rhinoceros (25-thirty,000 BCE)
Cave painting from Chauvet Cave.
Meet: Oldest Stone Age Art.

What is Cave Painting? Definition, Characteristics

In prehistoric art, the term "cave painting" encompasses whatever parietal fine art which involves the application of color pigments on the walls, floors or ceilings of ancient stone shelters. A monochrome cave painting is a moving-picture show fabricated with only i colour (usually black) - see, for instance, the monochrome images at Chauvet. A polychrome cave painting consists of two or more colours, as exemplified by the glorious multi-coloured images of bison on the ceiling at Altamira, or the magnificent aurochs in the Sleeping accommodation of the Bulls at Lascaux. In contrast, the term "cavern cartoon" refers (strictly speaking) only to an engraved drawing - that is, one made by cutting lines in the rock surface with a flintstone or stone tool, rather than one made by cartoon lines with charcoal or manganese.

Origins and History

At present we have no firm idea when cave painting showtime began. One theory links the evolution of Stone Historic period fine art to the arrival of anatomically modern humans in Europe during the period of the Upper Paleolithic. Co-ordinate to this theory, the evolution of cavern art coincided with the deportation of Neanderthal man by anatomically modern man, starting around 40,000 BCE. Indeed, it was from most this date that the earliest rock fine art began to sally in caves and stone shelters around the world, merely especially throughout the Franco-Cantabrian region. Painting comes first, followed by mobiliary art, equally exemplified by the portable Venus figurines like the Venus of Hohle Fels (38-33,000 BCE). Broadly speaking, cave painting techniques and materials improved across the board, century by century. Thus we see the monochrome paintings of Aurignacian civilisation (40-25,000 BCE) give mode to the polychrome art of the Gravettian (25-20,000 BCE), leading to the apogee of cave painting which is traditionally acknowledged to occur during the Magdalenian era (c.15-10,000 BCE) at Lascaux, Altamira, Font de Gaume and Les Combarelles. During the Belatedly Magdalenian, the Ice Age ended and a period of global warming led to the devastation of the Magdalenian reindeer habitat, forth with its culture and its cave fine art. For more about the development of cavern painting, and how it fits into Stone Age culture, see: Prehistoric Art Timeline (from two.v million BCE).

Types

The majority of prehistoric cavern paintings were figurative and 99 per centum of these were of animals. At first, Stone Age artists painted predator animals (lions, rhinoceroses, sabre-toothed felines, bears) almost as often equally game animals like bison and reindeer, only from the Solutrean era onwards imagery was dominated by game animals. Pictures of humans were an exceptionally rare occurrence, and were usually highly stylized and far less naturalistic than the animal figures. Abstract imagery (signs, symbols and other geometric markings) was also common, and actually comprises the oldest type of Paleolithic art found in caves of the Late Stone Age, as shown past recent dating results on paintings at El Castillo and Altamira. In addition to figure painting and abstract imagery, prehistoric caves are also heavily decorated with painted hand stencils rock art, most of which - according to recent inquiry by Dean Snow of Pennsylvania State University - were made by females, simply men and children were also involved. Some of the best examples of this form of painting are the Gargas Cavern Hand Stencils (Haute-Garonne), the Panel of Manus Stencils at Chauvet (Ardeche), and the prints throughout the Cueva de las Manos (Cave of the Hands) in Argentine republic.

Cave Painting in Three Stages

Typically a polychrome cave painting was created in three bones stages, which might vary significantly according to the experience and cultural maturity of the artist, the nature and contours of the rock surface, the forcefulness and type of lite, and the raw materials available. Have a motion picture of a bison, for instance. Kickoff, the outline and basic features of the animal are fatigued on the cave wall, either past scoring the surface of the stone with a sharpened stone, or by applying a black outline using charcoal or manganese. Second, the completed drawing of the creature would be coloured or filled in with scarlet ochre or other pigments. Third, the edges of the animate being's body would be shaded with blackness or another pigment to increase its iii-dimensionality. Alternatively, depending on whether or not the profile of the cave wall made it necessary, additional engraving or even sculpting would be practical to heave book and relief.

Where are Nigh Cavern Paintings Located?

The near spectacular examples of this rock art have been discovered in southwestern France and northern Spain - hence it is sometimes referred to equally Franco-Cantabrian cave art - where archeologists have found some 350 caves containing Upper Paleolithic artworks. The largest cave clusters are in the Dordogne (Lascaux, Cussac, Laussel, Font-de-Gaume, Les Combarelles, Rouffignac), and around Monte Castillo in the commune of Puente Viesgo, Cantabria, merely other magnificently busy caves have been found in diverse parts of the world - including Due south Africa, Argentina, India, China, Australia and elsewhere.

Which are the Oldest Cave Paintings?

Now, the primeval art in prehistoric caves, whose dates of origin take been authenticated past radiocarbon dating, consists of abstruse signs - namely a cherry dot and a hand print - found among the El Castillo cave paintings in Cantabria, Spain. These images have been dated to at to the lowest degree 39,000 BCE and 35,500 BCE respectively, making them the oldest art of their type from a cave in Europe.

However, in 2014 in Indonesia, on the other side of the world, archeologists used Uranium-Thorium dating techniques to date hand stencils among the images found at Leang Timpuseng Cavern, Sulawesi, to 37,900 BCE. (Creature paintings at the site were dated to 33,400 BCE.) Next in historic period comes the Fumane Cavern pictures (c.35,000 BCE), so two claviform symbols found at Altamira, dated 34,000 BCE. The next oldest paintings are those in Chauvet Cavern, situated in the Ardeche region of France. They were discovered in 1994, and date from thirty,000 BCE. The nearly productive periods of cavern art were the Gravettian and Magdalenian cultures, dating from 25,000-20,000 BCE and 15,000-10,000 BCE respectively.

Note: Many caves contain evidence of repeated painting, sometimes extending over tens of thousands of years. Therefore some of these "cave studios" may be plant to be older than originally thought. This is exactly what happened at Altamira, where the chief torso of fine art is Magdalenian (c.xv,000 BCE), only recent tests showed that i particular abstract image dates back to the Aurignacian era nigh 34,000 BCE.

What Sort of Pictures were Painted in Prehistoric Caves?

Stone Age artists created a multifariousness of figurative and abstract images. The naturalistic pictures more often than not depict hunting scenes, or arrangements of animals - usually bison, horses, reindeer, cattle, aurochs, and mammoths, although a wide diverseness of other creatures were depicted, such every bit: lions, musk ox, ass, saiga, chamois, wolf, fox, hare, otter, hyena, seals, fish, reptiles, birds and other creatures besides appear. But there is no landscape painting in prehistoric art, or even whatever elements of landscape depicted, like mountains or rivers. Images of humans announced only very rarely: fifty-fifty then, they are human-like, rather than realistically human. Practiced examples include: the 'wounded men' at Cougnac; the painting of the homo with the bird-like caput, in the "Shaft of the Expressionless Man" at Lascaux; and the engraved painting of the "Sorcerer" at the Trois-Freres Cave.

As mentioned, abstract art is as well common. Cave walls abound with a variety of dots, lines, signs and symbols. For example, researchers from the University of Victoria on Vancouver island accept identified more than 20 signs, all painted in the same style, that appear time and again in different shelters. Some of them are made with uncomplicated brushstrokes, like circles, semi-circles, triangles and direct lines; others are slightly more than complex. In improver to those just mentioned, they include: aviforms, claviforms, cordiforms, crosshatches, cruciforms, flabelliforms, negative hands, open angles, ovals, pectiforms, penniforms, positive hands, quadrangles, peniforms, scalariforms, serpentiforms, spirals, tectiforms, zigzags, and others.

What Painting Methods Did Stone Age Artists Use?

Using sea-shells as paint containers and working past candlelight, or occasionally weak sunlight, prehistoric artists employed a wide variety of painting methods. Initially, they painted with their fingers; before switching to lumpy pigment crayons, pads of moss, or brushes made of animal hair or vegetable fibre. They as well employed more than sophisticated spray painting techniques using reeds or specially hollowed bones. A hollowed out bone of a bird, stained with red ochre, dating to about 16,000 BCE, was plant at Altamira cave, revealing that Solutrean-Magdalenian artists must have been proficient at spray painting past this date. Stone Age painters also used foreshortening and chiaroscuro techniques. Each era introduced new cavern painting methods, and caves busy over many generations showroom numerous styles - at Lascaux, for case, archeologists have identified over a dozen different painting styles.

How Did Prehistoric Artists Obtain Their Paint Colours?

All colour pigments used in cavern painting were sourced locally, more often than not from mineral sources constitute in the earth. Rock Historic period painters employed several unlike combinations of materials to make coloured paints. Clay ochre provided 3 bones colours: numerous varieties of crimson, plus yellow and brown. For black colour, artists used either manganese dioxide or charcoal. After grinding the pigments to fine powder, artists mixed the powder with cave h2o (typically loftier in calcium carbonate) animal fats, vegetable juice, blood or urine to help it stick to the rock surface. They also used extenders like biotite and feldspar, or ground quartz and calcium phosphate (obtained from crushed, heated animate being os). It's conceivable that artists were familiar with pigments through trunk painting and face painting - arts which they were practicing for millennia before they started decorating caves. For more details about the type of colour pigments used in Stone Age cave painting, see: Prehistoric Colour Palette.

Did Rock Age Painters Brand Preliminary Sketches?

Sometimes. In the cave of La Vache, archeologists establish a layer of charcoal underneath the black pigment of the paintings, indicating that a preparatory sketch had been fabricated prior to the awarding of paint. More oftentimes, the silhouette of the animate being, together with its basic features, was engraved in the rock with a flint, then painted with pigment.

What Was the Purpose of These Cave Paintings?

We don't know exactly. Initially, most paleoanthropologists thought that this type of ancient fine art was purely decorative. Withal, detailed archeological show shows that painted caves were not inhabited by ordinary people. Instead, they were inhabited only past a small group of artists, or others involved in the cavern'south ceremonial activities and part. As a result, it is now idea that cave painting was created past shamans for formalism reasons - perhaps in connection with social, supernatural or religious rituals. At that place is no clear pattern in the iconography used, so now nearly theories as to the precise meaning or function of Stone Age cave painting are mere guesswork.

Practice Prehistoric Caves Contain Sculpture?

Yeah. Several beautiful examples of relief sculpture have survived. They include the Venus of Laussel (c.23,000 BCE), i of six bas-relief sculptures engraved on a large cake of limestone, in the Laussel rock shelter, near Lascaux; and likewise the famous Tuc d'Audoubert Bison relief carvings (c.13,500 BCE) fabricated from unfired clay that were found at Ariege, in French republic. Experts believe that prehistoric sculpture might have been as common as mural painting, except that most of it has crumbled or perished.

Famous Caves Containing Stone Historic period Paintings

Europe (France and Spain)

Franco-Cantabrian prehistoric cave painting is probably more famous than any other tradition of parietal fine art around the world. Here are the region's nigh famous busy caves.

Cavern of El Castillo (39,000 BCE) Puente Viesgo, Spain
Discovered in the complex of the Caves of Monte Castillo, this rock shelter contains the oldest fine art of any cave in Europe, except for the La Ferrassie Cavern Cupules (c.60,000 BCE).

Fumane Cave (c.35,000 BCE)
Italian prehistoric cave inhabited by Aurignacian reindeer hunters, in which a number of primitive animal cave paintings were institute on fragments of a collapsed cavern wall.

Abri Castanet (c.35,000 BCE)
Dordogne rock shelter containing engraved images of female ballocks and male phalluses, along with ochre paintings of horses and some abstruse symbols.

Altamira Cave (first stage 34,000 BCE) Antillana del Mar, Spain
A gild-shaped symbol constitute in the most remote office of the cave was U/Th dated to 34,000 BCE.

Chauvet Cave (c.30,000 BCE) Vallon-Pont-d'Arc, France
Discovered in 1994, Chauvet cave - a showcase of Aurignacian Art - comprises ii main parts. In the first, about pictures are crimson, while in the second, the animals are mostly black. The most striking images are the Horse Console and the Panel of Lions and Rhinoceroses. See Chauvet Cavern Paintings.

Grotte des Deux-Ouvertures (Cave of Ii Openings)
(c.28,000-26,000 BCE) Ardeche Gorge, virtually Chauvet Cave
Noted for its rock engravings of animals including more than 50 figures of bulls and mammoths.

Cosquer Cavern (c.25,000 BCE), Marseille Coast, France
Discovered by the abyssal diver Henri Cosquer in 1985, and dating from 25,000 BCE, the entrance to Cosquer cavern is situated over 100 feet beneath body of water level. Its paintings include paw stencils, Placard-blazon signs, charcoal drawings and about 100 polychrome paintings of horses and other animals. For details, see: Cosquer Cave Paintings.

Cussac Cave (c.25,000 BCE) Le Buisson-de-Cadouin, Dordogne, France
Discovered in 2000, its painted engravings of bison, horses and mammoths, are similar to the Gravettian art in the Quercy caves of Roucadour and Pech Merle.

Pech-Merle Cavern (c.25,000 BCE) Cabrerets, Midi-Pyrenees, French republic
Discovered in 1922, Pech-Merle is famous for its dramatic polychrome Dappled Horses, painted in charcoal and ochre on limestone, and its Placard-blazon signs. For details, see: Pech-Merle Cave Paintings.

Roucadour Cave Art (c.24,000 BCE)
Like to imagery discovered at Pech Merle and Cougnac, Roucadour's art consists of manus stencils, engravings and abstract symbols.

Cougnac Cave (first phase, c.23,000 BCE) Gourdon, Lot, French republic
The cavern features Gravettian era animal paintings and strange Placard-type signs.

La Pileta Cave (c.18,000 BCE) Andalucia, Spain
Rock paintings of animals, including a rare drawing of a fish, plus a big variety of abstract signs.

Le Placard Cave (c.17,500 BCE) La Rochefoucauld, France
Renowned for its undeciphered Aviform signs nearly identical to those discovered at Cosquer, Pech-Merle and Cougnac.

Cosquer Cave (2nd phase 17,000-fifteen,000 BCE) Marseilles, France
A 2nd period of Solutrean painting occurred at Cosquer during the Late Solutrean.

Lascaux Cave (c.17,000-13,000 BCE) Montignac, Dordogne, France
Discovered in 1940, Lascaux contains Solutrean art equally well as Magdalenian. The cave complex has seven decorated chambers with over 2000 painted images, including the awesome Hall of the Bulls which, despite its proper name, features mostly horses too equally the male aurochs (wild cattle) from which its proper noun derives. Contains renowned pictures like the Neat Blackness Bull, the Unicorn and the Bird Man. For details, meet: Lascaux Cave Paintings.

Cavern of La Pasiega (c.16,000 BCE) Cuevas de El Castillo, Cantabria, Kingdom of spain
Discovered in 1911, the cave of La Pasiega consists of one main gallery, some eighty yards in length, with openings to several secondary galleries. Its cave art consists of over 700 painted images (roughly 100 deer, eighty horses, thirty ibex, thirty cattle, along with reindeer, mammoth, birds and fish) including numerous abstruse symbols (ideomorphs) and engravings.

Altamira Cave (final stage c.fifteen,000 BCE) Antillana del Mar, Cantabria, Espana
Discovered in 1879 and dating from xv,000 BCE, Altamira is considered by archeologists and fine art historians to be "the Sistine Chapel of Paleolithic Art", due to its loftier quality large scale wall paintings. The ceiling of its so-called polychrome chamber - decorated with 30 big animal pictures (mostly bison) vividly executed in ruby and black pigment - is regarded equally the crowning creative achievement of Magdalenian art within the Franco-Cantabrian region. For details, come across: Altamira Cavern Paintings.

Font de Gaume Cave (14,000 BCE) Dordogne, France
The first cache of prehistoric cave painting to exist discovered in the Perigord, the cave is renowned for its frieze of five bison, enhanced with sophisticated shading around the body.

Tito Bustillo Cave (14,000 BCE) Asturias, Spain
Noted for its Gallery of the Horses, its cave paintings rank alongside those of El Castillo, Altamira and the Cave of La Pasiega (16,000 BCE) as important examples of Paleolithic civilization on the Iberian peninsula..

Cougnac Cave Paintings (second phase, 14,000 BCE) Gourdon, Lot, France
Its Magdalenian artworks include a stunning paradigm of a red ibex, deftly rendered so that the flowstone on the wall suggests hair hanging from its belly, and some unique human-blazon figures.

Rouffignac Cave Mammoths (c.xiv,000-12,000 BCE) Rouffignac, Dordogne
Contains the largest circuitous of underground passages in the Perigord. Decorations include over 250 engravings and monochrome drawings. Subjects include bison, mammoths, horses, and woolly rhinoceroses, plus a number of abstract symbols.

La Marche Cavern (c.xiii,000 BCE) Lussac-les-Chateaux, France
Discovered in 1937, archeologists were stunned to find a serial of painted engravings of human heads and faces, some with details of clothes depicted. Authenticated by the French regime, but experts remain skeptical well-nigh the dating of its paintings.

Niaux Cave (thirteen,000-eleven,000 BCE) Foix, Haute-Pyrenees, French republic
One of the about important galleries of Magdalenian art after Lascaux and Font-de-Gaume. Famous for its Rock Age footprints, its unique picture of a weasel, and other loftier quality cavern paintings.

Trois Freres Cave (xiii,000-12,000 BCE) Haute-Pyrenees, France
Globe famous for the painted engraving of a human-like figure known every bit the "Sorcerer", with the features of different animals. Understood to depict a shaman.

Les Combarelles Cave (12,000 BCE) Dordogne, France
Another major site of Magdalenian art, it boasts some 600–800 highly naturalistic drawings of animals, along with a collection of more than 50 anthropomorphic figures, plus a quantity of tectiforms.

Residuum of Europe

Important painted caves in Europe, outside France and Spain, include.

Fumane Cavern Paintings (35,000 BCE) Lessini Hills, Verona, Italian republic
Crude figurative pictures of animals and a human-similar figure. Represents the oldest art in Italian republic and the oldest figure painting in the world.

Coliboaia Cave Art (30,000 BCE) Apuseni Natural Park, Romania.
Discovered in 2009, it includes some eight charcoal drawings - now radiocarbon dated - and at to the lowest degree 1 engraving. Constitutes the oldest cave art in Fundamental or South-East Europe.

Kapova Cave Paintings (12,500 BCE) Shulgan-Tash Preserve, Russian federation.
Located in Bashkortostan - a Russian Commonwealth lying between the Volga and the Ural mountains, the cave contains red ochre paintings of mammoths and horses, as well equally numerous abstruse symbols and mitt stencils. Represents the oldest cave painting in Russia.

Residual OF THE WORLD

Other very sometime caves containing Stone Historic period parietal fine art are found in primal India, Southward Africa, Australia, Namibia, Argentina and South-East Asia, among other locations around the world.

India

The Auditorium and Daraki-Chattan Caves in Madhya Pradesh, Fundamental India, have recently been discovered to contain the world'due south oldest known cupule art, in the grade of cup-similar indentations (petroglyphs) incised on hard quartzite, dating dorsum into the Lower Paleolithic era. For details and photos, see: Bhimbetka Petroglyphs and Daraki-Chattan Cave Fine art.

Another of import site of Stone Age art in India is the Bhimbetka Rock Shelters, a UN World Heritage Site which was known to Indian archeologists as early equally 1888. Located in the district of Madhya Pradesh south of Bhopal at the border of the Vindhyachal hills, this site contains the earliest traces of human life in India, although its rock fine art is only almost 9,000 years old. Featuring a host of dissimilar scenes (eg. hunting, dancing, equus caballus riding, elephant riders, animal fights, domestic scenes and the like), and subjects (eg. bisons, tigers, lions, wild boar, elephants, antelopes dogs, lizards, crocodiles), all commonly painted in red and white, with occasional use of dark-green and xanthous, the pictures span most of the Mesolithic and Neolithic eras of the Stone Age, likewise as the Bronze, Iron and after Medieval ages.

Southward Africa

African art includes some of the world'south well-nigh ancient art, including cave paintings. The oldest African rock art was discovered in the Blombos Caves, non far from Capetown. Information technology features a number of geometric engravings on 2 small pieces of ochre coloured stone, and dates from lxx,000 BCE. For details and photos, please see: Blombos Cave Art.

Namibia

A series of geometric and animal images engraved and painted on seven stone slabs have been found at the Apollo 11 Caves in the Huns Mountains, dating to 25,500 BCE. (For details, see: Apollo eleven Cave Stones.) Unusually, the images - painted in charcoal, crimson ochre and white - were painted onto the slabs at a different location and and so brought to the cave. Experts consider them an early exemplar of Tribal art.

Australia

Australian aborigines were responsible for all the continent'southward paleolithic art. The oldest traditions of Aboriginal art - believed to date from 30,000 BCE, although this is unconfirmed - include Kimberley stone art (Western Australia), Ubirr stone art, Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, and Burrup Peninsula rock art (Pilbara). Later works include the Bradshaw paintings (now called Gwion fine art), dating from xv,500 BCE, at Kimberley, Western Australia. Withal, the oldest art in Australia is the Nawarla Gabarnmang Rock Shelter charcoal drawing, which was carbon-dated to 26,000 BCE.

Argentine republic

The Cueva de las Manos (Cave of the Hands) at Rio de las Pinturas is home to the oldest cave painting in the Americas. The oldest murals, dating from the era of Mesolithic art, about 9,000 BCE, comprise dozens of mitt stencils painted in ruddy, blackness and white pigments. Afterward images include paintings of animals, hunting scenes and complex abstruse patterns (ideomorphs).

Studies of their cave art, sculptures and decorated bones, pebbles and rocks by archeologists, and other scholars, accept revealed an art that adult from simplistic early forms to detailed, accurate figures over several chronological periods. The artists began by drawing elementary outlines of small animals. Later, they drew larger animals and filled in the animals' bodies with red or black pigment; and finally, they drew massive animals, washed over the animals' bodies with earthy tones of brown or blackness, and detailed the animals' beefcake with thick shading.

Southeast Asia

Stone paintings take also been found in Thailand (in the Petchabun Range of Central Thailand, and in Nakorn Sawan Province), Malaysia (at Gua Tambun in Perak, and in the Painted Cave at Niah Caves National Park) and Republic of indonesia, in the Sangkulirang area of Kalimantan. Recent finds in the Maros-Pangkep caves on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, testify that some of the oldest fine art on the planet was created by migrants island-hopping towards Australia. These finds suggest that modern man's creative power did not emerge "coincidentally" across the world, but was developed before he left Africa, around 80,000 BCE. See also: Oceanic art.

• For more about paintings in the rock shelters of the Upper Paleolithic, run across: Visual Arts Encyclopedia.

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF Stone Age Fine art
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