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The world’s oldest known cave paintings, to date, have been discovered nestled within the limestone karst formations of the Maros-Pangkep region. These artworks have captivated archaeologists...
- Beginnings and Development
- Concepts and Styles
- Further Developments
Earliest Humans to Make Art
It is impossible to state exactly when Homo sapiens (modern humans) began to create works of art, but famous examples date back to at least 40,000 BCE. However, the oldest known cave art was actually created by Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis), a species closely related to us, in around 63,000 BCE. Other excavated objects date from still earlier, but are the subject of debate as to whether they simply resemble crafted objects by chance. A good example of the latter dilemma is the discover...
Dating Paleolithic Art
Authenticating the year that Paleolithic art was made created immediate challenges for archeologists, and even today it can prove difficult to secure consensus amongst scholars. The greatest aid to the process has been through the use of carbon dating from the 1990s onwards. According to archaeologist Bruno David, "carbon dating is [today] the most commonly used method of absolute dating in cave art research, because some artworks contain organic carbon in such materials as charcoal or beeswa...
Cave Paintings
The most widely known form of Paleolithic art is probably the creation of paintings on prehistoric cave walls and ceilings. In many cases, even the discovery of these drawings is steeped in intrigue and excitement. For example, the famous depictions of bison and other animals in the Cave of Altamira in Spain were discovered in 1878 by Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola and his young daughter Maria while they were walking the grounds of their vast property. At the time of discovery, French experts que...
Paleolithic Sculptures and Portable Art
In addition to cave paintings, the Paleolithic period boasts a rich variety of sculptures and portable art (small objects that could be carried from place to place). Works from this period includes representations of the human form, most notably a number of "Venus" statues featuring women with enlarged breasts, hips, and pubic areas; animals such as a lion carved from mammoth ivory found in the Vogelherd Cave in Germany (40,000 years old); and composite creatures such as the "lion-man" of the...
Composite Creatures and Religious Expression
One of the most fascinating aspects of Paleolithic art is the creation of painted and sculpted composite creatures. Sometimes referred to as therianthropes, these forms combine certain human features with other, animal characteristics. While not a common occurrence in cave art or ancient sculpture, enough of these animal-human hybrids have been discovered to support the idea of their importance to people of this era. Notable examples of composite creatures in Paleolithic art include the "lion...
As our world continues to be explored, there is still the possibility of more Paleolithic art discoveries being made. A cave unearthed on the remote Indonesian Island of Sulawesi in late 2019 suggests the range of finds. As Katherine J. Wu explains, within the cave was discovered "a red-tinted painting depicting what appears to be a vivid hunt or r...
- Maltravieso Cave—Cáceres, Spain. (64,000 Years Old)
- Caves in the District of Maros… Again—Indonesia (43,900 Years Old)
- Lubang Jeriji Saléh Cave—East Kalimantan, Borneo (40,000 Years Old)
- Cave of El Castillo— Spain. (40,000 Years Old)
Cave painting is a form of prehistoric art involving the application of colour pigments to the walls, floors or ceilings of underground rock shelters. Like all Stone Age painting, it is essentially hunter-gatherer art, created by semi-nomadic humans.
May 25, 2024 · For as long as cave paintings have been known to modern humans, they have been a source of intrigue and mystery. What compelled prehistoric artists to venture deep underground, into the dark, cramped spaces of caves, to create these monumental works? What do the cryptic symbols, abstract patterns, and stylized animal figures mean?
Feb 22, 2018 · New research has found that the earliest cave paintings are at least 65,000 years old, suggesting Neanderthals were the first artists. Artsy Editors. Feb 22, 2018 7:00AM, via Smithsonian Magazine. Researchers examined work found in three Spanish caves, finding they were produced a minimum of 65,000 years ago.
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Feb 22, 2018 · A team of dating experts and archaeologists reports that simple creations—the outline of a hand, an array of lines, and a painted cave formation—from three caves in Spain all date to more than 64,800 years ago, at least 20,000 years before modern humans reached Europe.
