Cave paintings are
paintings on
cave walls and ceilings, and the term is used especially for those dating to
prehistoric times. The earliest known European cave paintings date to
Aurignacian, some 32,000 years ago. The purpose of the paleolithic cave paintings is not known. The evidence suggests that they were not merely decorations of living areas, since the caves in which they have been found do not have signs of ongoing habitation. Also, they are often in areas of caves that are not easily accessed. Some theories hold that they may have been a way of communicating with others, while other theories ascribe them a religious or ceremonial purpose.
Locations
Europe
Well known cave paintings include those of:
Other sites include
Creswell Crags,
Nottinghamshire,
England, (Cave etchings and
bas-reliefs discovered in 2003), and Magura , Belogradchik,
Bulgaria.
Rock painting was also performed on cliff faces, but fewer of those have survived because of
erosion. One well-known example is the rock paintings of
Astuvansalmi in the
Saimaa area of
Finland.
thumb|right|30,000 year old [[spotted hyena painting found in the
Chauvet Cave ]]
When
Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola first encountered the
Magdalenian paintings of the
Altamira cave,
Cantabria,
Spain in 1879, the academics of the time considered them hoaxes. Recent reappraisals and numerous additional discoveries have since demonstrated their authenticity, while at the same time stimulating interest in the artistry of
Upper Palaeolithic peoples. Cave paintings, undertaken with only the most rudimentary tools, can also furnish valuable insight into the
culture and beliefs of that era.
Age
Nearly 350 caves have now been discovered in France and Spain that contain art from prehistoric times. The age of the paintings in many sites has been a contentious issue, since methods like
radiocarbon dating can be easily misled by contaminated samples of older or newer material, and caves and rocky overhangs (parietal art) are typically littered with debris from many time periods. Recent advances make it possible to date the paintings by sampling the pigment itself.
"The choice of subject matter can also indicate date, as for instance in the
reindeer at the Spanish cave of
Cueva de las Monedas which place the art in the
last Ice Age. The oldest known cave is that of
Chauvet, the paintings of which may be 32,000 years old according to
radiocarbon dating. Some researchers believe the drawings are too advanced for this era and question this age.
Other examples may date as late as the Early Bronze Age, but the well known prolific and sophisticated style from Lascaux and Altamira died out about 10,000 years ago, coinciding with the advent of the
Neolithic period.
Some caves continued to be painted in for a long time.
Spanish Cave Painting of Bulls
Themes and patterns
The most common themes in cave paintings are large wild animals, such as
bison,
horses,
aurochs, and
deer, and tracings of human
hands as well as abstract patterns, called
finger flutings. Drawings of humans were rare and are usually schematic rather than the more naturalistic animal subjects. One explanation for this is that realistically painting the human form was forbidden by a powerful religious taboo.
Cave art may have begun in the
Aurignacian period (
Hohle Fels, Germany), but reached its apogee in the late
Magdalenian (Lascaux, France).
Many of the paintings were drawn with red and yellow
ochre,
hematite,
manganese oxide and
charcoal. Sometimes the silhouette of the animal was incised in the rock first.
Theories and interpretations
Henri Breuil interpreted the paintings as being hunting magic, meant to increase the number of animals. As there are some clay sculptures that seem to have been the targets of spears, this may partly be true, but does not explain the pictures of predators such as the
lion or the bear.
An alternative theory, developed by
David Lewis-Williams and broadly based on ethnographic studies of contemporary
hunter-gatherer societies, is that the paintings were made by
Cro-Magnon shamans. The
shaman would retreat into the darkness of the caves, enter into a trance state and then paint images of their visions, perhaps with some notion of drawing power out of the cave walls themselves. This goes some way toward explaining the remoteness of some of the paintings (which often occur in deep or small caves) and the variety of subject matter (from prey animals to
predators and human hand-prints).
R. Dale Guthrie[R. Dale Guthrie, The Nature of Paleolithic Art. University Of Chicago Press, 2006. ISBN 978-0-226-31126-5. .] has studied not only the most artistic and publicized paintings but also a variety of lower quality art and figurines, and he identifies a wide range of skill and ages among the artists.
He also points that the main themes in the paintings and other artifacts (powerful beasts, risky hunting scenes and the representation of women in the
Venus figurines) are to be expected in the fantasies of adolescent males, who made a big part of the
human population at the time.
Africa
At
Ukhahlamba-Drakensberg,
South Africa, now thought to be some 3,000 years old, the paintings by the
San people who settled in the area some 8,000 years ago depict animals and humans, and are thought to represent religious beliefs. Human figures are much more common in African than in European rock art.
Recently, an archeological team discovered the
Laas Gaa'l cave paintings outside
Hargeisa in
Somaliland. They show the ancient inhabitants of the area worshipping
cattle and performing religious ceremonies.
Cave paintings found at the in
Namibia may be among the earliest cave art. The estimated age of the images date from approximately 23,000 - 25,000 B.C.
Cave paintings are found in the
Tassili n'Ajjer mountains in southeast
Algeria also in the
Akakus,
Mesak Settafet and
Tadrart in Libya and other Sahara regions including: Ayr mountains, Niger and Tibesti, Chad.
The
Cave of Swimmers is a
cave in southwest
Egypt, near the border with
Libya, in the mountainous
Gilf Kebir region of the
Sahara Desert. It was discovered in October 1933 by the
Hungarian explorer
László Almásy. It contains
rock painting images of people swimming estimated to have been created 10,000 years ago during the time of the most recent Ice Age.
Australia
Significant early cave paintings have also been found in
Kakadu National Park in
Australia.
The
park has a large collection of
ochre paintings. Ochre is a not an
organic material, so
carbon dating of these pictures is impossible. Sometimes the approximate date, or at least, an
epoch, can be guessed from the content.
Southeast Asia
There are rock paintings in caves in India, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Burma.
In Thailand, caves and scarps along the Thai-Burmese border, in the Petchabun Range of Central Thailand, and overlooking the Mekong River in Nakorn Sawan Province, all contain galleries of rock paintings.
In Malaysia the oldest paintings are at Gua Tambun in Perak, dated at 2000 years, and those in the Painted Cave at
Niah Caves National Park are 1200 years old. See
prehistoric Malaysia.
In Indonesia the caves at Maros in Sulawesi are famous for their hand prints, also found in caves in the Sangkulirang area of Kalimantan.
The
Padah-Lin Caves of Burma contain 11,000-year-old paintings and many rock tools.
America
Serra da Capivara National Park is a
national park in the north east of
Brazil. It has many prehistoric paintings. The park was created to protect the prehistoric artifacts and paintings found there. It became a
World Heritage Site in 1991. Its head archaeologist is
Niède Guidon. Its best known archaeological site is
Pedra Furada.
It is located in southeast state of
Piauí, between latitudes 8° 26' 50" and 8° 54' 23" south and longitudes 42° 19' 47" and 42° 45' 51" west. It falls within the municipal areas of
São Raimundo Nonato,
São João do Piauí,
Coronel José Dias and
Canto do Buriti. It has an area of 1291.4 square kilometres (319,000 acres). The area has the largest concentration of prehistoric small farms on the American continents. Scientific studies confirm that the Capivara mountain range was densely populated in prehistoric periods.
Cueva de las Manos (
Spanish for "Cave of the Hands") is a
cave located in the
province of
Santa Cruz,
Argentina, 163 km (101 mi) south from the town of
Perito Moreno, within the borders of the
Francisco P. Moreno National Park, which includes many sites of
archaeological and
paleontogical importance.
The images of hands are often negative (
stencilled). Besides these there are also depictions of human beings,
guanacos,
rheas,
felines and other animals, as well as
geometric shapes,
zigzag patterns, representations of the
sun, and
hunting scenes. Similar paintings, though in smaller numbers, can be found in nearby caves. There are also red dots on the ceilings, probably made by submerging their hunting
bolas in ink, and then throwing them up. The colours of the paintings vary from red (made from
hematite) to white, black or yellow. The negative hand impressions are calculated to be dated around 550 BC, the positive impressions from 180 BC, and the hunting drawings to be older than 10,000 years
Most of the hands are left hands, which suggests that painters held the spraying pipe with their dexterous hand. The size of the hands resembles that of a 13-year-old boy, but considering they were probably smaller in size, it is speculated that they could be a few years older, and marked their advancement into
manhood by stamping their hands on the walls of this sacred cave.
Gallery
See also
