Rock paintings of ancient people. Six masterpieces of rock art

Paintings and engravings on the rocks began to be painted tens of thousands of years before the birth of such civilizations as Greece and Mesopotamia. While most of these writings remain a mystery, they scold modern scholars to understand the daily lives of prehistoric people, to understand their religious beliefs and culture. It is a real miracle that these ancient drawings have survived for such a long time in the face of natural erosion, wars and destructive human activities.

1. El Castillo

Spain
Some of the oldest known rock paintings in the world, depicting horses, bison and warriors, are located in the El Castillo Cave, in Cantabria in northern Spain. Inside the cave there is a hole so narrow that you need to crawl through it. In the cave itself, you can find many drawings that are at least 40,800 years old.

They were made shortly after humans began migrating from Africa to Europe, where they met the Neanderthals. In fact, the age of the rock paintings suggests the possibility that they were made by Neanderthals living in the region at the time, although the evidence for this is not at all conclusive.

2.Sulawesi

Indonesia
For a long time, El Castillo cave was believed to contain the oldest known rock art. But in 2014, archaeologists made a stunning discovery. In seven caves on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, handprints and primitive drawings of local pigs were found on the walls.

These images were already known to the locals, but no one even guessed how old they were. Scientists have estimated the age of the rock paintings at 40,000 years. Such a discovery called into question the long-standing belief that human art first appeared in Europe.

3. Arnhem Land Plateau

Australia
Recent studies have shown that some places in Australia may well compete in age with the world's oldest art. A 28,000-year-old rock painting has been found at the Navarla Gabarnmang rock shelter in the north of the country. However, scientists believe that some of the drawings may be much older, as one of them depicts a giant bird that became extinct about 40,000 years ago.

Therefore, either the rock art is older than expected, or the bird lived longer than modern science suggests. At Nawarla Gabarnmang, you can also find drawings of fish, crocodiles, wallabies, lizards, turtles and other animals made tens of thousands of years ago.

4. Apollo 11

Namibia
This cave got such an unusual name because it was discovered by a German archaeologist in 1969, when the first spacecraft (Apollo 11) landed on the moon. Drawings made with charcoal, ocher and white paint have been found on the stone slabs of a cave in southwestern Namibia.

The creatures, which resemble cats, zebras, ostriches and giraffes, are between 26,000 and 28,000 years old and are the oldest fine art found in Africa.

5. Pech-Merle cave

France
Scholars believed that the paintings of two spotted horses on the walls of the Peche Merle cave in south-central France, which were made 25,000 years ago, were the product of an ancient artist's imagination. But recent DNA studies have shown that a similar spotted horse did exist in the region at that time. Also in the cave you can find 5000-year-old images of bison, mammoths, horses and other animals, painted with black manganese oxide and red ocher.

6. Tadrart-Acacus

Libya
Deep in the Sahara desert in southwest Libya, in the Tadrart Acacus mountain range, thousands of paintings and rock paintings have been found that show that once there was water and lush vegetation in these arid lands. Also on the territory of the present Sahara lived giraffes, rhinos, and crocodiles. The oldest drawing here was made 12,000 years ago. But, after Tadrart-Acacus began to be swallowed up by the desert, people finally left this place around 100 AD.

7. Bhimbetka

India
In the state of Madhya Pradesh, there are about 600 caves and rock dwellings in which rock paintings have been found, made between 1,000 and 12,000 years ago.
These prehistoric images are painted with red and white paint. In the paintings you can find hunting scenes for buffaloes, tigers, giraffes, elks, lions, leopards, elephants and rhinos. Other drawings show fruit and honey gathering and animal domestication. You can also find images of animals that have long since become extinct in India.

8. Laas Gaal

Somalia
The complex of eight caves in Somaliland contains some of the oldest and best preserved rock paintings in Africa. Their age is estimated between 5,000 and 11,000 years, and these drawings of cows, humans, dogs, and giraffes are done in red, orange, and cream. Almost nothing is known about the people who lived here at that time, but many locals still consider the caves to be sacred.

9. Cueva de las Manos

Argentina
This unusual cave in Patagonia is literally overflowing with 9,000-year-old red and black handprints on the walls. Since there are mainly images of the left hands of teenage boys, scientists have suggested that drawing the image of one's hand was part of the rite of initiation for young men. In addition, hunting scenes of guanacos and flightless rhea birds can also be found in the cave.

10 Swimmers Cave

Egypt
In the Libyan desert in 1933, they found a cave with cave paintings from the Neolithic era. The images of floating people (from which the cave got its name), as well as the handprints that adorn the walls, were made between 6000 and 8000 years ago.

Niramin - Jun 14th, 2016

Ancient rock paintings are nothing but a chronicle of the most distant times, when the only way to convey impressions about the world around us and the events taking place in it were drawings made by the most common means of labor and creativity at that time - stone and coal.

In these simple, but sometimes very impressive plots, the everyday life of a primitive man is conveyed with amazing expressiveness, his thoughts about eternity and his place in the Universe, about who or what he is, where he came from and what is the meaning of his life full of fears and anxiety. The surviving petroglyphs are mute witnesses of the daily life of the disappeared tribes and peoples, their rituals and traditions. It is thanks to the ancient rock paintings that we can learn about the past of mankind, the ways of its development, the customs of ancient peoples, the formation of civilizations, etc.

One of the most famous rock art monuments is located in the Chauvet cave in the south of France. There are preserved drawings that are 32 thousand years old. On the walls of the cave you can see images of animals, scenes of hunting, cooking, household items, etc. The first ancient drawings are one-color. Later, two-color images appeared, in which red ocher was most often used.

Many rock paintings are very picturesque: expressive figures of people chasing game, ritual scenes, images of animals and plants. In the era of pastoralists, pictures of hunting are replaced by visual stories about the life of shepherds. During this period, images of herds of cattle are more common on the walls, where figures of bulls, cows, antelopes, and goats are carefully painted.

The creation of rock paintings is caused by the natural need of a person to convey his understanding of the world around him. The appearance of the first images of gods, mythical creatures, and masks is connected with this.

Photo gallery of rock paintings:

Photo: Ancient rock drawing.





Photo: Rock drawing - Lascaux Cave in France.

Photo: Chauvet Cave in France.

See the rock paintings of the Altamira cave in Spain:

Video: A copy of the Chauvet grotto is a new landmark of France (news)

Video: Cave paintings by … (UNESCO/NHK)

Video: Rock Paintings in the Twyfelfontein Valley

Video: Drawings of the Altamira cave turned out to be older

Video: Mysterious rock paintings. Ancient petroglyphs of shamans.

The discovery of cave art galleries raised a number of questions for archaeologists: what did the primitive artist draw with, how did he draw, where did he place his drawings, what did he draw, and, finally, why did he do it? The study of caves allows us to answer them with varying degrees of certainty.

The palette of primitive man was poor: it had four basic colors - black, white, red and yellow. Chalk and chalk-like limestones were used to produce white images; black - charcoal and manganese oxides; red and yellow - minerals hematite (Fe2O3), pyrolusite (MnO2) and natural dyes - ocher, which is a mixture of iron hydroxides (limonite, Fe2O3.H2O), manganese (psilomelane, m.MnO.MnO2.nH2O) and clay particles. In the caves and grottoes of France, stone slabs were found on which ocher was rubbed, as well as pieces of dark red manganese dioxide. Judging by the painting technique, pieces of paint were rubbed, bred on bone marrow, animal fat or blood. Chemical and X-ray diffraction analysis of paints from the Lascaux Cave showed that not only natural dyes were used, mixtures of which give different shades of primary colors, but also rather complex compounds obtained by firing them and adding other components (kaolinite and aluminum oxides).

The serious study of cave dyes is just beginning. And questions immediately arise: why were only inorganic paints used? The primitive man-collector distinguished more than 200 different plants, among which were dyeing ones. Why are the drawings in some caves made in different tones of the same color, and in others - in two colors of the same tone? Why did the colors of the green-blue-blue part of the spectrum enter early painting for so long? In the Paleolithic, they are almost absent, in Egypt they appear 3.5 thousand years ago, and in Greece - only in the 4th century. BC e. Archaeologist A. Formozov believes that our distant ancestors did not immediately understand the bright plumage of the "magic bird" - the Earth. The most ancient colors, red and black, reflect the harsh color of the life of that time: the sun disk at the horizon and the flame of a fire, the darkness of the night full of dangers and the darkness of the caves bringing relative calm. Red and black were associated with the opposites of the ancient world: red - warmth, light, life with hot scarlet blood; black - cold, darkness, death... This symbolism is universal. It was a long way from the cave artist, who had only 4 colors in his palette, to the Egyptians and Sumerians, who added two more (blue and green) to them. But even further from them is the cosmonaut of the 20th century, who took a set of 120 colored pencils on his first flights around the Earth.

The second group of questions that arise in the study of cave painting concerns the technology of drawing. The problem can be formulated as follows: did the animals depicted in the drawings of the Paleolithic man "leave" the wall or "gone" into it?

In 1923, N. Castere discovered a Late Paleolithic clay figure of a bear lying on the ground in the Montespan cave. It was covered with indentations - traces of javelin blows, and numerous prints of bare feet were found on the floor. The thought arose: this is a “model”, which has absorbed hunting pantomimes fixed for tens of millennia at the carcass of a dead bear. Further, the following row can be traced, confirmed by finds in other caves: a life-size model of a bear, dressed in its skin and decorated with a real skull, is replaced by its clay likeness; the beast gradually "gets on its feet" - it is leaned against the wall for stability (this is already a step towards creating a bas-relief); then the beast gradually “leaves” into it, leaving a traced, and then a picturesque outline ... This is how the archaeologist A. Solyar imagines the emergence of Paleolithic painting.

No less likely is another way. According to Leonardo da Vinci, the first drawing is the shadow of an object lit by a fire. Primitive begins to draw, mastering the technique of "bypass". The caves have preserved dozens of such examples. On the walls of the Gargas Cave (France), 130 "ghostly hands" are visible - imprints of human hands on the wall. It is interesting that in some cases they are depicted as a line, in others - by shading the outer or inner contours (positive or negative stencil), then drawings appear, "torn off" from the object, which is no longer depicted in full size, in profile or frontally. Sometimes objects are drawn as if in different projections (face and legs - profile, chest and shoulders - frontally). Skill grows gradually. The drawing acquires clarity, confidence of the stroke. According to the best drawings, biologists confidently determine not only the genus, but also the species, and sometimes the subspecies of the animal.

The next step is taken by Madeleine artists: by means of painting they convey dynamics and perspective. Color helps a lot with this. The full of life horses of the Grand Ben Cave seem to run in front of us, gradually decreasing in size ... Later this technique was forgotten, and similar drawings are not found in rock art either in the Mesolithic or in the Neolithic. The last step is the transition from a perspective image to a three-dimensional one. This is how the sculptures "coming out" from the walls of the cave appear.

Which of the following points of view is correct? A comparison of the absolute dates of the figurines made of bones and stone shows that they are approximately the same age: 30-15 thousand years BC. e. Maybe in different places the cave artist followed different paths?

Another of the mysteries of cave painting is the lack of background and framing. Figures of horses, bulls, mammoths are freely scattered along the rock wall. The drawings seem to be hanging in the air, not even a symbolic line of the earth is drawn under them. On the uneven vaults of caves, animals are placed in the most unexpected positions: upside down or sideways. No in drawings of primitive man and a hint of landscape background. Only in the 17th century n. e. in Holland the landscape takes shape in a special genre.

The study of Paleolithic painting provides specialists with abundant material to search for the origins of various styles and trends in contemporary art. So, for example, a prehistoric master, 12 thousand years before the appearance of pointillist artists, depicted animals on the wall of the Marsula cave (France) using tiny colored dots. The number of such examples can be multiplied, but something else is more important: the images on the walls of the caves are a fusion of the reality of existence and its reflection in the brain of a Paleolithic person. Thus, Paleolithic painting carries information about the level of thinking of a person of that time, about the problems that he lived with and that worried him. Primitive art, discovered more than 100 years ago, remains a real El Dorado for all kinds of hypotheses about this.

Dublyansky V.N., popular science book

More than three million years ago, the process of formation of the modern species of people began. The sites of primitive man have been found in various countries of the world. Our ancient ancestors, exploring new territories, encountered unfamiliar natural phenomena and formed the first centers of primitive culture.

Among the ancient hunters, people with extraordinary artistic talents stood out, who left many expressive works. There are no corrections in the drawings made on the walls of the caves, since the unique masters had a very firm hand.

Primitive thinking

The problem of the origin of primitive art, reflecting the lifestyle of ancient hunters, has been worrying the minds of scientists for several centuries. Despite its simplicity, it is of great importance in the history of mankind. It reflects the religious and social spheres of the life of that society. The consciousness of primitive people is a very complex interweaving of two principles - illusory and realistic. It is believed that this combination had a decisive impact on the nature of the creative activity of the first artists.

Unlike modern art, the art of past eras is always connected with the everyday aspects of human life and seems more earthly. It fully reflects primitive thinking, which does not always have a realistic coloring. And the point here is not the low level of skill of the artists, but the special purposes of their creativity.

The emergence of art

In the middle of the 19th century, archaeologist E. Larte discovered an image of a mammoth in the La Madeleine cave. So, for the first time, the involvement of hunters in painting was proved. As a result of the discoveries, it was established that art monuments appeared much later than tools.

Representatives of homo sapiens made stone knives, spearheads, and this technique was passed down from generation to generation. Later, people used bones, wood, stone and clay to create their first works. It turns out that primitive art arose when a person had free time. When the problem of survival was solved, people began to leave a huge number of monuments of the same type.

Kinds of art

Primitive art, which appeared in the late Paleolithic era (more than 33 thousand years ago), developed in several directions. The first is represented by rock paintings and megaliths, and the second - by small sculptures and carvings on bone, stone and wood. Unfortunately, wooden artifacts are extremely rare in archaeological sites. However, the objects created by man that have come down to us are very expressive and silently tell about the skill of ancient hunters.

It must be admitted that in the minds of the ancestors, art did not stand out as a separate field of activity, and not all people had the ability to create images. The artists of that era possessed such a powerful talent that he himself burst out, splashing bright and expressive images on the walls and vault of the cave, which overwhelmed the human mind.

The Old Stone Age (Paleolithic) is the earliest but longest period, at the end of which all kinds of art appeared, which are characterized by external simplicity and realism. People did not connect the events with nature or themselves, they did not feel the space.

The most outstanding monuments of the Paleolithic are the drawings on the walls of the caves, which are recognized as the first type of primitive art. They are very primitive and represent wavy lines, prints of human hands, images of animal heads. These are clear attempts to feel part of the world and the first glimpses of consciousness among our ancestors.

The paintings on the rocks were made with a stone chisel or paint (red ocher, black charcoal, white lime). Scientists argue that along with the emerging art, the first rudiments of a primitive society (society) arose.

In the Paleolithic era, carving on stone, wood and bone develops. The figurines of animals and birds found by archaeologists are distinguished by the exact reproduction of all volumes. Researchers say that they were created as amulets-amulets that protected the inhabitants of the caves from evil spirits. The oldest masterpieces had a magical meaning and oriented man in nature.

Different tasks facing the artists

The main feature of primitive art in the Paleolithic era is its primitivism. Ancient people did not know how to convey space and endow natural phenomena with human qualities. The visual image of animals was originally represented by a schematic, almost conditional, image. And only after a few centuries, colorful images appear that reliably show all the details of the appearance of wild animals. Scientists believe that this is not due to the level of skill of the first artists, but to the various tasks that were set before them.

Contour primitive drawings were used in rituals, created for magical purposes. But detailed, very accurate images appear at a time when animals turn into an object of veneration, and ancient people thus emphasize their mystical connection with them.

The heyday of art

According to archaeologists, the highest flowering of the art of primitive society falls on the Madeleine period (25-12 thousand years BC). At this time, animals are depicted in motion, and a simple contour drawing takes on three-dimensional forms.

The spiritual forces of hunters, who have studied the habits of predators to the smallest detail, are aimed at comprehending the laws of nature. Ancient artists convincingly draw images of animals, but the man himself does not receive special attention in art. In addition, not a single image of the landscape has ever been found. It is believed that ancient hunters simply admired nature, and feared predators and worshiped them.

The most famous samples of rock art of this period were found in the caves of Lascaux (France), Altamira (Spain), Shulgan-Tash (Urals).

"Sistine Chapel of the Stone Age"

It is curious that even in the middle of the 19th century, cave painting was not known to scientists. And only in 1877, a famous archaeologist, who got into the Almamir cave, discovered rock paintings, which were later included in the UNESCO World Heritage List. It is no coincidence that the underground grotto was called the Sistine Chapel of the Stone Age. In rock art, one can see the confident hand of ancient artists who made the outlines of animals without any corrections, in single lines. In the light of a torch, which gives rise to an amazing play of shadows, it seems that three-dimensional images are moving.

Later, more than a hundred underground grottoes with traces of primitive people were found in France.

In the Kapova Cave (Shulgan-Tash), located in the Southern Urals, animal images were found relatively recently - in 1959. 14 silhouette and contour drawings of animals are made in red ocher. In addition, various geometric signs were also found.

The first humanoid images

One of the main themes of primitive art is the image of a woman. It was caused by the special specifics of the thinking of ancient people. The drawings were attributed magical powers. The found figures of naked and dressed women testify to the very high level of skill of ancient hunters and convey the main idea of ​​the image - the keeper of the hearth.

These are figurines of very full women, the so-called Venuses. Such sculptures are the first humanoid images symbolizing fertility and motherhood.

Changes that took place during the Mesolithic and Neolithic eras

In the Mesolithic era, primitive art undergoes changes. Rock paintings are multi-figure compositions, on which you can trace various episodes from people's lives. Most often scenes of battles and hunting are depicted.

But the main changes in primitive society occur during the Neolithic period. A person learns to build new types of dwellings and builds structures on piles of brick. The main theme of art is the activity of the collective, and fine art is represented by rock paintings, stone, ceramic and wooden sculpture, clay plastic.

Ancient petroglyphs

It is impossible not to mention the multi-plot and multi-figure compositions, in which the main attention is paid to the animal and man. Petroglyphs (rock carvings that are carved or painted), painted in secluded places, attract the attention of scientists from all over the world. Some experts believe that they are ordinary sketches of everyday scenes. And others see in them some kind of writing, which is based on symbols and signs, and testifies to the spiritual heritage of our ancestors.

In Russia, petroglyphs are called "petroglyphs", and most often they are found not in caves, but in open areas. Made in ocher, they are perfectly preserved, because the paint is perfectly absorbed into the rocks. The subjects of the drawings are very wide and varied: the heroes are animals, symbols, signs and people. Schematic representations of the stars of the solar system have even been found. Despite the very respectable age, the petroglyphs, made in a realistic manner, speak of the great skill of the people who applied them.

And now research is ongoing to get closer to deciphering the unique messages left by our distant ancestors.

Bronze Age

In the Bronze Age, which is associated with the main milestones in the history of primitive art and humanity as a whole, new technical inventions appear, metal is mastered, people are engaged in agriculture and cattle breeding.

The themes of art are enriched with new plots, the role of figurative symbolism increases, and geometric ornament spreads. You can see scenes that are associated with mythology, and images become a special sign system that is understandable to some groups of the population. Appears zoomorphic and anthropomorphic sculpture, as well as mysterious structures - megaliths.

Symbols, through which a variety of concepts and feelings are conveyed, carry a great aesthetic load.

Conclusion

At the earliest stages of its development, art does not stand out as an independent sphere of human spiritual life. In primitive society, there is only nameless creativity, closely intertwined with ancient beliefs. It reflected the ideas of the ancient "artists" about nature, the surrounding world, and thanks to it, people communicated with each other.

If we talk about the features of primitive art, then we cannot fail to mention that it has always been associated with the labor activity of people. Only labor allowed the ancient masters to create real works that excite descendants with the vivid expressiveness of artistic images. Primitive man expanded his ideas about the world around him, enriching his spiritual world. In the course of labor activity, people developed aesthetic feelings and an understanding of beauty took place. From the very moment of its inception, art had a magical meaning, and later existed with other forms of not only spiritual, but also material activity.

When man learned to create images, he gained power over time. Therefore, it can be said without exaggeration that the appeal of ancient people to art is one of the most important events in the history of mankind.

Vintage cave paintings of primitive people were very amazing images, basically they were all drawn on stone walls.

There is an opinion that the rock paintings of ancient people are various animals that were hunted at that time. Then these drawings played a major role in magical rites, hunters wanted to attract real animals during their hunt.

Pictures and rock paintings of primitive people very often resemble a two-dimensional image. Rock art is very rich in drawings of bison, rhinos, deer, mammoths. Also in many pictures you can see hunting scenes or people with spears and arrows.

What did the first people draw?

Rock paintings of ancient people- this is one of the manifestations of their emotional state and figurative thinking. Not everyone was able to create a vivid image of an animal or a hunt; only those people who could create such an image in their subconscious could do this.

There is also an assumption that ancient people with the help of rock art conveyed their visions and experiences That's how they expressed themselves.

Where did primitive people paint?

Parts of the caves that were hard to find - this is one of the best places to draw. This explains the significance of the rock paintings. Drawing was a certain ritual, the artists worked by the light of stone lamps.