Drawing on the history of ancient people. Primitive rock art

Ancient rock paintings (petroglyphs) are found all over the world and have one thing in common, they describe animals, including those that are no longer found on earth. Many of these drawings are so well-preserved that experts thought they were fake at first glance. However, after careful examination, the images were found to be genuine. Below is a list of ten well-preserved prehistoric rock paintings.

Chauvet cave

A cave located near the commune of Vallon-Pont-d'Arc, in the valley of the Ardèche River in southern France. Contains the earliest known and best preserved rock art in the world dating from the Aurignacian era (36,000 years ago). The cave was discovered on December 18, 1994 by three cavers - Eliette Brunel, Christian Hillaire and Jean-Marie Chauvet. The drawings in the cave depict various animals from the Ice Age.

Magura Cave

Magura is a cave located near the village of Rabisha in the Vidin region, Bulgaria. In the cave, bones of a cave bear, cave hyena and other animals were found. And on its walls you can see drawings from different historical periods. They mainly depict female figures, hunters, animals, plants, the sun and stars.

The find includes about 5,000 Aboriginal drawings on rocks in Kakadu National Park, Australia. Most of the paintings were created around 2000 years ago. Interestingly, they depict not only animals such as white sea bass, catfish, kangaroos, rock couscous and others, but also their bones (skeletons).

Tadrart-Acacus

Tadrart Acacus is a mountain range in the Ghat Desert in western Libya, part of the Sahara. The massif is known for its prehistoric rock art, which spans the period 12000 BC. e. - 100 AD e. and reflects the cultural and natural changes in the area. The drawings depict animals such as giraffes, elephants, ostriches, camels and horses, as well as people in various situations of daily life, such as dancing and playing musical instruments.

Serra da Capivara is a national park located in the northeastern part of Brazil in the eastern state of Piauí. The park contains many caves containing examples of prehistoric art. The drawings, in great detail, depict animals and trees, as well as hunting scenes. A well-known site in the park, Pedra Furada contains the oldest remnants of human activity on the continent that have significantly altered the idea of ​​American settlement. In order to preserve numerous prehistoric exhibits and drawings, the Brazilian government created this national park.

Lascaux Cave is located in the southwest of France and is famous for its rock paintings dating back to the Paleolithic period. The cave contains about 2,000 drawings, which can be grouped into three main categories: animals, human figures, and abstract signs. The cave is one of the places on the planet where you will not be allowed.

The Bhimbetka Rock Dwellings is an archaeological site of over 600 rock shelters located in Raisen District, Madhya Pradesh, India. These shelters contain the earliest traces of human activity in India; according to archaeologists, some of them could have been inhabited more than 100 thousand years ago. Most of the drawings are in red and white and depict animals such as crocodiles, lions, tigers and others.

Laas Gaal

Laas Gaal is a cave complex located on the outskirts of the city of Hargeisa in Somalia. Known for its well-preserved rock art. The drawings date back to the ninth - third millennium BC. e. and depict mostly cows, humans, giraffes, wolves, or dogs.

Altamira Cave is located near the city of Santillana del Mar, Cantabria in Spain. It was accidentally discovered in 1879 by amateur archaeologist Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola. This great archaeological discovery is known for its ancient rock paintings of the Upper Paleolithic era (35 - 12 thousand years ago), which depict bison, horses, wild boars, human palm prints and more.

Cueva de las Manos

Cueva de las Manos is a cave located in southern Argentina, in the province of Santa Cruz, in the Pinturas river valley. Known for archaeological and paleontological finds. First of all, these are rock paintings depicting human hands, the oldest of which date back to the ninth millennium BC. e. The left hands of teenage boys are depicted on the walls of the cave. This fact suggested that these images were part of an ancient rite. In addition to hands, the walls of the cave depict guanacos, rhea, cats and other animals, as well as hunting scenes for them.

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") painted pictures of the animals they hunted. They were the first people to paint using paints, although they probably painted their bodies long before that with a crushed red rock, the so-called ocher.

Apparently, the Cro-Magnons used these drawings for religious purposes. They believed that the drawings would protect against evil forces and help during the hunt, on the success of which their very existence depended. Until now, no drawings made by more ancient people have been found. Perhaps they drew or scratched with something sharp on pieces of wood that had rotted away a long time ago.

Cro-Magnons painted horses, bison and deer. Often in the drawings there are also images of spears, which, according to the artist's intention, should have brought good luck during a real hunt.

One of the Cro-Magnon artists put his hand to the rock, and then sprayed paint around it through a reed. Images of people or plants are extremely rare in early drawings.

In front of you is an image of a woolly mammoth carved on the wall of the cave, on which its long shaggy hair is clearly visible. Rock art often shows us what prehistoric animals looked like.

Cro-Magnons carved in stone figurines of very fat or pregnant women. They also sculpted figurines out of clay, after which they burned them on fire. Probably, primitive people believed that such figurines would bring them good luck.

Cave drawings

Take up rock painting

You will need plaster, a box like a large matchbox, twine, duct tape, and paints.

Take a piece of twine 6 cm long and fold it in half so that you get a loop. Attach this loop with adhesive tape to the bottom of the box from the inside.

Mix the gypsum with so that you get a thin solution, and pour it into the box, a layer about 3 cm thick should form there. Let the gypsum harden, then peel the box away from it.

Repaint one of the rock paintings on this page on this piece of plaster. Then color it in using the same colors as the caveman: red, yellow, brown and black.

You can also reproduce a carved image of an animal. Transfer the outline of the mammoth shown on this page to a piece of plaster. Then, with an old fork, push the lines in plaster along the entire contour.

Primitive (or, otherwise, primitive) art geographically covers all continents except Antarctica, and in time - the entire era of human existence, preserved by some peoples living in remote corners of the planet to this day.

Most of the most ancient paintings were found in Europe (from Spain to the Urals).

It was well preserved on the walls of the caves - the entrances turned out to be tightly filled up millennia ago, the same temperature and humidity were maintained there.

Not only wall paintings have been preserved, but also other evidence of human activity - clear footprints of bare feet of adults and children on the damp floor of some caves.

Reasons for the emergence of creative activity and the function of primitive art Man's need for beauty and creativity.

beliefs of the time. The man portrayed those whom he revered. People of that time believed in magic: they believed that with the help of paintings and other images, one could influence the nature or outcome of the hunt. It was believed, for example, that it was necessary to hit a drawn animal with an arrow or spear in order to ensure the success of a real hunt.

periodization

Now science is changing its opinion about the age of the earth and the time frame is changing, but we will study by the generally accepted names of the periods.
1. Stone Age
1.1 Old Stone Age - Paleolithic. ... to 10 thousand BC
1.2 Middle Stone Age - Mesolithic. 10 - 6 thousand BC
1.3 New Stone Age - Neolithic. From 6 - to 2 thousand BC
2. Bronze Age. 2 thousand BC
3. Age of iron. 1 thousand BC

Paleolithic

Tools of labor were made of stone; hence the name of the era - the stone age.
1. Ancient or Lower Paleolithic. up to 150 thousand BC
2. Middle Paleolithic. 150 - 35 thousand BC
3. Upper or late Paleolithic. 35 - 10 thousand BC
3.1 Aurignac-Solutrean period. 35 - 20 thousand BC
3.2. Madeleine period. 20 - 10 thousand BC This period received its name from the name of the La Madeleine cave, where murals related to this time were found.

The earliest works of primitive art date back to the Late Paleolithic. 35 - 10 thousand BC
Scientists are inclined to believe that naturalistic art and the representation of schematic signs and geometric figures arose simultaneously.
Pasta drawings. Impressions of a human hand and a disorderly weave of wavy lines pressed into the wet clay with the fingers of the same hand.

The first drawings from the Paleolithic period (Old Stone Age, 35–10 thousand BC) were discovered at the end of the 19th century. Spanish amateur archaeologist Count Marcelino de Sautuola, three kilometers from his family estate, in the cave of Altamira.

It happened like this:
“An archaeologist decided to explore a cave in Spain and took his little daughter with him. Suddenly she shouted: “Bulls, bulls!” The father laughed, but when he raised his head, he saw on the ceiling of the cave huge, painted figures of bison. Some of the bison were depicted standing still, others rushing with inclined horns at the enemy. At first, scientists did not believe that primitive people could create such works of art. Only 20 years later, numerous works of primitive art were discovered in other places and the authenticity of the cave painting was recognized.

Paleolithic painting

Cave of Altamira. Spain.
Late Paleolithic (Madeleine era 20 - 10 thousand years BC).
On the vault of the cave chamber of Altamira, a whole herd of large bison, closely spaced to each other, is depicted.


Panel of bison. Located on the ceiling of the cave. Wonderful polychrome images contain black and all shades of ocher, rich colors, superimposed somewhere densely and monotonously, and somewhere with halftones and transitions from one color to another. A thick layer of paint up to several cm. In total, 23 figures are depicted on the vault, if we do not take into account those of which only outlines have been preserved.

Fragment. Buffalo. Cave of Altamira. Spain. Late Paleolithic. They illuminated the caves with lamps and reproduced from memory. Not primitivism, but the highest degree of stylization. When the cave was discovered, it was believed that this was an imitation of a hunt - the magical meaning of the image. But today there are versions that the goal was art. The beast was necessary for man, but he was terrible and elusive.

Fragment. Bull. Altamira. Spain. Late Paleolithic.
Nice brown shades. The tense stop of the beast. They used the natural relief of the stone, depicted on the bulge of the wall.

Fragment. Bison. Altamira. Spain. Late Paleolithic.
Transition to polychrome art, darker stroke.

Font-de-Gaume cave. France

Late Paleolithic.
Characterized by silhouette images, deliberate distortion, exaggeration of proportions. On the walls and vaults of the small halls of the Font-de-Gaumes cave, at least about 80 drawings are applied, mainly bison, two indisputable figures of mammoths and even a wolf.

Grazing deer. Font de Gome. France. Late Paleolithic.
The image of the horns in perspective. Deer at this time (the end of the Madeleine era) replaced other animals.

Fragment. Buffalo. Font de Gome. France. Late Paleolithic.
The hump and crest on the head are emphasized. Overlapping one image with another is a polypsest. Detailed work. Decorative solution for the tail. Image of houses.

Wolf. Font de Gome. France. Late Paleolithic.

Cave of Nio. France

Late Paleolithic.
Round room with drawings. There are no images of mammoths and other animals of the glacial fauna in the cave.

Horse. Nio. France. Late Paleolithic.
Depicted already with 4 legs. The silhouette is outlined in black paint, retouched in yellow inside. The character of a pony horse.

Stone sheep. Nio. France. Late Paleolithic. Partially contour image, the skin is drawn on top.

Deer. Nio. France. Late Paleolithic.

Buffalo. Nio. Nio. France. Late Paleolithic.
Among the images, most of all are bison. Some of them are shown as wounded, arrows in black and red.

Buffalo. Nio. France. Late Paleolithic.

Lascaux cave

It so happened that it was the children, and quite by accident, who found the most interesting cave paintings in Europe:
“In September 1940, near the town of Montignac, in the South-West of France, four high school students went on an archaeological expedition they had planned. In place of a long-rooted tree, there was a gaping hole in the ground that aroused their curiosity. There were rumors that this was the entrance to a dungeon leading to a nearby medieval castle.
There was also a smaller hole inside. One of the guys threw a stone at it and, from the noise of the fall, concluded that the depth was decent. He widened the hole, crawled inside, nearly fell over, lit a flashlight, gasped, and called out to the others. From the walls of the cave in which they found themselves, some huge animals looked at them, breathing with such confident force, sometimes it seemed ready to go into a rage, that they became terrified. And at the same time, the power of these animal images was so majestic and convincing that it seemed to them as if they had fallen into some kind of magical kingdom.

Lasko cave. France.
Late Paleolithic (Madeleine era, 18 - 15 thousand years BC).
Called the primitive Sistine Chapel. Consists of several large rooms: rotunda; main gallery; pass; apse.
Colorful images on the calcareous white surface of the cave.
Strongly exaggerated proportions: large necks and bellies.
Contour and silhouette drawings. Clear images without layering. A large number of male and female signs (rectangle and many dots).

The scene of the hunt. Lasko. France. Late Paleolithic.
genre image. A bull killed by a spear butted a man with a bird's head. Nearby on a stick is a bird - maybe his soul.

Buffalo. Lasko. France. Late Paleolithic.

Horse. Lasko. France. Late Paleolithic.

Mammoths and horses. Kapova cave. Ural.
Late Paleolithic.

KAPOVA CAVE- to the south. m Ural, on the river. White. Formed in limestones and dolomites. Corridors and grottoes are located on two floors. The total length is over 2 km. On the walls - late Paleolithic picturesque images of mammoths, rhinos

Paleolithic sculpture

Art of small forms or mobile art (small plastic)
An integral part of the art of the Paleolithic era are objects that are commonly called "small plastic".
These are three types of objects:
1. Figurines and other three-dimensional items carved from soft stone or other materials (horn, mammoth tusk).
2. Flattened objects with engravings and paintings.
3. Reliefs in caves, grottoes and under natural canopies.
The relief was knocked out with a deep contour or the background around the image was shy.

Relief

One of the first finds, called small plastics, was a bone plate from the Shaffo grotto with images of two fallow deer or deer:
Deer swimming across the river. Fragment. Bone carving. France. Late Paleolithic (Madeleine period).

Everyone knows the wonderful French writer Prosper Mérimée, author of the fascinating novel Chronicle of the Reign of Charles IX, Carmen and other romantic novels, but few people know that he served as an inspector for the protection of historical monuments. It was he who handed over this disc in 1833 to the Cluny Historical Museum, which was just being organized in the center of Paris. Now it is kept in the Museum of National Antiquities (Saint-Germain en Le).
Later, an Upper Paleolithic cultural layer was discovered in the Shaffo Grotto. But then, just as it was with the painting of the cave of Altamira, and with other pictorial monuments of the Paleolithic era, no one could believe that this art is older than the ancient Egyptian. Therefore, such engravings were considered examples of Celtic art (V-IV centuries BC). Only at the end of the 19th century, again, like cave painting, they were recognized as the oldest after they were found in the Paleolithic cultural layer.

Very interesting figurines of women. Most of these figurines are small in size: from 4 to 17 cm. They were made of stone or mammoth tusks. Their most notable distinguishing feature is their exaggerated "corpulence", they depict women with overweight figures.

"Venus with a goblet". Bas-relief. France. Upper (Late) Paleolithic.
Goddess of the Ice Age. The canon of the image is that the figure is inscribed in a rhombus, and the stomach and chest are in a circle.

Sculpture- mobile art.
Almost everyone who has studied Paleolithic female figurines, with some differences in detail, explains them as cult objects, amulets, idols, etc., reflecting the idea of ​​motherhood and fertility.

"Willendorf Venus". Limestone. Willendorf, Lower Austria. Late Paleolithic.
Compact composition, no facial features.

"The Hooded Lady of Brassempouy". France. Late Paleolithic. Mammoth bone.
The facial features and hairstyle have been worked out.

In Siberia, in the Baikal region, a whole series of original figurines of a completely different stylistic appearance was found. Along with the same as in Europe, overweight figures of naked women, there are figurines of slender, elongated proportions and, unlike European ones, they are depicted dressed in deaf, most likely fur clothes, similar to "overalls".
These are finds at the Buret sites on the Angara River and Malta.

conclusions
Rock painting. Features of the pictorial art of the Paleolithic - realism, expression, plasticity, rhythm.
Small plastic.
In the image of animals - the same features as in painting (realism, expression, plasticity, rhythm).
Paleolithic female figurines are cult objects, amulets, idols, etc., they reflect the idea of ​​motherhood and fertility.

Mesolithic

(Middle Stone Age) 10 - 6 thousand BC

After the melting of the glaciers, the usual fauna disappeared. Nature becomes more pliable for man. People become nomads.
With a change in lifestyle, a person's view of the world becomes broader. He is not interested in a single animal or an accidental discovery of cereals, but in the vigorous activity of people, thanks to which they find whole herds of animals, and fields or forests rich in fruits.
Thus, in the Mesolithic, the art of multi-figured composition was born, in which it was no longer the beast, but the man who played the leading role.
Change in the field of art:
the main characters of the image are not a separate animal, but people in some action.
The task is not in a believable, accurate depiction of individual figures, but in the transfer of action, movement.
Many-figured hunts are often depicted, scenes of honey gathering, cult dances appear.
The nature of the image is changing - instead of realistic and polychrome, it becomes schematic and silhouette. Local colors are used - red or black.

A honey harvester from a hive, surrounded by a swarm of bees. Spain. Mesolithic.

Practically everywhere where planar or three-dimensional images of the Upper Paleolithic era were found, there seems to be a pause in the artistic activity of people of the subsequent Mesolithic era. Perhaps this period is still poorly understood, perhaps the images made not in caves, but in the open air, were washed away by rain and snow over time. Perhaps, among the petroglyphs, which are very difficult to accurately date, there are those related to this time, but we still do not know how to recognize them. It is indicative that objects of small plastics are extremely rare during excavations of Mesolithic settlements.

Of the Mesolithic monuments, only a few can be named: Stone Grave in Ukraine, Kobystan in Azerbaijan, Zaraut-Sai in Uzbekistan, Mines in Tajikistan and Bhimpetka in India.

In addition to rock art, petroglyphs appeared in the Mesolithic era.
Petroglyphs are carved, carved or scratched rock art.
When carving a picture, ancient artists knocked down the upper, darker part of the rock with a sharp tool, and therefore the images stand out noticeably against the background of the rock.

In the south of Ukraine, in the steppe, there is a rocky hill of sandstone rocks. As a result of strong weathering, several grottoes and sheds were formed on its slopes. Numerous carved and scratched images have long been known in these grottoes and on other planes of the hill. In most cases, they are difficult to read. Sometimes images of animals are guessed - bulls, goats. Scientists attribute these images of bulls to the Mesolithic era.

Stone grave. South of Ukraine. General view and petroglyphs. Mesolithic.

To the south of Baku, between the southeastern slope of the Greater Caucasus Range and the coast of the Caspian Sea, there is a small plain Gobustan (a country of ravines) with highlands in the form of table mountains composed of limestone and other sedimentary rocks. On the rocks of these mountains there are many petroglyphs of different times. Most of them were discovered in 1939. Large (more than 1 m) images of female and male figures, made with deep carved lines, received the greatest interest and fame.
Many images of animals: bulls, predators and even reptiles and insects.

Kobystan (Gobustan). Azerbaijan (territory of the former USSR). Mesolithic.

Grotto Zaraut-Kamar
In the mountains of Uzbekistan, at an altitude of about 2000 m above sea level, there is a monument widely known not only among archaeologists - the Zaraut-Kamar grotto. Painted images were discovered in 1939 by local hunter I.F.Lamaev.
The painting in the grotto is made with ocher of different shades (from red-brown to lilac) and consists of four groups of images, in which anthropomorphic figures and bulls participate.

Here is a group in which most researchers see bull hunting. Among the anthropomorphic figures surrounding the bull, i.e. There are two types of "hunters": figures in robes that expand downwards, without bows, and "tailed" figures with raised and stretched bows. This scene can be interpreted as a real hunt of disguised hunters, and as a kind of myth.

The painting in the grotto of Shakhta is probably the oldest in Central Asia.
"What does the word Mines mean," writes V.A. Ranov, "I don't know. Perhaps it comes from the Pamir word "mines", which means rock."

In the northern part of Central India, huge rocks with many caves, grottoes and sheds stretch along the river valleys. In these natural shelters, a lot of rock carvings have been preserved. Among them, the location of Bhimbetka (Bhimpetka) stands out. Apparently, these picturesque images belong to the Mesolithic. True, one should not forget about the uneven development of cultures of different regions. The Mesolithic of India may turn out to be 2-3 millennia older than in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

Some scenes of driven hunts with archers in the paintings of the Spanish and African cycles are, as it were, the embodiment of the movement itself, brought to the limit, concentrated in a stormy whirlwind.

Neolithic

(New Stone Age) from 6 to 2 thousand BC

Neolithic- New Stone Age, the last stage of the Stone Age.
periodization. The entry into the Neolithic is timed to coincide with the transition of culture from an appropriating (hunters and gatherers) to a producing (agriculture and/or cattle breeding) type of economy. This transition is called the Neolithic Revolution. The end of the Neolithic dates back to the time of the appearance of metal tools and weapons, that is, the beginning of the copper, bronze or iron age.
Different cultures entered this period of development at different times. In the Middle East, the Neolithic began about 9.5 thousand years ago. BC e. In Denmark, the Neolithic dates from the 18th century. BC, and among the indigenous population of New Zealand - the Maori - the Neolithic existed as early as the 18th century. AD: before the arrival of Europeans, the Maori used polished stone axes. Some peoples of America and Oceania still have not fully passed from the Stone Age to the Iron Age.

The Neolithic, like other periods of the primitive era, is not a specific chronological period in the history of mankind as a whole, but characterizes only the cultural characteristics of certain peoples.

Achievements and activities
1. New features of the social life of people:
- Transition from matriarchy to patriarchy.
- At the end of the era in some places (Anterior Asia, Egypt, India) a new formation of a class society took shape, that is, social stratification began, the transition from a tribal-communal system to a class society.
- At this time, cities begin to be built. One of the most ancient cities is Jericho.
- Some cities were well fortified, which indicates the existence of organized wars at that time.
- Armies and professional warriors began to appear.
- One can quite say that the beginning of the formation of ancient civilizations is connected with the Neolithic era.

2. The division of labor, the formation of technologies began:
- The main thing is simple gathering and hunting as the main sources of food are gradually being replaced by agriculture and cattle breeding.
The Neolithic is called the "Age of Polished Stone". In this era, stone tools were not just chipped, but already sawn, polished, drilled, sharpened.
- Among the most important tools in the Neolithic is an ax, previously unknown.
development of spinning and weaving.

In the design of household utensils, images of animals begin to appear.

An ax in the shape of an elk head. Polished stone. Neolithic. Historical Museum. Stockholm.

Wooden ladle from the Gorbunovsky peat bog near Nizhny Tagil. Neolithic. GIM.

For the Neolithic forest zone, fishing becomes one of the leading types of economy. Active fishing contributed to the creation of certain stocks, which, combined with the hunting of animals, made it possible to live in one place all year round.
The transition to a settled way of life led to the appearance of ceramics.
The appearance of ceramics is one of the main signs of the Neolithic era.

The village of Chatal-Guyuk (Eastern Turkey) is one of the places where the most ancient samples of ceramics were found.

Cup from Ledce (Czech Republic). Clay. Culture of bell-shaped goblets. Eneolithic (Copper Stone Age).

Monuments of Neolithic painting and petroglyphs are extremely numerous and scattered over vast territories.
Their accumulations are found almost everywhere in Africa, eastern Spain, on the territory of the former USSR - in Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, on Lake Onega, near the White Sea and in Siberia.
Neolithic rock art is similar to Mesolithic, but the subject matter becomes more varied.

"Hunters". Rock painting. Neolithic (?). Southern Rhodesia.

For about three hundred years, the attention of scientists was riveted to the rock, known as the "Tomsk Pisanitsa".
"Pisanitsy" refers to images painted with mineral paint or carved on the smooth surface of a wall in Siberia.
Back in 1675, one of the brave Russian travelers, whose name, unfortunately, remained unknown, wrote:
“The prison (Verkhnetomsky prison) did not reach the edges of the Tom, a stone is large and high, and animals, and cattle, and birds, and all sorts of similarities are written on it ...”
Real scientific interest in this monument arose already in the 18th century, when, by decree of Peter I, an expedition was sent to Siberia to study its history and geography. The result of the expedition was the first images of Tomsk petroglyphs published in Europe by the Swedish captain Stralenberg, who participated in the trip. These images were not an exact copy of the Tomsk inscription, but conveyed only the most general outlines of rocks and the placement of drawings on it, but their value lies in the fact that they can be seen drawings that have not survived to this day.

Images of Tomsk petroglyphs, made by the Swedish boy K. Shulman, who traveled with Stralenberg across Siberia.

For hunters, deer and elk were the main source of livelihood. Gradually, these animals began to acquire mythical features - the elk was the "master of the taiga" along with the bear.
The image of the elk plays the main role in the Tomsk petroglyphs: the figures are repeated many times.
The proportions and shapes of the animal's body are absolutely correctly conveyed: its long massive body, a hump on its back, a heavy large head, a characteristic protrusion on the forehead, a swollen upper lip, bulging nostrils, thin legs with cloven hooves.
In some drawings, transverse stripes are shown on the neck and body of moose.

On the border between the Sahara and Fezzan, on the territory of Algeria, in a mountainous area called Tassili-Ajer, bare rocks rise in rows. Now this region is dried up by the desert wind, scorched by the sun and almost nothing grows in it. However, earlier in the Sahara meadows were green ...

- Sharpness and accuracy of drawing, grace and grace.
- A harmonious combination of shapes and tones, the beauty of people and animals depicted with a good knowledge of anatomy.
- The swiftness of gestures, movements.

The small plastic of the Neolithic acquires, as well as painting, new subjects.

"Man Playing the Lute". Marble (from Keros, Cyclades, Greece). Neolithic. National Archaeological Museum. Athens.

The schematism inherent in Neolithic painting, which replaced Paleolithic realism, also penetrated small plastic arts.

Schematic representation of a woman. Cave relief. Neolithic. Croisart. Department of the Marne. France.

Relief with a symbolic image from Castelluccio (Sicily). Limestone. OK. 1800-1400 BC National Archaeological Museum. Syracuse.

conclusions

Mesolithic and Neolithic rock art
It is not always possible to draw a precise line between them.
But this art is very different from the typically Paleolithic:
- Realism, accurately fixing the image of the beast as a target, as a cherished goal, is replaced by a broader view of the world, the image of multi-figured compositions.
- There is a desire for harmonic generalization, stylization and, most importantly, for the transfer of movement, for dynamism.
- In the Paleolithic there was a monumentality and inviolability of the image. Here - liveliness, free fantasy.
- A desire for elegance appears in the images of a person (for example, if we compare the Paleolithic "Venuses" and the Mesolithic image of a woman collecting honey, or Neolithic Bushman dancers).

Small plastic:
- There are new stories.
- Greater craftsmanship and mastery of craft, material.

Achievements

Paleolithic
- Lower Paleolithic
> > fire taming, stone tools
- Middle Paleolithic
> > out of Africa
- Upper Paleolithic
> > sling

Mesolithic
- microliths, bow, canoe

Neolithic
- Early Neolithic
> > agriculture, animal husbandry
- Late Neolithic
> > ceramics

Eneolithic (Copper Age)
- metallurgy, horse, wheel

Bronze Age

The Bronze Age is characterized by the leading role of bronze products, which was associated with an improvement in the processing of metals such as copper and tin, obtained from ore deposits, and the subsequent production of bronze from them.
The Bronze Age succeeded the Copper Age and preceded the Iron Age. In general, the chronological framework of the Bronze Age: 35/33 - 13/11 centuries. BC e., but different cultures are different.
Art is becoming more diverse, spreading geographically.

Bronze was much easier to work than stone and could be molded and polished. Therefore, in the Bronze Age, all kinds of household items were made, richly decorated with ornaments and of high artistic value. Ornamental decorations consisted mostly of circles, spirals, wavy lines and similar motifs. Particular attention was paid to jewelry - they were large in size and immediately caught the eye.

Megalithic architecture

In 3 - 2 thousand BC. appeared peculiar, huge structures of stone blocks. This ancient architecture was called megalithic.

The term "megalith" comes from the Greek words "megas" - "big"; and "lithos" - "stone".

Megalithic architecture owes its appearance to primitive beliefs. Megalithic architecture is usually divided into several types:
1. Menhir is a single vertically standing stone, more than two meters high.
On the Brittany Peninsula in France, the so-called fields stretched for miles. menhirs. In the language of the Celts, the later inhabitants of the peninsula, the name of these stone pillars several meters high means "long stone".
2. Trilith - a structure consisting of two vertically placed stones and covered by a third.
3. A dolmen is a building whose walls are made up of huge stone slabs and covered with a roof made of the same monolithic stone block.
Initially, dolmens served for burials.
Trilit can be called the simplest dolmen.
Numerous menhirs, triliths and dolmens were located in places that were considered sacred.
4. Cromlech is a group of menhirs and triliths.

Stone grave. South of Ukraine. Anthropomorphic menhirs. Bronze Age.

Stonehenge. Cromlech. England. Age of Bronze. 3 - 2 thousand BC Its diameter is 90 m, it consists of boulders, each of which weighs approx. 25 tons. It is curious that the mountains from where these stones were delivered are located 280 km from Stonehenge.
It consists of triliths arranged in a circle, inside a horseshoe of triliths, in the middle - blue stones, and in the very center - a heel stone (on the day of the summer solstice, the luminary is exactly above it). It is assumed that Stonehenge was a temple dedicated to the sun.

Age of Iron (Iron Age)

1 thousand BC

In the steppes of Eastern Europe and Asia, pastoral tribes created the so-called animal style at the end of the Bronze Age and the beginning of the Iron Age.

Plaque "Deer". 6th century BC Gold. Hermitage. 35.1 x 22.5 cm. From a mound in the Kuban region. The relief plate was found attached to a round iron shield in the chief's burial. An example of zoomorphic art ("animal style"). The deer's hooves are made in the form of a "big-beaked bird".
There is nothing accidental, superfluous - a complete, thoughtful composition. Everything in the figure is conditional and extremely truthful, realistic.
The feeling of monumentality is achieved not by size, but by the generalization of form.

Panther. Plaque, shield decoration. From a mound near the village of Kelermesskaya. Gold. Hermitage.
Age of Iron.
Served as a shield decoration. The tail and paws are decorated with figures of curled up predators.

Age of Iron

Age of Iron. The balance between realism and stylization is tipped in favor of stylization.

Cultural ties with Ancient Greece, the countries of the ancient East and China contributed to the emergence of new plots, images and visual means in the artistic culture of the tribes of southern Eurasia.

Scenes of a battle between barbarians and Greeks are depicted. Found in the Chertomlyk barrow, near Nikopol.

Zaporozhye region Hermitage.

conclusions

Scythian art - "animal style". Striking sharpness and intensity of images. Generalization, monumentality. Stylization and realism.

There is something magically attractive and at the same time sad in petroglyphs. We will never know the names of talented ancient artists and their history. All that remains for us are rock paintings, by which we can try to imagine the life of our distant ancestors. Let's take a look at 9 famous caves with cave paintings.

Cave of Altamira

Opened in 1879 by Marcelino de Sautola in Spain, it is not without reason that they call the Sistine Chapel of primitive art. The techniques that were in service with ancient artists, the Impressionists began to use in their work only in the 19th century.

The painting, discovered by the daughter of an amateur archaeologist, made a lot of noise in the scientific community. The researcher was even accused of falsification - no one could believe that such talented drawings were created millennia ago.

The paintings are made realistically, some of them are three-dimensional - a special effect was achieved using the natural relief of the walls.

After the opening, everyone could visit the cave. Due to the constant visits of tourists, the temperature inside has changed, mold has appeared on the drawings. Today the cave is closed to visitors, but not far from it is the Museum of Ancient History and Archeology. Just 30 km from the Altamira cave, you can get acquainted with copies of rock paintings and curious finds of archaeologists.

Lascaux cave

In 1940, a group of teenagers accidentally discovered a cave near Montillac in France, the entrance to which was opened by a tree that had fallen during a thunderstorm. It is small, but there are thousands of drawings under the vaults. Some of them were painted by ancient artists on walls as early as the 18th century BC.

It depicts people, symbols and in motion. The researchers divided the cave into thematic zones for convenience. Drawings of the Hall of the Bulls are known far beyond the borders of France, its other name is the Rotunda. Here is the largest rock art, of all discovered - a 5-meter bull.

Under the vaults there are more than 300 drawings, including here you can see the animals of the ice age. It is believed that the age of some paintings is about 30 thousand years.

Cave Nio

In the southeast of France is located, about the painting inside which the locals knew back in the 17th century. However, they did not attach due importance to the drawings, leaving numerous inscriptions nearby.

In 1906, Captain Molyar discovered a hall with images of animals inside, which later became known as the Black Salon.

Inside you can see bison, deer and goats. Scientists believe that in ancient times, rituals were performed here to attract good luck on the hunt. For tourists, next to Nio, the Pyrenean Park of Prehistoric Art is open, where you can learn more about archeology.

Koske Cave

Not far from Marseille is located, which can only be entered by those who can swim well. To see the ancient images, you have to swim through the 137-meter tunnel, located deep under water. The unusual place was discovered in 1985 by diver Henri Koske. Scientists believe that some images of animals and birds found inside were made 29 thousand years ago.

Kapova Cave (Shulgan-Tash)

Cueva de las Manos Cave

In the south of Argentina in 1941, ancient paintings were also discovered. There is not one cave here, but a whole series, the total length of which is 160 km. The most famous of them is Cueva de las Manos. Its name is translated into Russian as "".

There are many images of human palms inside - our ancestors made prints on the walls with their left hands. In addition, here you can see hunting scenes and ancient inscriptions. The images were taken from 9 to 13 thousand years ago.

Caves of Nerja

The caves of Nerja are located 5 km from the city of the same name in Spain. The rock paintings were discovered by accident by teenagers, as happened earlier in the Lascaux cave. Five guys went to catch bats, but accidentally saw a hole in the rock, looked inside and found a corridor with stalagmites and stalactites. The find interested scientists.

The cave turned out to be impressive in size - 35,484 square meters, which is equivalent to five football fields. The fact that people lived in it is evidenced by many finds: tools, traces of a hearth, ceramics. Downstairs are three rooms. The hall of ghosts scares guests with unusual sounds and strange shapes. The hall of waterfalls was equipped as a concert hall, it can accommodate 100 spectators at the same time.

Montserrat Caballe, Maya Plisetskaya and other famous artists performed here. Bethlehem Hall impresses with bizarre columns with stalactites and stalagmites. Rock paintings can be seen in the Hall of Spears and the Hall of Mountains.

Before the discovery of this cave, scientists assumed that the most ancient drawings are in the Chauvet cave. According to recent studies, our distant ancestors began to engage in creativity even earlier than modern science believed. The results of radiocarbon analysis showed that six images of seals and fur seals were supposedly made 43,000 years ago - therefore, they are even older than the rock art discovered in Chauvet. However, it is too early to draw conclusions.

Magura Cave

The images in all these caves and the methods of applying drawings are completely different. However, there are also common features. The artists of antiquity conveyed their perception of the world with the help of creativity and shared their outlook on life, only they did it not with words, but with drawings.

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Red discs, hand stencils and animal paintings in Spanish caves represent the oldest known examples of rock art in Europe.

The symbols on the walls at 11 sites in Spain, including the World Heritage Sites of Altamira, El Castillo and Tito Bustillo, have always been prized by scholars for their antiquity.

Recently, however, researchers have used improved dating methods to get more accurate information about the age of the images.

The main goal of scientists was to confirm that the most ancient drawing is a pale red dot (disk), which is supposedly more than 40,000 years old.

Hand stencils and images of animals dominate the El Castillo cave in Spain. One of the stencils has been dated to 37,300 years ago and the red disk to 40,800 years ago, making them the oldest rock art in Europe (image: Pedro Saura). Photo from msn.com

“In Cantabria, El Castillo, we find numerous hand stencils that are formed by spraying paint around hands pressed against a cave wall,” explained Dr Alistair Pike from the University of Bristol, UK, and lead author of an academic paper published in the journal Science.

“We believe one of these stencils is over 37,300 years old, and there is a red disk nearby made using a similar technique that is closer to 40,800 years old. We now know that these oldest pieces of ancient art in Europe are at least 4,000 years older than we thought,” Pike told reporters. This is possibly the oldest reliably dated rock carving in the world.

The two-metre-high depictions of horses at Tito Bustillo are superimposed on earlier red dots that are over 29,000 years old (image: Rodrigo De Balbin Behrmann). Photo from msn.com

The team determined the age of the samples by examining the calcium carbonate (calcite) of plaque that had formed over the years on the image.

This material builds up in the same way that stalagmites and stalactites form in caves.

In the process of formation, a small amount of natural radioactive uranium atoms is included in calcite. From the level of decay of these atoms into thorium and the ratio of two different elements in a sample of material, one can very accurately determine the moment when the calcite deposit formed.

Uranium/thorium dating has been used for decades, but the technique has improved so much over the years that scientists now only need a small sample of the material to get a very accurate result.

The Corredor de los Puntos is located in the El Castillo Cave of Spain. The red discs here date back to 34,000 - 36,000 years ago, and elsewhere in a cave 40,800 years ago, making them examples of the earliest rock art in Europe (image: Pedro Saura). Photo from msn.com

The team took thin sediment samples just above the paint pigments, and the images should be equal to or older than the calcite.

The earliest dates coincide with the first known immigration to Europe of modern humans (Homo sapiens). Previously, about 41,000 years ago, their evolutionary cousins, the Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis), dominated the continent.

The work of Dr. Pike and his colleagues raises some intriguing questions about who is the creator of the signs.

The antiquity of the paintings leads study co-author Joao Silhao, a lecturer at the University of Barcelona, ​​to suggest that some of the fragments were created by Neanderthals. If images could be found even older than the red dot at El Castillo, it might confirm that the professor's "gut feeling" is not deceiving.

“There is a chance that the authors of these images are Neanderthals,” said Professor Silao. - But I will not say that we have proved it, because it cannot even be proved now. Now all we can do is go back and look for older specimens until we are convinced that there are no drawings older than 42,000 to 44,000 years old. We will go through all the caves in Spain, Portugal and Western Europe, and in the end we will get the necessary information.

By tracing the origin and change in the level of thoughts and behavior of a person in relation to time, one can understand the process of development, which is undoubtedly important in relation to the understanding of human history.

The use of symbols - the ability of one thing to replace another in the mind - is one of the traits that distinguishes our animal species from all others. This is what supports our creativity and use of speech.