Types and features of the art of primitive society. rock painting

Speleologists all over the world find cave drawings of the most ancient people in all corners of the globe. The rock paintings are perfectly preserved to this day, although they were drawn many millennia ago. There are several types of such art, which are periodically included in the World Heritage List.

As a rule, the ancient man painted the walls of the caves with the same type of scenes - he depicted hunting, human hands, various battles, the sun and animals. Our ancestors attached special significance to these drawings and invested in them a sacred meaning.

These paintings were created using various methods and materials. Ocher, animal blood and chalk were used for drawing. And hewn pictures were created on a stone with the help of a special cutter.

We offer you to make a mini-excursion to the mysterious world of caves with rock paintings created by an ancient man BC.

Magura Cave, Bulgaria

Prehistoric pictures have been found in the Bulgarian Magura Cave, not far from Sofia, which strikes with its uniqueness and length. The underworld stretched for two kilometers, and the halls of the cave are huge: its width is 50 m, and its height is 20 m.

The discovered rock painting was created using bat guano. Pictures were applied in many layers over several periods: the Paleolithic, Neolithic, Eneolithic and Bronze Age. The drawings depict figurines of ancient people and animals.

Here you can also find a painted sun, and various tools.

Cave Cueva de las Manos, Argentina

In Argentina, there is another ancient cave with a large number of rock paintings. In translation, it sounds like “The Cave of Many Hands”, as it is dominated by the handprints of our ancestors. The rock painting is located in a large hall 24 m wide and 10 m long. The approximate date of drawing the pictures is 13-9 millennium BC.

Numerous handprints are imprinted on the voluminous limestone canvas. Scientists put forward their own version of the appearance of such clear prints - ancient people put a special composition in their mouths, and then blew through a tube on their hand, which was applied to the cave wall.

There are also images of people, animals and geometric shapes.

Bhimbetka rock dwellings, India

In India, many caves with rock art have been discovered. One of them is located in the north of central India, in the state of Madhya Pradesh. The locals gave this name to the cave in honor of the hero of the Mahabharata epic. The paintings of the ancient Indians date back to the Mesolithic era.

Here you can see both worn, dim images, and very colorful and interesting drawings. Basically, various battles and ornaments are depicted here.

Serra da Capivara National Park, Brazil

In the Brazilian national park Serra da Capivara, there is a cave of ancient people, the walls of which have preserved drawings that were drawn 50 thousand years ago.

Scientists have discovered about 300 different arts and architectural monuments here. The cave is dominated by drawings of animals and other representatives of the Paleolithic era.

Laas Gaal cave complex, Somaliland

In the African Republic of Somaliland, archaeologists have discovered the Laas-Gaal cave complex, on the walls of which pictures of the times of 8-9 and 3 millennia BC have been preserved. Ancient settlers depicted here a variety of domestic and life scenes: cattle grazing, various rituals and games.

Contemporaries who live here are not particularly interested in this rock art. And in the caves, as a rule, only shelter from the rain. A large number of drawings have not yet been studied and archaeologists continue to explore them.

Rock art of Tadrart Acacus, Libya

There is a hall of Bulls and a palace hall of Cats. Unfortunately, in 1998, these masterpieces of painting were almost spoiled by mold. Therefore, in order to avoid this, in 2008 the cave was closed.

The cave was discovered on December 18, 1994 in the south of France, in the department of Ardèche, in the steep bank of the canyon of the river of the same name, a tributary of the Rhone, near the town of Pont d'Arc, by three speleologists Jean-Marie Chauvet, Eliette Brunel Deschamps and Christian Hillaire.

All of them already had extensive experience in exploring caves, including those containing traces of prehistoric man. The half-filled entrance to the then nameless cave was already known to them, but the cave had not yet been explored. When Eleth, squeezing through a narrow opening, saw a large cavity stretching into the distance, she knew that she needed to return to the car behind the stairs. It was already evening, they even doubted whether they should postpone further examination, but nevertheless they returned behind the stairs and went down into the wide passage.

The researchers stumbled upon a cave gallery, where a flashlight beam picked out an ocher spot on the wall from the darkness. It turned out to be a "portrait" of a mammoth. No other cave of the south-east of France, rich in "murals", can be compared with the newly discovered one, named after Chauvet, neither in size, nor in the preservation and skill of drawings, and the age of some of them reaches 30-33 thousand years.

Speleologist Jean-Marie Chauvet, after whom the cave got its name.

The discovery of the Chauvet cave on December 18, 1994 became a sensation, which not only pushed back the appearance of primitive drawings by 5 thousand years ago, but also overturned the concept of the evolution of Paleolithic art that had developed by that time, based, in particular, on the classification of the French scientist Henri Leroy-Gourhan . According to his theory (as well as according to most other specialists), the development of art went from primitive forms to more complex ones, and then the earliest drawings from Chauvet should generally belong to the pre-figurative stage (dots, spots, stripes, winding lines, other scribbles) . However, the researchers of Chauvet's painting found themselves face to face with the fact that the oldest images are almost the most perfect in their execution of the Paleolithic ones known to us (the Paleolithic ones are at least: it is not known what Picasso, who admired the Altamira bulls, would say if he happened to see lions and Chauvet bears!). Apparently, art is not very friendly with the evolutionary theory: avoiding any stage structure, it somehow inexplicably arises immediately, out of nothing, in highly artistic forms.

Here is what Abramova Z.A., the leading specialist in the field of Paleolithic art, writes about this: “Paleolithic art arises as a bright flash of flame in the mists of time. finds a direct continuation in subsequent eras ... It remains a mystery how the Paleolithic masters achieved such high perfection and what were the paths along which the echoes of the art of the ice age penetrated the brilliant work of Picasso "(quoted from: Sher Ya. When and how did art arise? ).

(source - Donsmaps.com)

The drawing of black rhinoceroses from Chauvet is considered the oldest in the world (32.410 ± 720 years ago; information on a certain "new" dating comes across on the Web, giving Chauvet painting from 33 to 38 thousand years, but without credible references).

At the moment, this is the oldest example of human creativity, the beginning of art, not burdened with history. Typically, Paleolithic art is dominated by drawings of animals that people hunted - horses, cows, deer, and so on. The walls of the Chauvet are covered with images of predators - cave lions, panthers, owls and hyenas. There are drawings depicting a rhinoceros, tarpans and a number of other animals of the Ice Age.

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In addition, in no other cave there are so many images of a woolly rhinoceros, an animal that was not inferior to a mammoth in terms of “dimensions” and strength. In terms of size and strength, the woolly rhinoceros was almost as good as the mammoth, its weight reached 3 tons, the body length was 3.5 m, the size of the front horn was 130 cm. The rhinoceros died out at the end of the Pleistocene, before the mammoth and the cave bear. Unlike mammoths, rhinos were not herd animals. Probably because this powerful animal, although it was a herbivore, had the same vicious disposition as their modern relatives. This is evidenced by the scenes of violent "rock" fights of rhinos from Chauvet.

The cave is located in the south of France, on the steep bank of the canyon of the Ardege River, a tributary of the Rhone, in a very picturesque place, in the vicinity of the Pont d'Arc ("Arched Bridge"). This natural bridge is formed in the rock by a huge ravine up to 60 meters high.

The cave itself is "mothballed". Entrance to it is open exclusively to a limited circle of scientists. Yes, and those are allowed to enter it only twice a year, in spring and autumn, and work there for only a couple of weeks for several hours a day. Unlike Altamira and Lascaux, Chauvet has not been "cloned" yet, so ordinary people like you and me will have to admire the reproductions, which we will certainly do, but a little later.

"In the fifteen-plus years since the discovery, there have been many more people who have been to the top of Everest than have seen these drawings," writes Adam Smith in a review of Werner Herzog's documentary on Chauve. Haven't tested it, but sounds good.

So, the famous German film director, by some miracle, managed to get permission to shoot. The film "The Cave of Forgotten Dreams" was filmed in 3D and screened at the Berlin Film Festival in 2011, which, presumably, attracted the attention of the general public to Chauvet. It is not good for us to lag behind the public.

Researchers agree that the caves containing drawings in such a quantity were clearly not intended for habitation and were not prehistoric art galleries, but were sanctuaries, places of rituals, in particular, the initiation of young men entering adulthood (more on this evidenced, for example, by preserved baby footprints).

In the four "halls" of the Chauvet, along with connecting passages with a total length of about 500 meters, more than three hundred perfectly preserved drawings depicting various animals, including large-scale multi-figure compositions, were found.

Eliette Brunel Deschamps and Christian Hillair - participants in the opening of the Chauvet cave.

The murals also answered the question - did tigers or lions live in prehistoric Europe? It turned out - the second. Ancient drawings of cave lions always show them without a mane, which suggests that, unlike their African or Indian relatives, they either did not have one, or it was not so impressive. Often these images show the tuft on the tail characteristic of lions. The coloring of the wool, apparently, was one-color.

In the art of the Paleolithic, for the most part, drawings of animals from the "menu" of primitive people appear - bulls, horses, deer (although this is not entirely accurate: it is known, for example, that for the inhabitants of Lasko the main "forage" animal was the reindeer, while on on the walls of the cave, it is found in single copies). In general, one way or another, commercial ungulates predominate. Chauvet in this sense is unique in the abundance of images of predators - cave lions and bears, as well as rhinos. It makes sense to dwell on the latter in more detail. Such a number of rhinos, as in Chauvet, is no longer found in any cave.

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It is noteworthy that the first "artists" who left their mark on the walls of some Paleolithic caves, including Chauvet, were ... bears: in places, engraving and painting were done right on top of the traces of mighty claws, the so-called griffads.

In the late Pleistocene, at least two species of bears could coexist: brown bears have survived successfully to this day, and their relatives - cave bears (large and small) died out, unable to adapt to the damp dusk of the caves. The big cave bear wasn't just big, it was huge. Its weight reached 800-900 kg, the diameter of the found skulls is about half a meter. From a fight with such an animal in the depths of a cave, a person, most likely, could not have emerged victorious, but some zoologists are inclined to assume that, despite the frightening size, this animal was slow, non-aggressive and did not pose a real danger.

An image of a cave bear made in red ocher in one of the first rooms.

The oldest Russian paleozoologist, Professor N.K. Vereshchagin believes that "among the hunters of the Stone Age, cave bears were a kind of beef cattle that did not require care for grazing and feeding." The appearance of the cave bear is conveyed in Chauvet as distinctly nowhere. It seems to have played a special role in the life of primitive communities: the beast was depicted on rocks and pebbles, its figurines were molded from clay, its teeth were used as pendants, the skin probably served as a bed, the skull was preserved for ritual purposes. So, in Chauvet, a similar skull was found, resting on a rocky foundation, which most likely indicates the existence of a bear cult.

The woolly rhinoceros died out a little earlier than the mammoth (according to various sources, from 15-20 to 10 thousand years ago), and, at least, in the drawings of the Madeleine period (15-10 thousand years BC), it almost never meets. In Chauvet, we generally see a two-horned rhinoceros with larger horns, without any trace of wool. Perhaps this is Merck's rhinoceros, which lived in southern Europe, but is much rarer than its woolly relative. The length of its front horn could be up to 1.30 m. In a word, the monster was something else.

There are practically no images of people. There are only chimera-like figures - for example, a man with a bison's head. No traces of human habitation were found in the Chauvet cave, but in some places on the floor footprints of the primitive visitors of the cave were preserved. According to researchers, the cave was a place for magical rituals.

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Previously, researchers believed that several stages could be distinguished in the development of primitive painting. At first, the drawings were very primitive. The skill came later, with experience. More than one thousand years had to pass for the drawings on the walls of the caves to reach their perfection.

Chauvet's discovery shattered this theory. The French archaeologist Jean Clott, having carefully examined Chauvet, stated that our ancestors must have learned to draw even before moving to Europe. And they arrived here about 35,000 years ago. The most ancient images from the Chauvet cave are very perfect works of painting, in which one can see both perspective and chiaroscuro, and different angles, etc.

Interestingly, the artists of the Chauvet Cave used methods not applicable anywhere else. Before drawing the picture, the walls were scraped and leveled. Ancient artists, having first scratched the contours of the animal, gave them the necessary volume with paints. "The people who painted this were great artists," confirms French rock-artist Jean Clotte.

A detailed study of the cave will take more than a dozen years. However, it is already clear that its total length is more than 500 m at one level, the height of the ceilings is from 15 to 30 m. Four successive "halls" and numerous side branches. In the first two rooms, the images are made in red ocher. In the third - engravings and black figures. There are many bones of ancient animals in the cave, and in one of the halls there are traces of the cultural layer. Found about 300 images. The painting is well preserved.

(source - Flickr.com)

There is speculation that such images with multiple contours layered on top of each other are some kind of primitive animation. When a torch was quickly moved along the drawing in a cave immersed in darkness, the rhinoceros "came to life", and one can imagine what effect this had on the cave "spectators" - the "Arrival of the train" by the Lumiere brothers is resting.

There are other considerations in this regard. For example, that a group of animals is thus depicted in perspective. Nevertheless, the same Herzog in his film adheres to "our" version, and you can trust him in matters of "moving pictures".

Now the Chauvet cave is closed to public access, since any noticeable change in air humidity can damage the wall paintings. The right of access, only for a few hours and subject to restrictions, can be obtained by only a few archaeologists. The cave has been cut off from the outside world since the Ice Age due to the fall of the rock in front of its entrance.

The drawings of the Chauvet Cave amaze with the knowledge of the laws of perspective (the drawings of mammoths overlapping each other) and the ability to cast shadows - until now it was believed that this technique was discovered several millennia later. And for a whole eternity before the idea dawned on Seurat, primitive artists discovered pointillism: the image of one animal, it seems to be a bison, consists entirely of red dots.

But the most surprising thing is that, as already mentioned, the artists prefer rhinos, lions, cave bears and mammoths. Usually, the animals that were hunted served as models for rock art. "From all the bestiaries of that era, artists choose the most predatory, most dangerous animals," says archaeologist Margaret Conkey from the University of Berkeley in California. Depicting animals that were clearly not on the menu of the Paleolithic cuisine, but symbolized danger, strength, power, the artists, according to Klott, "learned their essence."

Archaeologists have paid attention to how exactly the images are included in the space of the wall. In one of the halls, a cave bear without a lower body is depicted in red ocher, so that it seems, Clott says, "as if he were coming out of the wall." In the same hall, archaeologists also found images of two stone goats. The horns of one of them are natural crevices in the wall, which the artist expanded.

Image of a horse in a niche (source - Donsmaps.com)

Rock art clearly played a significant role in the spiritual life of prehistoric people. This can be confirmed by two large triangles (symbols of the feminine and fertility?) and the image of a creature with human legs, but with the head and body of a buffalo. Probably, the people of the Stone Age hoped in this way to appropriate at least partially the power of animals. The cave bear, apparently, occupied a special position. 55 bear skulls, one of which lies on a fallen boulder, as if on an altar, suggest a cult of this beast. Which also explains the choice of the Chauvet cave by the artists - dozens of potholes in the floor indicate that it was a hibernation place for giant bears.

Ancient people came again and again to look at the rock art. The 10-meter "horse panel" shows traces of soot left by torches that were fixed in the wall after it was covered with paintings. These marks, according to Konka, are on top of a layer of mineralized deposits covering the images. If painting is the first step towards spirituality, then the ability to appreciate it is undoubtedly the second.

At least 6 books and dozens of scientific articles have been published about Chauvet Cave, not counting sensational materials in the general press, four large albums of beautiful color illustrations with accompanying text have been published and translated into major European languages. The documentary film Cave of Forgotten Dreams 3D is released on December 15 in Russia. The director of the picture is the German Werner Herzog.

picture Cave of Forgotten Dreams appreciated at the 61st Berlin Film Festival. More than a million people went to see the film. It is the highest grossing documentary film of 2011.

According to new data, the age of the coal with which the drawings on the wall of the Chauvet cave are drawn is 36,000 years old, and not 31,000, as previously thought.

Refined methods of radiocarbon dating show that the settlement of modern man (Homo sapiens) in Central and Western Europe began 3 thousand years earlier than thought, and proceeded faster. The time of joint residence of sapiens and Neanderthals in most parts of Europe has decreased from about 10 to 6 or less thousand years. The final extinction of European Neanderthals may also have occurred several millennia earlier.

Renowned British archaeologist Paul Mellars has published a review of recent advances in radiocarbon dating that have significantly changed our understanding of the chronology of events that took place over 25,000 years ago.

The accuracy of radiocarbon dating has increased dramatically in recent years due to two factors. First, there appeared methods of high-quality purification of organic substances, primarily collagen, isolated from ancient bones, from all impurities. When it comes to very ancient samples, even a tiny admixture of foreign carbon can lead to serious distortions. For example, if a 40,000-year-old sample contains only 1% of modern carbon, this would reduce the "radiocarbon age" by as much as 7,000 years. As it turned out, most of the ancient archaeological finds contain such impurities, so their age was systematically underestimated.

The second source of errors, which has finally been eliminated, is related to the fact that the content of the radioactive isotope 14C in the atmosphere (and, consequently, in the organic matter formed in different eras) is not constant. The bones of people and animals that lived during periods of high levels of 14C in the atmosphere initially contained more of this isotope than expected, and therefore their age was again underestimated. In recent years, a number of extremely accurate measurements have been made that have made it possible to reconstruct the fluctuations of 14C in the atmosphere over the past 50 millennia. For this, unique marine deposits were used in some areas of the World Ocean, where precipitation accumulated very quickly, Greenland ice, cave stalagmites, coral reefs, etc. In all these cases, it was possible to compare radiocarbon dates for each layer with others obtained on the basis of ratios of oxygen isotopes 18O/16O or uranium and thorium.

As a result, correction scales and tables were developed, which made it possible to sharply improve the accuracy of radiocarbon dating of samples older than 25 thousand years. What did the updated dates say?

It was previously believed that modern humans (Homo sapiens) appeared in southeastern Europe about 45,000 years ago. From here they gradually settled in a western and northwestern direction. The settlement of Central and Western Europe continued, according to "uncorrected" radiocarbon dates, for about 7 thousand years (43-36 thousand years ago); the average advance rate is 300 meters per year. Refined dates show that the settlement was faster and began earlier (46-41 thousand years ago; the rate of advancement is up to 400 meters per year). Approximately at the same rate, an agricultural culture later spread in Europe (10-6 thousand years ago), which also came from the Middle East. It is curious that both waves of settlement followed two parallel paths: the first along the Mediterranean coast from Israel to Spain, the second along the Danube valley, from the Balkans to South Germany and further to Western France.

In addition, it turned out that the period of cohabitation of modern humans and Neanderthals in most parts of Europe was significantly shorter than thought (not 10,000 years, but only about 6,000), and in some areas, for example, in western France, even less - only 1-2 thousand years. According to updated dates, some of the brightest examples of cave painting turned out to be much older than it was thought; the beginning of the Orignac era, marked by the appearance of various complex products made of bone and horn, also moved back in time (41,000 thousand years ago, according to new ideas).

Paul Mellars believes that the earlier published dates of the latest Neanderthal sites (in Spain and Croatia; both sites, according to "unspecified" radiocarbon dating, are 31-28 thousand years old) also need to be revised. In fact, these finds are most likely several millennia older.

All this shows that the indigenous Neanderthal population of Europe fell under the onslaught of the Middle Eastern newcomers much faster than thought. The superiority of the sapiens - technological or social - was too great, and neither the physical strength of the Neanderthals, nor their endurance, nor their adaptability to the cold climate could save the doomed race.

Chauvet's painting is amazing in many ways. Take, for example, angles. It was common for cave artists to depict animals in profile. Of course, this is also typical for most of the drawings here, but there are breaks, as in the above fragment, where the bison's muzzle is given in three quarters. In the following figure, you can also see a rare frontal image:

Maybe this is an illusion, but a distinct feeling of composition is created - the lions are sniffing in anticipation of the prey, but they still do not see the bison, and he clearly tensed up and froze, feverishly thinking where to run. True, judging by the dull look, it looks bad.

Remarkable running bison:

(source - Donsmaps.com)

At the same time, the "face" of each horse is purely individual:

(source - istmira.com)

The following panel with horses is probably the most famous and widely distributed among the people from the images of Chauvet:

(source - popular-archaeology.com)

In the recently released science fiction film Prometheus, the cave, which promises the discovery of an extraterrestrial civilization that once visited our planet, is copied clean from Chauvet, including this wonderful group, to which people who are completely inappropriate here are added.

Frame from the film "Prometheus" (dir. R. Scott, 2012)

You and I both know that there are no people on the walls of the Chauvet. What is not, is not. There are bulls.

(source - Donsmaps.com)

During the Pliocene and especially during the Pleistocene, ancient hunters exerted significant pressure on nature. The idea that the extinction of the mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, cave bear, cave lion is associated with warming and the end of the ice age was first questioned by the Ukrainian paleontologist I.G. Pidoplichko, who expressed the then-seeming seditious hypothesis that man was to blame for the extinction of the mammoth. Later discoveries confirmed the validity of these assumptions. The development of methods of radiocarbon analysis showed that the last mammoths ( Elephas primigenius) lived at the very end of the Ice Age, and in some places survived until the beginning of the Holocene. The remains of a thousand mammoths were found at the Predmost site of a Paleolithic man (Czechoslovakia). There are mass finds of mammoth bones (more than 2 thousand individuals) at the Volchya Griva site near Novosibirsk, which are 12 thousand years old. The last mammoths in Siberia lived only 8-9 thousand years ago. The destruction of the mammoth as a species is undoubtedly the result of the activities of ancient hunters.

An important character in Chauvet's painting was a big-horned deer.

The art of the Upper Paleolithic animalists, along with paleontological and archaeozoological finds, serves as an important source of information about what animals our ancestors hunted. Until recently, the Late Paleolithic drawings from the Lascaux caves in France (17 thousand years) and Altamira in Spain (15 thousand years) were considered the oldest and most complete, but later the Chauvet caves were discovered, which gives us a new range of images of the mammalian fauna of that time. Along with relatively rare drawings of a mammoth (among them is an image of a mammoth, strikingly reminiscent of the mammoth Dima found in the permafrost of the Magadan Region) or an alpine ibex ( Capra ibex) there are many images of two-horned rhinos, cave bears ( Ursus spelaeus), cave lions ( Panthera spelaea), tarpanov ( Equus gmelini).

The images of rhinos in the Chauvet Cave raise many questions. This is undoubtedly not a woolly rhinoceros - the drawings depict a two-horned rhinoceros with larger horns, without traces of wool, with a pronounced skin fold, characteristic of living species for a one-horned Indian rhinoceros ( Rhinocerus indicus). Maybe it's Merck's rhinoceros ( Dicerorhinus kirchbergensis), who survived in southern Europe until the end of the Late Pleistocene? However, if from the woolly rhinoceros, which was the object of hunting in the Paleolithic and disappeared by the beginning of the Neolithic, rather numerous remnants of skin with hair, horny growths on the skull were preserved (even the only stuffed animal of this species in the world is kept in Lvov), then from the Merck rhinoceros we have come down to only bone remains, and keratin "horns" were not preserved. Thus, the discovery in the Chauvet Cave raises the question: what kind of rhino was known to its inhabitants? Why are the rhinos from the Chauvet Cave shown in herds? It is very likely that Paleolithic hunters are also to blame for the disappearance of the Merck rhinoceros.

Paleolithic art does not know the concepts of good and evil. Both the peacefully grazing rhinoceros and the lions ensconced in ambush are parts of a single nature, from which the artist himself does not separate himself. Of course, you can’t get into the head of a Cro-Magnon man and don’t talk “for life” when you meet, but I’m close and, at least, I understand such an idea that art at the dawn of mankind still does not oppose nature in any way, a person is in harmony with the outside world. Every thing, every stone or tree, not to mention animals, is considered by him as carrying meaning, as if the whole world were a huge living museum. At the same time, there is no reflection yet, and the questions of being are not raised. This is such a pre-cultural, heavenly state. Of course, we will not be able to fully feel it (as well as return to paradise), but suddenly we will be able to at least touch it, communicating through tens of millennia with the authors of these amazing creations.

We do not see them resting alone. Always hunting, and always almost a whole pride.

In general, the admiration of primitive man for the huge, strong and fast animals surrounding him, whether it be a big-horned deer, a bison or a bear, is understandable. It is even somehow ridiculous to put yourself next to them. He didn't set it. We have a lot to learn, filling our virtual "caves" with our own or family photos in immeasurable quantities. Yes, something, but narcissism was not characteristic of the first people. But the same bear was depicted with the greatest care and trepidation:

The gallery ends with the strangest drawing in the Chauvet, with a definite cult purpose. It is located in the farthest corner of the grotto and is made on a rocky ledge, which has (for good reason, presumably) a phallic shape.

In literature, this character is usually referred to as a "sorcerer" or taurocephalus. In addition to the bull's head, we see another, lion's, female legs and a deliberately enlarged, let's say, bosom, which forms the center of the entire composition. Against the background of their colleagues in the Paleolithic workshop, the craftsmen who painted this sanctuary look like pretty avant-garde artists. We know individual images of the so-called. "venus", male sorcerers in the form of animals and even scenes hinting at intercourse of an ungulate with a woman, but to mix all of the above so thickly ... It is assumed (see, for example, http://www.ancient-wisdom.co.uk/ francech auvet.htm) that the image of the female body was the earliest, and the heads of a lion and a bull were completed later. Interestingly, there is no overlay of later drawings on the previous ones. Obviously, the preservation of the integrity of the composition was part of the artist's plans.

and look again at and

Long ago, our ancient ancestors lived on Earth. Primitive people were not full rulers of the prehistoric planet, on the contrary, their life was very difficult and full of dangers. But in the future, it was they who became the rulers of the Earth.

In this lesson we will show how to draw such a primitive man in stages.

To begin with, we draw the contours of the head, similar to a triangle, the edges of which are rounded. We draw the axis of the torso, legs and arms, do not forget to draw the lines of the hips and shoulders.

We draw a rounded line in the contour of the head, which will delimit the face and mane of a primitive man. With ovals on the body, we highlight the protruding places, the ovals will help draw the very figure of the Neanderthal. Two vertical lines mark the borders of the body.

We proceed to the most interesting, we draw the figure of our ancient relative. The figure should be massive, the arms and legs should look strong, the stomach and chest should sag, the shoulders should be sloping. The arms should be longer than modern humans, they should look a little like the hands of a monkey. In the form of trapezoids, draw the feet. Draw a hanging forehead on the face of a Neanderthal with a line, finish drawing the eyes and outline the mouth and nose.

With the help of an eraser, we erase all the auxiliary lines and start drawing the face of our ancient man. Let's draw a narrow forehead hanging over a large face. We draw arched, shaggy eyebrows that will give the face a more formidable expression. Draw high cheekbones. With strokes under the large nose, draw a beard and mustache. Draw hair on top of the head.

We outline the axis of the large club in the left hand. Four lines draw the fingers. Let's throw a loincloth over our primitive man to keep him warm. On the elbows, knees and stomach, we outline the folds of the skin with strokes - to make the picture realistic.

Remove the extra leg lines from the loincloth. Draw fingers on the feet. With small and light strokes we will create a hairline on the body of a primitive man. Bear skin can also be decorated with hair. Draw a mighty club along the previously drawn axis.

Well, that's all, our primitive man is ready!

About ancient rock paintings.

All over the world, speleologists in deep caves find confirmation of the existence of ancient people. Rock paintings have been excellently preserved for many millennia. There are several types of masterpieces - pictograms, petroglyphs, geoglyphs. Important monuments of human history are regularly included in the World Heritage Register.

Usually on the walls of the caves there are common plots, such as hunting, battle, images of the sun, animals, human hands. People in ancient times attached sacred significance to the paintings, they believed that they were helping themselves in the future.

Images were applied by various methods and materials. For artistic creation, animal blood, ocher, chalk and even bat guano were used. A special type of murals are hewn murals, they were beaten out in stone with the help of a special cutter.

Many caves are not well studied and are limited in visiting, while others, on the contrary, are open to tourists. However, most of the precious cultural heritage is lost without supervision, without finding its researchers.

Below is a short excursion into the world of the most interesting caves with prehistoric rock paintings.

Ancient rock paintings.

Bulgaria is famous not only for the hospitality of the inhabitants and the indescribable color of the resorts, but also for the caves. One of them, with the sonorous name of Magura, is located north of Sofia, not far from the town of Belogradchik. The total length of the cave galleries is more than two kilometers. The halls of the cave have colossal dimensions, each of them is about 50 meters wide and 20 meters high. The pearl of the cave is a rock painting made directly on the surface covered with bat guano. The murals are multi-layered, here are a number of paintings from the Paleolithic, Neolithic, Eneolithic and Bronze Ages. The drawings of ancient Homo sapiens depict figures of dancing villagers, hunters, many outlandish animals, constellations. The sun, plants, tools are also represented. Here begins the story of the festivities of the ancient era and the solar calendar, scientists assure.

The cave with the poetic name Cueva de las Manos (Spanish for “Cave of Many Hands”) is located in the province of Santa Cruz, exactly one hundred miles from the nearest settlement, the city of Perito Moreno. The art of the rock painting in the hall, 24 meters long and 10 meters high, dates back to 13-9 millennium BC. An amazing painting on limestone is a three-dimensional canvas, decorated with handprints. Scientists have built a theory about how the surprisingly crisp and clear handprints turned out. Prehistoric people took a special composition, then they put it in their mouths, and through a tube they blew it with force onto a hand attached to the wall. In addition, there are stylized images of a man, rhea, guanaco, cats, geometric figures with ornaments, the process of hunting and observing the sun.

Enchanting India offers tourists not only the delights of oriental palaces and charming dances. In north central India, there are huge mountain formations of weathered sandstone with many caves. Once upon a time, ancient people lived in natural shelters. About 500 dwellings with traces of human habitation have been preserved in the state of Madhya Pradesh. The Indians called the rock dwellings the name of Bhimbetka (on behalf of the hero of the Mahabharata epic). The art of the ancients here dates back to the Mesolithic era. Some of the paintings are minor, and some of the hundreds of images are very typical and vivid. 15 rock masterpieces are available for contemplation of those who wish. Mostly, patterned ornaments and battle scenes are depicted here.

Rare animals and venerable scientists find shelter in the Serra da Capivara National Park. And 50 thousand years ago here, in the caves, our distant ancestors found shelter. Presumably, this is the oldest community of hominids in South America. The park is located near the town of San Raimondo Nonato, in the central part of the state of Piauí. Experts counted more than 300 archaeological sites here. The main surviving images date back to the 25-22 millennium BC. The most amazing thing is that extinct bears and other paleofauna are painted on the rocks.

The Republic of Somaliland recently seceded from Somalia in Africa. Archaeologists in the area are interested in the Laas-Gaal cave complex. Here are rock paintings from the 8th-9th and 3rd millennium BC. On the granite walls of the majestic natural shelters, scenes of the life and life of the nomadic people of Africa are depicted: the process of grazing, ceremonies, and playing with dogs. The local population does not attach any importance to the drawings of their ancestors, and uses the caves, as in the old days, for shelter during the rain. Many of the studies have not been studied properly. In particular, there are problems with the chronological reference of the masterpieces of the Arab-Ethiopian ancient rock paintings.

Not far from Somalia, in Libya, there are also rock paintings. They are much earlier, and date back almost to the 12th millennium BC. The last of them were applied after the birth of Christ, in the first century. It is interesting to observe, following the drawings, how the fauna and flora changed in this area of ​​the Sahara. First we see elephants, rhinoceros and fauna characteristic of a rather humid climate. Also of interest is the clearly traced change in the lifestyles of the population - from hunting to settled cattle breeding, then to nomadism. To get to Tadrart Acacus, one has to cross the desert to the east of the city of Ghats.

In 1994, on a walk, by chance, Jean-Marie Chauvet discovered the cave that later became famous. She was named after the caver. In the Chauvet cave, in addition to traces of the life of ancient people, hundreds of wonderful frescoes were discovered. The most amazing and beautiful of them depict mammoths. In 1995, the cave became a state monument, and in 1997, 24-hour surveillance was introduced here to prevent damage to the magnificent heritage. Today, in order to take a look at the incomparable rock art of the Cro-Magnons, you need to get a special permit. In addition to mammoths, there is something to admire, here on the walls there are handprints and fingers of representatives of the Aurignacian culture (34-32 thousand years BC)

In fact, the name of the Australian national park has nothing to do with the famous Cockatoo parrots. It's just that the Europeans mispronounced the name of the Gaagudju tribe. This nation is now extinct, and there is no one to correct the ignorant. The park is inhabited by natives who have not changed their way of life since the Stone Age. For thousands of years, Indigenous Australians have been involved in rock art. Pictures were painted here already 40 thousand years ago. In addition to religious scenes and hunting, stylized stories in drawings about useful skills (educational) and magic (entertainment) are sketched here. Of the animals, extinct marsupial tigers, catfish, barramundi are depicted. All the wonders of the Arnhem Land plateau, Colpignac and the southern hills are located 171 km from the city of Darwin.

It turns out that the first Homo sapiens reached Spain in the 35th millennium BC, it was the early Paleolithic. They left outlandish rock paintings in the Altamira cave. The art artifacts on the walls of the huge cave date back to both the 18th and 13th millennia. In the last period, polychrome figures are interesting, a kind of combination of engraving and painting, the acquisition of realistic details. The famous bison, deer and horses, or rather, their beautiful images on the walls of Altamira, often end up in textbooks for middle school students. The cave of Altamira is located in the Cantabrian region.

Lascaux is not just a cave, but a whole complex of small and large cave halls located in the south of France. Not far from the caves is the legendary village of Montignac. The paintings on the walls of the cave were drawn 17 thousand years ago. And they still amaze with amazing forms, akin to modern graffiti art. Scholars especially value the Hall of the Bulls and the Palace Hall of the Cats. What prehistoric creators left there is easy to guess. In 1998, the rock masterpieces were almost destroyed by mold, which arose due to an improperly installed air conditioning system. And in 2008, Lasko was closed to save more than 2,000 unique drawings.

Photo Travel Guide

September 12, 1940 Four French teenagers accidentally stumble upon a narrow hole formed after a fall of a pine tree, which was hit by lightning. They decided that this was the exit from the underground passage leading to the nearby ruins of the castle, and hoped to find a treasure there. But when they got inside and saw huge drawings on the walls, they realized that this was not just an underground passage, and they reported their find to the teacher. This is how the Lascaux cave was discovered.

All the walls of the cave were completely covered with amazing drawings of animals - bulls, bison, rhinos, horses, deer, even a unicorn, painted with ocher, soot and marl (rock, like clay) and circled in dark contours. Some of the drawings were real size!
The scientist A. Breil spent several months in this cave, making all kinds of measurements and studying primitive painting. At first, art historians doubted the authenticity of the drawings, but a thorough examination rejected all suspicions of forgery, and the age of the images was estimated at 15,000 years.

Very soon, many tourists began to come to the Lasko cave, and soon scientists noticed that the drawings were slowly beginning to collapse. This was due to the excess carbon dioxide exhaled by the people who visited the caves. Soon, tourists were no longer allowed into the Lasko cave and it was mothballed, and a copy of it, Lasko II, was created next to it. It is a concrete structure, inside of which the petroglyphs of selected parts of Lascaux were faithfully reproduced.

Osya and I really liked that on the official website you can take a virtual tour of the cave. In some places, you can stop, zoom in on the drawing, examine it and read a short text about it (there is no Russian language on the site, but there is English). Here is the site: http://www.lascaux.culture.fr/#/en/02_00.xml

The figures of animals are drawn mainly in profile, in motion. Interestingly, when several animals of different sizes and different colors accumulate in one scene at once, and at the same time they are drawn so that one figure overlaps another, then a cartoon feeling is created if you move the window on the site. Probably, the same effect will be if you move next to these drawings with a lantern in your hands, it's a pity that we can't check :)

There is only one image of a man on the walls of the cave: here you can see four figures combined into one compositional space - a bison pierced by a spear, a lying man, a small bird and a fuzzy silhouette of a receding rhinoceros. The bison stands in profile, but his head is turned towards the viewer. The man is depicted schematically, as in children's drawings. Everything is drawn with a thick black line and not filled with color. Scientists are still arguing what exactly is depicted in this picture: did the bison kill a man, and did the nasorok inflict a mortal wound on the bison? Or is it the other way around?

I showed Osa just such a picture and told that the paints were then mineral. The basis of black paint was manganese, and red - iron oxide. Pieces of minerals were ground into powder on stone slabs, or on animal bones, for example, on a bison shoulder blade. This colored powder was kept in hollowed out bones or leather pouches worn on the belt.

This picture shows an image of a huge bull. The figure of the right bull is the largest rock art in the world, its length is 5.2 meters.
To make it clearer what five meters is, we measured this distance in the apartment and figured out how huge the bull was.

Interestingly, in the Lascaux cave there is an image of a mythical animal - a unicorn:

But this big black bull, 3.71 meters long, is interesting in that it was painted with paint sprayed through a special tube:

What you can do if the child is interested in these drawings:

- you can take craft paper, wrinkle it properly (we didn’t guess right away, but when we came across a crumpled piece of wrapping paper, Osya himself noticed that it turns out to be more textured and the surface resembles the surface of a stone) and hang it on the wall to draw memorable ones on it figures in charcoal, sanguine or multi-colored pastel. And you can paint if the child does not want to get his hands dirty. Most importantly, do not forget to cover the floor around.

And you can make natural paints - from clay and berries, and paint animals with them. And then make a contour separately with charcoal.

You can also try painting with homemade brushes. Offer the child a small stick, some grass/flower stems, and some string. Will he guess what to do with them? And if you cut off the top layer from the sponge for washing dishes, then you can play that this is the skin of an animal that ancient people used to paint over a large area of ​​the picture. Shall we try?

To draw drawings, you can simply sit on a table or on the floor, or you can imagine that we are in a cave and draw on its walls and vaults. Once, when we were playing primitive people, we pasted over the place under the table with paper, and Osya left the rock carvings lying on his back.

This time we hung the drawings under the desk, then Osya filled up the entrance to the "cave" with cushions from the sofa, and we played as if we ourselves were walking and unexpectedly found such a treasure - a cave with ancient rock paintings. In the evening, when it was already dark, we turned off the light and climbed into the cave with flashlights and candles and looked at the images on the walls.