What are the cave paintings of ancient people called? How and with what people drew from primitive times to the Middle Ages

September 12, 1940 Four French teenagers accidentally stumbled upon a narrow hole created by the fall of a pine tree, which was struck by lightning. They decided that this was the exit from an underground passage leading to the nearby ruins of a castle, and hoped to find 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 reported their discovery 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, rhinoceroses, horses, deer, even a unicorn, drawn with ocher, soot and marl (a rock like clay) and outlined in dark outlines. Some of the drawings were real size!
The scientist A. Breuil 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 thousand years.

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

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, look at it and read a short text about it (there is no Russian language on the site, but there is English). Here is the website: http://www.lascaux.culture.fr/#/en/02_00.xml

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

On the walls of the cave there is only one image of a person: 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 retreating rhinoceros. The bison stands in profile, but its head is turned towards the viewer. The person is depicted schematically, as in children's drawings. Everything is drawn with a thick black line and is not filled with color. Scientists are still arguing about what exactly is shown in this picture: did the bison kill the man, and did the horse inflict a mortal wound on the bison? Or is it the other way around?

I showed Osya this picture and told him that the paints were mineral back then. The black paint was based on manganese, and the red paint was based on iron oxide. Pieces of minerals were ground into powder on stone slabs or on animal bones, for example, on the shoulder blade of a bison. This colored powder was stored in hollowed out bones or leather bags that were worn on the belt.

In this picture you can see the 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 estimated 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 because it was painted with paint sprayed through a special tube:

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

- you can take craft paper, crumple it properly (we didn’t figure it out right away, but when we came across a crumpled piece of wrapping paper, Osya himself noticed that it turned out more textured and the surface resembled the surface of a stone) and hang it on the wall to draw memorable memories on it figures in charcoal, sanguine or multi-colored pastels. Or you can use paints if the child doesn’t want to get his hands dirty. The main thing is not to forget to cover the floor around it.

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

You can also try painting with homemade brushes. Offer your child a small stick, some grass/flower stems, and some string. Will he guess what can be done with them? And if you cut off the top layer of a dishwashing sponge, you can play that it is an animal skin that ancient people used to paint over a large area of the design. Shall we try?

To draw pictures, 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 arches. Once, when we were playing at primitive people, we covered the area under the table with paper, and Osya left rock carvings while lying on his back.

This time we hung the drawings under the desk, then Osya blocked the entrance to the “cave” with pillows 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.

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

Chauvet Cave

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

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, a 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, sun and stars.

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

Tadrart-Akakus

Tadrart-Akakus is a mountain range in the Ghat Desert in western Libya, part of the Sahara. The massif is famous for its prehistoric rock art, which spans the period 12,000 BC. e. - 100 AD e. and reflects 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 Everyday life, for example, dancing and playing musical instruments.

Serra da Capivara - national park, located in the northeastern part of Brazil in the east of the state of Piaui. The park contains many caves containing examples of prehistoric art. The drawings, in great detail, depict animals and trees, as well as scenes from hunting. A famous site of the park, Pedra Furada contains the oldest remains human activity on the continent, which significantly changed the idea of the settlement of America. In order to preserve numerous prehistoric exhibits and drawings, the Brazilian government created this national park.

The Lascaux Cave is located in southwest France and is famous for its cave 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 characters. The cave is one of the places on the planet where you will not be allowed.

Bhimbetka rock shelters are an archaeological site consisting 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 designs are in red and white colors 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 millennia BC. e. and depict mainly cows, people, giraffes, wolves or dogs.

The Altamira Cave is located near the town 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 famous for its ancient cave paintings from the Upper Paleolithic era (35 - 12 thousand years ago), which depict bison, horses, wild boars, human handprints 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 valley of the Pinturas River. Known for archaeological and paleontological finds. First of all, these are cave 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 ritual. In addition to hands, on the walls of the cave there are depictions of guanacos, rheas, cats and other animals, as well as scenes of hunting them.

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Prehistoric rock art is the most abundant evidence available of humanity's first steps in the fields of art, knowledge and culture. It is found in most countries of the world, from the tropics to the Arctic, and in a wide variety of places - from deep caves to mountain heights.

Several tens of millions of rock paintings and artistic motifs have already been discovered, and more are being discovered every year. This solid, enduring, cumulative monument of the past is clear evidence that our distant ancestors developed complex social systems.

Some common false claims about the origins of art had to be rejected at their very beginning. Art, as such, did not arise suddenly; it developed gradually with the enrichment of human experience. By the time the famous cave art appeared in France and Spain, it is believed that artistic traditions were already fairly developed, at least in South Africa, Lebanon, Eastern Europe, India and Australia, and no doubt in many other regions that have yet to be adequately explored.

When did people first decide to generalize reality? This is an interesting question for art historians and archaeologists, but it also has broad interest given that the idea of cultural primacy has an influence on the formation of ideas about racial, ethnic and national value, even on fantasy. For example, the claim that art originated in the caves of Western Europe encourages the creation of myths about European cultural superiority. Secondly, the origins of art should be considered closely related to the emergence of other purely human qualities: ability to create abstract ideas and symbols, communicate in top level, develop self-image. Apart from prehistoric art, we have no real evidence from which to conclude the existence of such abilities.

THE BEGINNINGS OF ART

Artistic creativity was considered an example of “impractical” behavior, that is, behavior that seemed to have no practical purpose. The oldest clear archaeological evidence of this is the use of ocher or red iron ore (hematite), a red mineral dye removed and used by people several hundred thousand years ago. These ancient people also collected crystals and patterned fossils, colorful and unusual shape gravel. They began to distinguish between ordinary, everyday objects and unusual, exotic ones. Apparently they developed ideas about a world in which objects could be classified into different classes. Evidence first appears in South Africa, then in Asia and finally in Europe.

The oldest known cave painting was made in India two or three hundred thousand years ago. It consists of cup-shaped depressions and a sinuous line, chiseled into the sandstone of the cave. Around the same time, on various kinds of portable objects (bone, teeth, tusks and stones) found at sites primitive man, simple linear signs were made. Sets of clustered carved lines first appear in the central and Eastern Europe, they acquire a certain improvement, which makes it possible to recognize individual motifs: scribbles, crosses, arcs and sets of parallel lines.

This period, which archaeologists call the Middle Paleolithic (somewhere between 35,000 and 150,000 years ago), was decisive for the development of human mental and cognitive abilities. This was also the time when people acquired seafaring skills and groups of colonists could make journeys of up to 180 km. Regular sea navigation obviously required improvement of the communication system, that is, language.

People of this era also mined ocher and flint in several world regions. They began to build large joint houses out of bones and put stone walls inside the caves. And most importantly, they created art. In Australia, some examples of rock art were born 60,000 years ago, that is, during the era of human settlement of the continent. In hundreds of places there are objects believed to be of older origin than the art of Western Europe. But during this era, rock art also appeared in Europe. The oldest example of it that is known to us is a system of nineteen cup-like signs in a cave in France, carved on a stone slab, covering the site of a child’s burial.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this era is the cultural unanimity that reigned in the world at that time in all regions of settlement. Despite the differences in tools, undoubtedly due to differences in environment, cultural behavior was surprisingly resilient. The use of ocher and an expressively monotonous set of geometric marks indicate the existence of a universal artistic language between archaic homo sapiens, including European Neanderthals and others that we know about from fossil remains.

Figured images (sculptures) arranged in a circle first appeared in Israel (about 250-300 thousand years ago), in the form of modified natural forms, then in Siberia and central Europe(about 30-35 thousand years ago), and only then in Western Europe. Around 30,000 years ago, rock art became richer in intricate finger marks made into the soft surfaces of caves in Australia and Europe, and stenciled images of palms in France. Two-dimensional images of objects began to appear. The oldest examples, created approximately 32,000 years ago, come from France, followed by South African paintings (Namibia).

About 20,000 years ago (very recently in terms of human history) significant differences begin to form between cultures. Late Paleolithic people in Western Europe began fine traditions in both the sculptural and graphic arts of ritual and decorative consumption. Somewhere around 15,000 years ago, this tradition led to the appearance of such famous masterpieces, such as painting in the caves of Altamira (Spain) and Lescaut (France), as well as the appearance of thousands of elaborately carved figurines from stone, tusks, bone, clay and other materials. This was the time of the finest multicolored works of cave art, drawn or embossed by a certain hand of master craftsmen. However, the development of graphic traditions in other regions was not easy.

In Asia, forms of geometric art, developing, formed very perfect systems, some reminiscent of official records, others - mnemonic emblems, original texts designed to refresh the memory.

Beginning around the end of the Ice Age, about 10,000 years ago, rock art gradually expanded beyond the caves. This was not dictated by the search for new best places how (there is almost no doubt here) survival rock art through selection. Rock art is well preserved in the permanent conditions of deep limestone caves, but not on rock surfaces, which are more open to destruction. So, unquestioning spread rock art at the end of the Ice Age indicates not an increase in artistic production, but the crossing of a threshold of what ensured good preservation.

On every continent beyond Antarctica, rock art now shows diversity artistic styles and cultures, the progressive growth of the ethnic diversity of humanity on all continents, as well as the development of major religions. Even the last one historical stage the development of mass migrations, colonization and religious expansion - thoroughly reflected in rock art.

DATING

There are two main forms of rock art, petroglyphs (carving) and pictors (painting). Petroglyphic motifs were created by carving, gouging, chasing or grinding rock surfaces. In pictographs, additional substances, usually paint, were applied to the rock surface. This difference is very important; it determines approaches to dating.

The methodology for scientific dating of rock art has only been developed within the last fifteen years. Therefore, it is still in its “infancy” stage, and the dating of almost all of the world’s rock art remains in poor condition. This, however, does not mean that we have no idea about his age: there are often all kinds of landmarks that allow us to determine the approximate or at least probable age. Sometimes you are lucky enough to determine the age of a rock painting quite accurately, especially when the paint contains organic substances or microscopic inclusions that allow dating due to the radioactive carbon isotope present in them. Careful evaluation of the results of such an analysis can determine the date quite accurately. On the other hand, dating petroglyphs remains extremely difficult.

Modern methods rely on determining the age of mineral deposits that may have been deposited on rock art. But they only allow you to determine the minimum age. One way is to analyze the microscopic organic matter embedded in such mineral deposits; laser technology can be successfully used here. Today, only one method is suitable for determining the age of the petroglyphs themselves. It is based on the fact that the mineral crystals, chipped when gouging out petroglyphs, initially had sharp edges, which became blunt and rounded over time. By determining the rate of such processes on nearby surfaces whose age is known, the age of the petroglyphs can be calculated.

Several archaeological methods can also help the dating matter a little. If, for example, the rock surface is covered with archaeological layers of mud whose age can be determined, they can be used to determine the minimum age of petroglyphs. They often resort to comparison of stylistic manners in order to determine the chronological framework of rock art, although not very successfully.

Much more reliable are the methods of studying rock art, which often resemble the methods of forensic science. For example, the components of paint can tell how it was made, what tools and admixtures were used, where the dyes were taken from, and the like. Human blood, which was used as a bonding agent in glacial period, discovered in Australian rock art. Australian researchers also discovered up to forty layers of paint superimposed on each other in different places, indicating constant redrawing of the same surface over a long period of time. Like the pages of a book, these layers convey to us the history of the use of surfaces by artists of many generations. The study of such layers is just beginning and can lead to a real revolution in views.

Pollen found on brush fibers in the paint of cave paintings indicates what crops were grown by the ancient artists' contemporaries. In some French caves, characteristic paint recipes were determined from their chemical composition. Using charcoal dyes, often used for drawings, even the type of wood burned into charcoal was determined.

Rock art research has become a separate scientific discipline, and already uses many other disciplines, from geology to semiotics, from ethnology to cybernetics. His methodology involves expressiveness using electronic images of colors of very damaged, almost completely faded drawings; a wide range of specialized description methods; microscopic studies of traces left by tools and scanty sediments.

VULNERABLE MONUMENTS

Methods for preserving prehistoric monuments are also being developed and increasingly used. Copies of rock art are made (fragments of an object or even the entire object) to prevent damage to the originals. Yet many of the world's prehistoric sites are in constant danger. Acid rain dissolves the protective mineral layers that cover many petroglyphs. All the rapid flows of tourists, urban sprawl, industrial and mining development, even unskilled research contribute to the dirty work of shortening the age of invaluable artistic treasures.

Interesting and picturesque messages from the past - drawings on the walls of caves, which are up to 40 thousand years old - fascinate modern people with its brevity.

What were they for the people of ancient times? If they served only to decorate the walls, then why were they performed in remote corners of caves, in places where, most likely, they did not live?

The oldest of the found drawings were made about 40 thousand years ago, others are several tens of thousands of years younger. It is interesting that in different parts of the world the images on the walls of caves are very similar - in those days people depicted mainly ungulates and other animals that were common in their area.

The image of hands was also popular: community members put their palms to the wall and outlined them. Such pictures are truly inspiring: by pressing your palm against such an image, a person can feel as if he has formed a bridge between modern civilization and antiquity!

Below we present to your attention interesting images made by ancient people from different corners light on the walls of the caves.

Pettaker Lime Cave, Indonesia

Pettaker Cave 12 kilometers from the town of Maros. At the entrance to the cave, there are white and red outlines of hands on the ceiling - 26 images in total. The age of the drawings is about 35 thousand years. Photo: Cahyo Ramadhani/wikipedia.org

Chauvet Cave, south of France

The images, which are about 32-34 thousand years old, are placed on the walls of a limestone cave near the city of Valon-pont-d'Arc. In total, in the cave, which was discovered only in 1994, there are 300 drawings that amaze with their picturesqueness.

One of the most famous images from the Chauvet Cave. Photo: JEFF PACHOUD/AFP/Getty Images

Photo: JEFF PACHOUD/AFP/Getty Images

El Castillo Cave, Spain

El Castillo contains some of the oldest specimens cave painting in the world. The age of the images is at least 40,800 years.

Photo: cuevas.culturadecantabria.com

Covalanas Cave, Spain

The unique Kovalanas cave was inhabited by people less than 45 thousand years ago!

Photo: cuevas.culturadecantabria.com

The walls of the caves located near Covalanas and El Castillo are also decorated with numerous paintings made by people thousands of years ago. However, these caves are not so famous. Among them are Las Monedas, El Pendo, Chufin, Hornos de la Pena, Culalvera.

Lascaux Cave, France

The Lascaux cave complex in southwestern France was accidentally discovered in 1940 by a local resident, an 18-year-old boy named Marcel Ravid. The huge number of paintings on the walls, which are surprisingly well preserved, give this cave complex the right to claim the title of one of the largest galleries ancient world. The age of the images is about 17.3 thousand years.

Friends, where and how did it all start?

Maybe when ancient man Did you see your footprint in the sand?
Or, when you ran your finger along the ground, you realized that it was a fingerprint?
Or maybe when our ancestors learned to control the “fiery beast” (fire) by running the burnt end of a stick over a stone?

In any case, it is clear that a person has always been curious and even our ancestors, leaving primitive drawings on rocks and stones, wanted to convey their feelings to each other.

Exploring drawings of ancient people, it is obvious that in the process of evolution, their drawings also improved, moving from primitiveness to more complex images of people and animals.

It is known that archaeologists have found in Africa, in the Sibudu cave, rock paintings made by ancient people 49 thousand years ago! The drawings were drawn with ocher mixed with milk. Primitive people used ocher even earlier, about 250 thousand years ago, but the presence of milk in the paint was not found.

This find was strange in that the ancient people who lived 49 thousand years ago did not yet have livestock, which means they obtained milk by hunting animals. In addition to ocher, our ancestors used charcoal or burnt roots, crushed into powder, limestone.

Everyone knows Ancient Egypt paintings most popular. The history of Ancient Egyptian civilization goes back about 40 centuries! This civilization reached great heights in architecture, papyrus writing, and graphic drawings and other images.

Existence Ancient Egypt began 3000 BC. e. and ended in the 4th–7th centuries. ad.

The Egyptians loved to decorate almost everything with painting: tombs, temples, sarcophagi, various household items and dishes, statues. For paints they used: limestone (white), soot (black), iron ore (yellow and red), copper ore (blue and green).

Painting ancient egypt was meaningful, depicting people, for example, dead, providing them with services in the afterlife.

They believed in afterlife and believed that life was just an interval to another, more interesting life. Therefore, after death, the deceased was glorified in images.

No less fascinating ancient drawings and frescoes of other civilizations - Ancient Rome and Ancient Greece.

Greco-Roman antiquity began in the 7th century BC and ended in the 6th century AD. The Romans learned from the ancient Greeks how to paint walls on wet plaster.

So, for example, for paints, colored minerals mixed with egg white and animal glue. And after drying, such a fresco was covered melted wax.

But here ancient Greeks knew where The best way maintaining bright colors. The plaster they used contained lime and dried to form a clear, thin film of calcium. It was this film that made the fresco durable!

Wall frescoes ancient Greece have reached our days, thousands of years later, perfectly preserved in the same bright and rich color as when they were created.

Previously, fresco was the name given to paintings done on wet plaster. But in our time, any wall painting can be called a fresco, regardless of the technique of its execution.

In general, wall paintings or frescoes belong to monumental painting. And this has a direct bearing on me. Alfraine painting, that is, wall painting, is my main specialization, which I studied at a private school in the south of France.

You can see my works in the section >>> <<<

In the Middle Ages in Kievan Rus the walls of the cathedrals were painted with beautiful frescoes. For example, in 2016 I visited the Sofia Kyiv nature reserve in Kyiv. And in the most beautiful cathedral, founded in 1037 by the Grand Duke of Kyiv Yaroslav the Wise, wall frescoes have been preserved on the walls (the total area of the frescoes is 3000 sq. m.)

The main composition in the cathedral is portrait of the family of Yaroslav the Wise on three walls. But only portraits of the prince’s sons and daughters have survived and are well preserved. The huge frescoes, painted in the 11th century, certainly made a strong impression on me.

Also already in Middle Ages (period V – XV centuries) They used not only walls, but also wooden surfaces (for painting) for painting. For such works tempera paints were used. This paint, of course, is considered one of the oldest types of paint and was used to paint pictures until the 15th century.

Until one day Dutch painter Van Eyck did not introduce widespread use oil based paints in Europe

Tempera- These are water-based paints. Coloring powder diluted with water and chicken yolk. The history of this type of paint goes back more than 3000 years.

Sandro Botticelli/Sandro Botticelli. Left Portrait of a young woman 1480-1485, 82 x 54 cm, Frankfurt. On right Annunciation 1489-1490, tempera on wood, 150 x 156 cm, Florence

For example, in ancient Egypt sarcophagi of the pharaohs They painted it with tempera.

But they began to use canvas instead of a wooden board for painting in Western European countries only at the beginning of the 16th century. Florentine and Venetian painters painted on canvas in significant quantities.

In Russia, canvases began to be used as a basis for painting even later, only from the second half of the 17th century. But that is another story…. Or rather

So, by showing curiosity and doing a little analysis, you can trace the ways of human self-expression from primitive drawing to the true creations of the Middle Ages!!! Of course, this is not a scientific article, but only the opinion of one curious artist who likes to drip and drip into the labyrinths of the human mind.

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Ask your questions below in the comments, I usually answer all questions quickly