- What is prehistoric art?
- History of prehistoric art
- Characteristics of prehistoric art
- Periods of prehistoric art
- Examples of prehistoric art
We explain what prehistoric art was, its history and the periods it went through. In addition, examples that can still be seen today.
Some forms of prehistoric art are over 67,000 years old.What is prehistoric art?
Prehistoric art is called the different ornamental, funerary and religious manifestations made by the human being during the prehistory that have survived the centuries to reach us. This category includes both the cave paintings of the Quaternary period, as well as the Palaeolithic art or the megalithic constructions (also called Cyclopean).
As is evident, prehistoric art is a very broad category, where there are plastic and visual manifestations of different types and time sources.
Its deposits are generally found in caves and places of primitive settlements. These, for the most part, have so far been discovered in the European continent and its adjacencies, although there are also important archaeological sites in Africa, Asia Y America.
History of prehistoric art
Prehistoric art in its different meanings was a consequence of the expansion and diversification of the species human along the planet, thus giving rise to cultures and very different civilizations. Each of them had their own vision, although still primitive, of the world and of themselves.
It is known that the Homo neanderthalensis collected materials of shapes and colors eye-catching, with which to decorate their caves and say goodbye to their deceased. The first forms of prehistoric art belonged to this hominid, with more than 67,000 years old.
But the Cro-Magnons were the ones that left more and better artistic traces behind, either in the form of paintings, engravings and sculptures little. Some of them date back 35,000 years.
Characteristics of prehistoric art
Prehistoric art is extremely diverse and contains not only drawings and carvings that sought to represent real life, but also utensils, constructions, and artifacts for funeral purposes, for example. Its characteristics tend to be:
- All carved in wood, flint, bone or stone, or painted on the latter using hemetite powder and other similar pigments.
- It always presents a deep religious meaning, since the mystical or mythological was a fundamental component of the relationship of the human being with the surrounding reality.
- Always tends to abstraction, stylization, symbolism and schematics, moving away from realistic claims.
- In the case of rock art, It was found on the external or superficial walls of the caves and represents hunting scenes or indecipherable symbols.
Periods of prehistoric art
Stonehenge, made up of various menhirs, comes from the late Neolithic.
Prehistoric art covers three great chronological periods, the same ones in which the Stone age:
- Paleolithic art. The oldest and most primitive of all, it consists mostly of paintings and reliefs made with the hands or with stone instruments, by means of techniques rudimentary or using pigments extracted from ground minerals.Its two tendencies are:
- Parietal art. The decoration of the walls with artistic forms that represented hunting scenes, human representations or signs, by means of pigments in the rocky wall. These are the so-called cave paintings. It is unknown whether they were used to decorate the home, or to mark ritual sites, but they were particularly common in Europe and North Africa, especially in the intermediate region between France and Spain.
- Mobile art. Reliefs and small sculptures, mostly anthropomorphic figurines, like the different "venus", naked women carved in stone, with highly exaggerated proportions of breasts and hips compared to the rest of the body.
- Mesolithic art. The art of this period represents a transition between the ancient forms of the Paleolithic and the new ones from the Neolithic. Its best known record is that of Levantine art, originating in the eastern fringe of Spain, where ritual scenes were represented by highly schematic, almost pre-hieroglyphic figures, which is why it is also known as schematic art.
- Neolithic art. During the so-called Neolithic Revolution, in which humanity abandoned the wandering life in favor of the sedentary, prehistoric art took a turn, thus appearing new materials that were being discovered with new sedentary techniques, such as ceramics, the result of baking.
Towards the end of the period, in addition, megalithic art or megalithic architecture appears, with its enormous stone figures such as menhirs, stone galleries or dolmens, and other mysterious groupings such as those that make up the Stonehenge.
Examples of prehistoric art
Some of the most famous pieces of prehistoric art discovered are:
- The cave paintings of the Altamira Cave. Located in Spain and originating from different human occupations of the caves during the Upper Paleolithic, they show a series of signs and illustrations of animals, such as oxen or antelope, as well as remains of stones used to grind the pigment with which they were drawn on the walls and ceilings.
- The Venus of Willendorf. It was carved in stone sometime in the Paleolithic age, between 28,000 to 25,000 BC. This stone figurine found in 1908 in Willendorf, Austria, depicts a nude woman with prominent, bulging breasts and sex, carved from limestone and painted in red ocher.
- The Venus of Tan-Tan. About six centimeters high and a possible 400,000 years old, that is, contemporary with the Homo heidelbegensis, this vaguely anthropomorphic figure was found in Morocco in 1999, about 15 meters deep in the fluvial sediment of the Draa River. It is a controversial finding, since many scientists think that its similarity to the human being could be merely accidental.
- The Menhir of Mollet. Coming from the late Neolithic, around 3300 to 2200 BC. C., this stone statue of 4.9 meters high and 68 centimeters thick was found in Mollet del Vallés, Barcelona, Spain, in 2009. It represents a human figure in bas-relief, sometimes completed or replaced by engravings.