We explain what rock art is and its main characteristics. Also, what is the history of these ancient drawings.
What is rock art?
Prehistoric sketches or drawings that have been discovered in stones or caves, and that reflect the imaginary of humanity, are called rock art or cave painting. primitive.
It is one of the oldest cultural manifestations known in our history as species, since some date from more or less 40,000 years ago, that is to say, from the last planetary ice age.
These illustrations are closely related to the petroglyphs, sculptures and engravings of that time, but unlike many of them they have been preserved in very good condition despite the centuries thanks to the protection provided by the natural support where they are, safe from damage. erosion and wear.
The cave paintings have been found in practically all the continents (except Antarctica), but the best known are those of Spain and France, from the transition period between the Paleolithic and the Neolithic, such as those found in the Altamira Caves, in Cantabria.
The importance of these findings is due to how much they reveal regarding the mentality of the human being primitive, inclined as much as we towards the artistic representation of his daily life, although it is assumed that these drawings they also had a certain magical-religious importance, and that they were made to ask for success in the hunt.
Characteristics of rock art
Thematically, cave paintings are more or less homogeneous: those from the Paleolithic generally show wild animals and lines, while in the Neolithic there are human figures, handprints and other representations of the environment.
Most of the animals depicted are mammoths, bison, horses, deer, and reindeer, often wounded with arrows or hunting spears.
It is also striking that these drawings were made with very similar materials, despite being thousands of kilometers from each other: charcoal pigments, feces and other body fluids, hematite, clay and manganese oxide, probably mixed with fat or some oil as a binder.
Usually one or two prevail in them colors: black, red, yellow and brown. They were smeared on the stone directly with the fingers, although the animal figures were often scraped with some stone or tool to generate effects of realism and three-dimensionality.
History of rock art
Much is unknown regarding rock art, as it is difficult to find its actual dates of production: most of the time this is done by measurements of carbon-14 and other residual elements in the weather, but the presence in the caves of materials from different periods, as well as the contamination of the samples over time can lead to erroneous results.
The main finds in the matter of cave paintings occurred between France and Spain, for being a region highly populated and favorable in those times, but also in South Africa (Ukhahlamba-Drakensberg), Namibia (Twyfelfontein), Argentina (In the Sierras de Córdoba and in San Luis), Peru (The famous lines and geoglyphs of Nazca), Malaysia (Gua Also in Perak), etc.