Primitive rock art. Rock art of primitive people: what is hidden behind it? Animal rock paintings
Ancient rock paintings (petroglyphs) are found all over the world and have one common feature, 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 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, sun and stars.
The find includes about 5,000 drawings made by the natives on the rocks in national park Kakadu, Australia. Most of the paintings were created around 2000 years ago. Interestingly, they depict not only animals, such as white sea bass, catfish, kangaroo, rocky couscous and others, but, and 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 covers 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. Everyday life, for example, dancing and playing on 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 section 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.
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 from the era Upper Paleolithic(35 - 12 thousand years ago), which depict bison, horses, wild boars, prints of human palms 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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Friends, where and how did it all start?
Maybe when ancient man saw your footprint in the sand?
Or, when you ran your finger along the ground, did you realize that you get a fingerprint?
Or maybe when our ancestors learned to control the “fiery beast” (fire) by passing the burnt end of the stick over the stone?
In any case, it is clear that man 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 primitive 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 painted with ocher mixed with milk. primitive people ocher was used 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 got milk by hunting the beast. In addition to ocher, our ancestors used charcoal or burnt roots, crushed into powder, limestone.
Everyone knows murals of ancient egypt most popular. The history of the Ancient Egyptian civilization has about 40 centuries! This civilization reached great heights in architecture, writing papyri, as well as graphic drawings and other images.
Existence ancient egypt began 3000 BC. e. and ended IV-VII centuries. ad.
The Egyptians loved to decorate almost everything with paintings: tombs, temples, sarcophagi, various household trifles and utensils, statues. For paints used: limestone (white), soot (black), iron ore (yellow and red), copper ore (blue and green).
Painting ancient egypt was meaningful, depicting people, for example, the dead, providing them with services in the afterlife. 
They believed in an afterlife and believed that life was just a gap 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 spied on the ancient Greeks to make wall paintings 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 keeping bright colors. The plaster they used contained lime and, when dried, formed a transparent, thin film of calcium. It was this film that made the fresco durable!
wall murals ancient greece have survived to this day, millennia later, perfectly preserved in the same bright and saturated color as when they were created.
Previously, a fresco was called painting work 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 it has a direct bearing on me. It is Alfrey painting, that is, wall painting, that is my main specialization, which I studied at private school in the south of France.
You can see my work in the section >>> <<<
In the Middle Ages in Kievan Rus the walls of the cathedrals were painted with beautiful frescoes. So, for example, in 2016 I visited the Sophia Kyiv 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 frescoes is 3000 sq. m.)
The main composition in the cathedral - family portrait of Yaroslav the Wise on three walls. But only portraits of the sons and daughters of the prince have survived and are well preserved. The huge frescoes painted in the 11th century, of course, made a strong impression on me.
Also already in Middle Ages (period V - XV centuries) used for painting not only walls, but also surfaces made of wood (for painting). Tempera paints were used for such works. This paint, of course, is considered one of the oldest types of paints and was used to paint pictures until the 15th century.
Until one day Dutch painter Van Eyck not widely used oil based paints in Europe
Tempera These are water based paints. Coloring powder diluted with water and chicken yolk. The history goes back more than 3000 years to this type of paint.
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 painted with tempera.
But to use canvas, instead of a wooden board for writing pictures, in the countries of Western Europe began only at the beginning of the 16th century. Florentine and Venetian painters painted in significant quantities on canvas.
In Russia, canvases as the basis for painting began to be used even later, only from the second half of the 17th century. But that is another story…. Or rather
So, showing curiosity and making a little analysis, you can trace the ways of human self-expression from a primitive drawing to true creations of the Middle Ages !!! Of course, this is not a scientific article, but only the view of one curious artist who likes to dig and dig in the labyrinths of the human mind.
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Ask your questions below in the comments, I usually answer all questions quickly
primitive artAnyone endowed with a great gift - feel the beauty surrounding world, feel harmony lines, admire the variety of shades of colors.
Painting- this is the artist's attitude captured on canvas. If your perception of the surrounding world is reflected in the artist's painting, then you feel an affinity with the works of this master.
Pictures attract attention, fascinate, excite the imagination and dreams, evoke memories of pleasant moments, favorite places and landscapes.
When did they appear first images man-made?
Appeal primitive people to a new type of activity for them - art - one of the greatest events in human history. Primitive art reflected the first ideas of man about the world around him, thanks to him knowledge and skills were preserved and transferred, people communicated with each other. In the spiritual culture of the primitive world, art began to play the same universal role that a pointed stone played in labor activity.
What prompted a person to think of depicting certain objects? How do you know if body painting was the first step towards creating images, or if a person guessed the familiar silhouette of an animal in a random outline of a stone and, having cut it, gave it a greater resemblance? Or maybe the shadow of an animal or a person served as the basis for the drawing, and the imprint of a hand or a step precedes the sculpture? There is no definite answer to these questions. Ancient people could come up with the idea of depicting objects not in one, but in many ways.
For example, to the number the most ancient images on the walls of caves of the Paleolithic era are also human handprints, and a disorderly weave of wavy lines, pressed into the damp clay with the fingers of the same hand.
The works of art of the early Stone Age, or Paleolithic, are characterized by simplicity of forms and colors. Rock paintings are, as a rule, the contours of the figures of animals., made with bright paint - red or yellow, and occasionally - filled with round spots or completely painted over. Such ""paintings"" were clearly visible in the twilight of the caves, illuminated only by torches or the fire of a smoky fire.
At the initial stage of development primitive fine arts didn't know laws of space and perspective, as well as composition, those. intentional distribution on the plane of individual figures, between which there is necessarily a semantic connection.
In living and expressive images rises before us life history of primitive man era of the Stone Age, told by him in the rock paintings.
Dance. Painting by Lleid. Spain. With various movements and gestures, a person conveyed his impressions of the world around him, reflecting in them his own feelings, mood and state of mind. Frantic jumps, imitation of the habits of an animal, stamping feet, expressive hand gesturescreated the prerequisites for the emergence of dance. There were also martial dances associated with magical rituals, with the belief in victory over the enemy.
<<Каменная газета>> Arizona
Composition in the cave of Lascaux. France. On the walls of the caves you can see mammoths, wild horses, rhinos, bison. Drawing for primitive man was the same "witchcraft" as a spell and ritual dance. “Conjuring” the spirit of the drawn animal by singing and dancing, and then “killing” it, the person seemed to master the power of the animal and “defeat” it before the hunt.
<<Сражающиеся лучники>> Spain
And these are petroglyphs. Hawaii
Paintings on the Tassili-Adjer mountain plateau. Algeria.
Primitive people practiced sympathetic magic - in the form of dancing, singing, or pictures of animals on the walls of caves - to attract herds of animals and ensure the continuation of the family and the safety of livestock. The hunters acted out successful hunting scenes to draw energy into the real world. They turned to the Mistress of the Herds, and later to the Horned God, who was depicted with the horns of goats or deer to emphasize his leadership in the herds. The bones of animals were supposed to be buried in the ground so that animals, like people, would be reborn from the womb of Mother Earth.
This is a cave drawing in the Lascaux region of France from the Paleolithic era.
Large animals were the preferred food. And the Paleolithic people, skilled hunters, destroyed most of them. And not just large herbivores. During the Paleolithic, cave bears completely disappeared as a species.
There is another type of rock paintings, which is of a mystical, mysterious nature.
Rock paintings from Australia. Either people, or animals, or maybe not both...
Drawings from West Arnhem, Australia.
Huge figures and a number of little men. And in the lower left corner, something is generally incomprehensible.
And here is a masterpiece from Laskaux, France.
North Africa, Sahara. Tassili. 6 thousand years BC Flying saucers and someone in a space suit. Or maybe it's not a spacesuit.
Rock painting from Australia...
Val Camonica, Italy.
and the next photo is from Azerbaijan, Gobustan region
Gobustan is included in the UNESCO heritage list
Who were those "artists" who managed to convey to remote eras the message of their time? What prompted them to do this? What were the hidden springs and the driving motives that guided them?..Thousands of questions and very few answers...Many of our contemporaries are very fond of being offered to look at history through a magnifying glass.
But is it really all that small?
After all, there were images of the gods
In the north of Upper Egypt is the ancient temple city of Abydos. Its origin dates back to prehistoric times. It is known that already in the era of the Old Kingdom (about 2500 BC), the universal deity Osiris enjoyed wide veneration in Abydos. Osiris, on the other hand, was considered a divine teacher who gave the people of the Stone Age diverse knowledge and crafts, and, quite possibly, knowledge about the secrets of the sky. By the way, it was in Abydos that the oldest calendar was found, dating back to the 4th millennium BC. e.
Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome also left a lot of rock evidence to remind us of their existence. They already had developed writing - their drawings are much more interesting, from the point of view of studying everyday life, than ancient graffiti.
Why is humanity trying to find out what happened millions of years ago, what knowledge ancient civilizations had? We seek the source because we think that by uncovering it, we will know why we exist. Humanity wants to find where is the starting point from which it all began, because it thinks that there, apparently, there is an answer, “what is all this for”, and what will happen in the end ...
After all, the world is so vast, and the human brain is narrow and limited. The most difficult crossword puzzle of history must be solved gradually, cell by cell...
December 18, 1994, the famous French speleologist Jean Marie Chauvet discovered the cave gallerycancient depictions of animals. The find was named after its discoverer — Chauvet cave. We decided to talk about the most beautiful caves with rock paintings.
Chauvet cave
The discovery of the Chauvet cave in the south of France near the town of Pont d'Arc became a scientific sensation that forced us to reconsider the existing idea of the art of ancient people: it was previously believed that primitive painting developed in stages. At first, the images were very primitive, and more than one thousand years had to pass for the drawings on the walls of the caves to reach their perfection. The discovery of Chauvet suggests the opposite: the age of some images is 30-33 thousand years, which means that our ancestors learned to draw even before moving to Europe. The found rock art is one of the oldest examples of cave art in the world, in particular, the drawing of black rhinos from Chauvet is still considered the oldest. The south of France is rich in such caves, but none of them can be compared with the Chauvet cave either in size, or in the preservation and skill of the drawings. Mostly animals are depicted on the walls of the cave: panthers, horses, deer, as well as woolly rhinoceros, tarpan, cave lion and other animals of the Ice Age. In total, images of 13 different types of animals were found in the cave.
Now the cave is closed to tourists, as changes in air humidity can damage the images. Archaeologists can only work in a cave for a few hours a day. To date, the Chauvet cave is a national treasure of France.
Caves of Nerja
Nerja Caves is an amazingly beautiful series of huge caves near the city of Nerja in Andalusia, Spain. Received the nickname "Prehistoric Cathedral". They were discovered by accident in 1959. They are one of the main attractions of Spain. Some of their galleries are open to the public, and one of them, which forms a natural amphitheater and has excellent acoustics, even hosts concerts. In addition to the largest stalagmite in the world, several mysterious drawings were found in the cave. Experts believe that seals or fur seals are depicted on the walls. Fragments of charcoal were found near the drawings, radiocarbon dating of which gave an age between 43,500 and 42,300 years. If experts prove that the images were made with this charcoal, the seals of the Nerja cave will be significantly older than the cave paintings from the Chauvet cave. This once again confirms the assumption that the Neanderthals had the ability for creative imagination no less than that of a reasonable person.
Kapova Cave (Shulgan-Tash)
This karst cave was found in Bashkiria, on the Belaya River, in the area of \u200b\u200bwhich is now the Shulgan-Tash reserve. This is one of the longest caves in the Urals. Rock paintings of ancient people from the Late Paleolithic era, the likes of which can be found only in very limited places in Europe, were discovered in Kapova Cave in 1959. Images of mammoths, horses and other animals are made mainly with ocher - a natural pigment based on animal fat, their age is about 18 thousand years. There are several charcoal drawings. In addition to animals, there are images of triangles, stairs, oblique lines. The most ancient drawings, dating from the early Paleolithic, are in the upper tier. On the lower tier of the Kapova cave there are later images of the Ice Age. The drawings are also notable for the fact that the human figures are shown without the realism inherent in the animals depicted. The researchers suggest that the images were made in order to propitiate the "gods of the hunt." In addition, cave paintings are designed to be perceived not from one specific point, but from several angles of view. To preserve the drawings, the cave was closed to the public in 2012, but an interactive kiosk was installed in the museum on the territory of the reserve for everyone to take a virtual look at the drawings.
Cueva de las Manos Cave
Cueva de las Manos ("Cave of Many Hands") is located in Argentina, in the province of Santa Cruz. The world fame of Cueva de las Manos in 1964 was brought by the research of archeology professor Carlos Gradin, who discovered many wall paintings and human handprints in the cave, the oldest of which date back to the 9th millennium BC. e. More than 800 prints, overlapping each other, form a multi-colored mosaic. So far, scientists have not come to a consensus on the meaning of the images of hands, from which the cave got its name. Mostly left hands are captured: out of 829 prints, only 36 are right. Moreover, according to some researchers, the hands belong to teenage boys. Most likely, drawing the image of one's hand was part of the initiation rite. In addition, scientists have built a theory about how such clear and crisp palm prints were obtained: apparently, a special composition was typed into the mouth, and through the tube it was blown with force onto the hand attached to the wall. In addition to handprints, the walls of the cave depict people, Nanda ostriches, guanacos, cats, geometric figures with ornaments, hunting processes (the drawings show the use of bolas, a traditional throwing weapon of the Indians of South America) and observations of the sun. In 1999, the cave was included in the UNESCO World Heritage List.
The discovery of cave art galleries raised a number of questions for archaeologists: what did the primitive artist draw with, how did he draw, where did he place his drawings, what did he draw, and, finally, why did he do it? The study of caves allows us to answer them with varying degrees of certainty.The palette of primitive man was poor: it had four basic colors - black, white, red and yellow. Chalk and chalk-like limestones were used to produce white images; black - charcoal and manganese oxides; red and yellow - minerals hematite (Fe2O3), pyrolusite (MnO2) and natural dyes - ocher, which is a mixture of iron hydroxides (limonite, Fe2O3.H2O), manganese (psilomelane, m.MnO.MnO2.nH2O) and clay particles. In the caves and grottoes of France, stone slabs were found on which ocher was rubbed, as well as pieces of dark red manganese dioxide. Judging by the painting technique, pieces of paint were rubbed, bred on bone marrow, animal fat or blood. Chemical and X-ray diffraction analysis of paints from the Lascaux Cave showed that not only natural dyes were used, mixtures of which give different shades of primary colors, but also rather complex compounds obtained by firing them and adding other components (kaolinite and aluminum oxides).
The serious study of cave dyes is just beginning. And questions immediately arise: why were only inorganic paints used? The primitive man-collector distinguished more than 200 different plants, among which were dyeing ones. Why are the drawings in some caves made in different tones of the same color, and in others - in two colors of the same tone? Why did the colors of the green-blue-blue part of the spectrum enter early painting for so long? In the Paleolithic, they are almost absent, in Egypt they appear 3.5 thousand years ago, and in Greece - only in the 4th century. BC e. Archaeologist A. Formozov believes that our distant ancestors did not immediately understand the bright plumage of the "magic bird" - the Earth. The most ancient colors, red and black, reflect the harsh color of the life of that time: the sun disk at the horizon and the flame of a fire, the darkness of the night full of dangers and the darkness of the caves bringing relative calm. Red and black were associated with the opposites of the ancient world: red - warmth, light, life with hot scarlet blood; black - cold, darkness, death... This symbolism is universal. It was a long way from the cave artist, who had only 4 colors in his palette, to the Egyptians and Sumerians, who added two more (blue and green) to them. But even further from them is the cosmonaut of the 20th century, who took a set of 120 colored pencils on his first flights around the Earth.
The second group of questions that arise in the study of cave painting concerns the technology of drawing. The problem can be formulated as follows: did the animals depicted in the drawings of the Paleolithic man "leave" the wall or "gone" into it?
In 1923, N. Castere discovered a Late Paleolithic clay figure of a bear lying on the ground in the Montespan cave. It was covered with indentations - traces of javelin blows, and numerous prints of bare feet were found on the floor. The thought arose: this is a “model”, which has absorbed hunting pantomimes fixed for tens of millennia at the carcass of a dead bear. Further, the following series is traced, confirmed by finds in other caves: a life-size model of a bear, dressed in its skin and decorated with a real skull, is replaced by its clay likeness; the beast gradually "gets on its feet" - it is leaned against the wall for stability (this is already a step towards creating a bas-relief); then the beast gradually “leaves” into it, leaving a traced, and then a picturesque outline ... This is how the archaeologist A. Solyar imagines the emergence of Paleolithic painting.
No less likely is another way. According to Leonardo da Vinci, the first drawing is the shadow of an object lit by a fire. Primitive begins to draw, mastering the technique of "bypass". The caves have preserved dozens of such examples. On the walls of the Gargas Cave (France), 130 "ghostly hands" are visible - imprints of human hands on the wall. It is interesting that in some cases they are depicted by a line, in others by shading the outer or inner contours (positive or negative stencil), then drawings appear, "torn off" from the object, which is no longer depicted in full size, in profile or frontally. Sometimes objects are drawn as if in different projections (face and legs - profile, chest and shoulders - frontally). Skill grows gradually. The drawing acquires clarity, confidence of the stroke. According to the best drawings, biologists confidently determine not only the genus, but also the species, and sometimes the subspecies of the animal.
The next step is taken by Madeleine artists: by means of painting they convey dynamics and perspective. Color helps a lot with this. The full of life horses of the Grand Ben Cave seem to run in front of us, gradually decreasing in size ... Later this technique was forgotten, and similar drawings are not found in rock art either in the Mesolithic or in the Neolithic. The last step is the transition from a perspective image to a three-dimensional one. So there are sculptures that "came out" from the walls of the cave.
Which of the following points of view is correct? A comparison of the absolute dates of the figurines made of bones and stone shows that they are approximately the same age: 30-15 thousand years BC. e. Maybe in different places the cave artist followed different paths?
Another of the mysteries of cave painting is the lack of background and framing. Figures of horses, bulls, mammoths are freely scattered along the rock wall. The drawings seem to be hanging in the air, not even a symbolic line of the earth is drawn under them. On the uneven vaults of caves, animals are placed in the most unexpected positions: upside down or sideways. No in drawings of primitive man and a hint of landscape background. Only in the 17th century n. e. in Holland the landscape takes shape in a special genre.
The study of Paleolithic painting provides specialists with abundant material to search for the origins of various styles and trends in contemporary art. So, for example, a prehistoric master, 12 thousand years before the appearance of pointillist artists, depicted animals on the wall of the Marsula cave (France) using tiny colored dots. The number of such examples can be multiplied, but something else is more important: the images on the walls of the caves are a fusion of the reality of existence and its reflection in the brain of a Paleolithic person. Thus, Paleolithic painting carries information about the level of thinking of a person of that time, about the problems that he lived with and that worried him. Primitive art, discovered more than 100 years ago, remains a real El Dorado for all kinds of hypotheses about this.
Dublyansky V.N., popular science book
