Western Painting - Pre-history

Pre-history

• Rock Shelters of Bhimbetka, rock painting, Stone Age, India

• Aurochs Cave painting, Lascaux, France

• Lascaux, horse

• Lascaux, Bulls and Horses

• Bison, in the great hall of policromes, Cave of Altamira, Spain

• Petroglyphs, from Sweden, Nordic Bronze Age (painted)

• Pictographs from the Great Gallery, Canyonlands National Park, Horseshoe Canyon, Utah, c. 1500 BCE

• Cueva de las Manos (Spanish for Cave of the Hands) in the Santa Cruz province in Argentina, c. 550 BC

The history of painting reaches back in time to artifacts from pre-historic humans, and spans all cultures. The oldest known paintings are at the Grotte Chauvet in France, claimed by some historians to be about 32,000 years old. They are engraved and painted using red ochre and black pigment and show horses, rhinoceros, lions, buffalo, mammoth, or humans often hunting. There are examples of cave paintings all over the world—in France, India, Spain, Portugal, China, Australia etc. There are many common themes throughout the many different places that the paintings have been found; implying the universality of purpose and similarity of the impulses that might have created the imagery. Various conjectures have been made as to the meaning these paintings had to the people who made them. Prehistoric men may have painted animals to "catch" their soul or spirit in order to hunt them more easily, or the paintings may represent an animistic vision and homage to surrounding nature, or they may be the result of a basic need of expression that is innate to human beings, or they may be recordings of the life experiences of the artists and related stories from the members of their circle.