The cave was discovered on December 18, 1994 in the south of France, in the department of Ardèche, in the steep bank of the canyon of the river of the same name, a tributary of the Rhone, near the town of Pont d'Arc, by three speleologists Jean-Marie Chauvet, Eliette Brunel Deschamps and Christian Hillaire.
All of them already had extensive experience in exploring caves, including those containing traces of prehistoric man. The half-filled entrance to the then nameless cave was already known to them, but the cave had not yet been explored. When Eleth, squeezing through a narrow opening, saw a large cavity stretching into the distance, she knew that she needed to return to the car behind the stairs. It was already evening, they even doubted whether they should postpone further examination, but nevertheless they returned behind the stairs and went down into the wide passage.
The researchers stumbled upon a cave gallery, where a flashlight beam picked out an ocher spot on the wall from the darkness. It turned out to be a "portrait" of a mammoth. No other cave of the south-east of France, rich in “murals”, can be compared with the newly discovered one, named after Chauvet, neither in size, nor in the safety and skill of drawings, and some of them are 30-33 thousand years old.
Speleologist Jean-Marie Chauvet, after whom the cave got its name.
The discovery of the Chauvet cave on December 18, 1994 became a sensation, which not only pushed back the appearance of primitive drawings by 5 thousand years ago, but also overturned the concept of the evolution of Paleolithic art that had developed by that time, based, in particular, on the classification of the French scientist Henri Leroy-Gourhan . According to his theory (as well as according to most other specialists), the development of art went from primitive forms to more complex ones, and then the earliest drawings from Chauvet should have generally belonged to the pre-figurative stage (dots, spots, stripes, winding lines, other scribbles) . However, the researchers of Chauvet's painting found themselves face to face with the fact that the oldest images are almost the most perfect in their execution of the Paleolithic known to us (Paleolithic - this is at least: it is not known what Picasso, who admired the Altamira bulls, would say if he happened to see lions and Chauvet bears!). Apparently, art is not very friendly with the evolutionary theory: avoiding any stage structure, it somehow inexplicably arises immediately, out of nothing, in highly artistic forms.
Here is what Abramova Z.A., the leading specialist in the field of Paleolithic art, writes about this: “Paleolithic art arises as a bright flash of flame in the mists of time. finds a direct continuation in subsequent eras ... It remains a mystery how the Paleolithic masters achieved such high perfection and what were the paths along which the echoes of the art of the ice age penetrated the brilliant work of Picasso "(quoted from: Sher Ya. When and how did art arise? ).
(source - Donsmaps.com)
The drawing of black rhinos from Chauvet is considered the oldest in the world (32.410 ± 720 years ago; information on a certain "new" dating comes across on the Web, giving Chauvet painting from 33 to 38 thousand years, but without credible references).
At the moment, this is the oldest example of human creativity, the beginning of art, not burdened with history. Typically, Paleolithic art is dominated by drawings of animals that people hunted - horses, cows, deer, and so on. The walls of the Chauvet are covered with images of predators - cave lions, panthers, owls and hyenas. There are drawings depicting a rhinoceros, tarpans and a number of other animals of the Ice Age.
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In addition, in no other cave there are so many images of a woolly rhinoceros, an animal that was not inferior to a mammoth in terms of “dimensions” and strength. In terms of size and strength, the woolly rhinoceros was almost as good as the mammoth, its weight reached 3 tons, body length - 3.5 m, front horn dimensions - 130 cm. The rhinoceros died out at the end of the Pleistocene, before the mammoth and cave bear. Unlike mammoths, rhinos were not herd animals. Probably because this powerful animal, although it was a herbivore, had the same vicious disposition as their modern relatives. This is evidenced by the scenes of violent "rock" fights of rhinos from Chauvet.
The cave is located in the south of France, on the steep bank of the canyon of the Ardege River, a tributary of the Rhone, in a very picturesque place, in the vicinity of the Pont d'Arc ("Arched Bridge"). This natural bridge is formed in the rock by a huge ravine up to 60 meters high.
The cave itself is "mothballed". Entrance to it is open exclusively to a limited circle of scientists. Yes, and those are allowed to enter it only twice a year, in spring and autumn, and work there for only a couple of weeks for several hours a day. Unlike Altamira and Lascaux, Chauvet has not been "cloned" yet, so ordinary people like you and me will have to admire the reproductions, which we will certainly do, but a little later.
"In the fifteen-plus years since the discovery, there have been far more people who have been to the top of Everest than have seen these drawings," writes Adam Smith in a review of Werner Herzog's documentary on Chauve. Haven't tested it, but it sounds good.
So, the famous German film director, by some miracle, managed to get permission to shoot. The film "The Cave of Forgotten Dreams" was filmed in 3D and screened at the Berlin Film Festival in 2011, which, presumably, attracted the attention of the general public to Chauvet. It is not good for us to lag behind the public.
Researchers agree that the caves containing drawings in such a quantity were clearly not intended for habitation and were not prehistoric art galleries, but were sanctuaries, places of rituals, in particular, the initiation of young men entering adulthood (about this evidenced, for example, by preserved baby footprints).
In the four "halls" of Chauvet, along with connecting passages with a total length of about 500 meters, more than three hundred perfectly preserved drawings depicting various animals, including large-scale multi-figured compositions, were found.
Eliette Brunel Deschamps and Christian Hillair - participants in the opening of the Chauvet cave.
The murals also answered the question - did tigers or lions live in prehistoric Europe? It turned out - the second. Ancient drawings of cave lions always show them without a mane, which suggests that, unlike their African or Indian relatives, they either did not have one, or it was not so impressive. Often these images show the tuft on the tail characteristic of lions. The coloring of the wool, apparently, was one-color.
In the art of the Paleolithic, for the most part, drawings of animals from the "menu" of primitive people appear - bulls, horses, deer (although this is not entirely accurate: it is known, for example, that for the inhabitants of Lasko the main "forage" animal was the reindeer, while on on the walls of the cave, it is found in single copies). In general, one way or another, commercial ungulates predominate. Chauvet in this sense is unique in the abundance of images of predators - cave lions and bears, as well as rhinos. It makes sense to dwell on the latter in more detail. Such a number of rhinos, as in Chauvet, is no longer found in any cave.
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It is noteworthy that the first "artists" who left their mark on the walls of some Paleolithic caves, including Chauvet, were ... bears: in places, engraving and painting were done right on top of the traces of mighty claws, the so-called griffads.
In the late Pleistocene, at least two species of bears could coexist: brown bears have survived successfully to this day, and their relatives - cave bears (large and small) died out, unable to adapt to the damp dusk of the caves. The big cave bear wasn't just big, it was huge. Its weight reached 800-900 kg, the diameter of the found skulls is about half a meter. From a fight with such an animal in the depths of a cave, a person, most likely, could not have emerged victorious, but some zoologists are inclined to assume that, despite the frightening size, this animal was slow, non-aggressive and did not pose a real danger.
An image of a cave bear made in red ocher in one of the first rooms.
The oldest Russian paleozoologist, Professor N.K. Vereshchagin believes that "among the hunters of the Stone Age, cave bears were a kind of beef cattle that did not require care for grazing and feeding." The appearance of the cave bear is conveyed in Chauvet as distinctly nowhere. It seems to have played a special role in the life of primitive communities: the beast was depicted on rocks and pebbles, its figures were molded from clay, its teeth were used as pendants, the skin probably served as a bed, the skull was preserved for ritual purposes. So, in Chauvet, a similar skull was found, resting on a rocky foundation, which most likely indicates the existence of a bear cult.
The woolly rhinoceros died out a little earlier than the mammoth (according to various sources, from 15-20 to 10 thousand years ago), and, at least, in the drawings of the Madeleine period (15-10 thousand years BC), it almost never meets. In Chauvet, we generally see a two-horned rhinoceros with larger horns, without any trace of wool. Perhaps this is Merck's rhinoceros, which lived in southern Europe, but is much rarer than its woolly relative. The length of its front horn could be up to 1.30 m. In a word, the monster was something else.
There are practically no images of people. There are only chimera-like figures - for example, a man with a bison's head. No traces of human habitation were found in the Chauvet cave, but in some places on the floor footprints of the primitive visitors of the cave were preserved. According to researchers, the cave was a place for magical rituals.
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Previously, researchers believed that several stages could be distinguished in the development of primitive painting. At first, the drawings were very primitive. The skill came later, with experience. More than one thousand years had to pass for the drawings on the walls of the caves to reach their perfection.
Chauvet's discovery shattered this theory. The French archaeologist Jean Clott, having carefully examined Chauvet, stated that our ancestors must have learned to draw even before moving to Europe. And they arrived here about 35,000 years ago. The most ancient images from the Chauvet cave are very perfect works of painting, in which one can see both perspective and chiaroscuro, and different angles, etc.
Interestingly, the artists of the Chauvet Cave used methods not applicable anywhere else. Before drawing the picture, the walls were scraped and leveled. Ancient artists, having first scratched the contours of the animal, gave them the necessary volume with paints. "The people who painted this were great artists," confirms French rock-artist Jean Clotte.
A detailed study of the cave will take more than a dozen years. However, it is already clear that its total length is more than 500 m at one level, the height of the ceilings is from 15 to 30 m. Four successive "halls" and numerous side branches. In the first two rooms, the images are made in red ocher. In the third - engravings and black figures. There are many bones of ancient animals in the cave, and in one of the halls there are traces of the cultural layer. Found about 300 images. The painting is well preserved.
(source - Flickr.com)
There is speculation that such images with multiple contours layered on top of each other are some kind of primitive animation. When a torch was quickly moved along the drawing in a cave immersed in darkness, the rhinoceros "came to life", and one can imagine what effect this had on the cave "spectators" - the "Arrival of the train" by the Lumiere brothers is resting.
There are other considerations in this regard. For example, that a group of animals is thus depicted in perspective. Nevertheless, the same Herzog in his film adheres to "our" version, and he can be trusted in matters of "moving pictures".
Now the Chauvet cave is closed to public access, since any noticeable change in air humidity can damage the wall paintings. The right of access, only for a few hours and subject to restrictions, can be obtained by only a few archaeologists. The cave has been cut off from the outside world since the Ice Age due to the fall of the rock in front of its entrance.
The drawings of the Chauvet cave amaze with the knowledge of the laws of perspective (the drawings of mammoths overlapping each other) and the ability to cast shadows - until now it was believed that this technique was discovered several millennia later. And for a whole eternity before the idea dawned on Seurat, primitive artists discovered pointillism: the image of one animal, it seems to be a bison, consists entirely of red dots.
But the most surprising thing is that, as already mentioned, the artists prefer rhinos, lions, cave bears and mammoths. Usually, the animals that were hunted served as models for rock art. "From all the bestiaries of that era, artists choose the most predatory, most dangerous animals," says archaeologist Margaret Conkey from the University of Berkeley in California. Depicting animals that were clearly not on the menu of the Paleolithic cuisine, but symbolized danger, strength, power, the artists, according to Klott, "learned their essence."
Archaeologists have paid attention to how exactly the images are included in the space of the wall. In one of the halls, a cave bear without a lower body is depicted in red ocher, so that it seems, Clott says, "as if he were coming out of the wall." In the same hall, archaeologists also found images of two stone goats. The horns of one of them are natural crevices in the wall, which the artist expanded.
Image of a horse in a niche (source - Donsmaps.com)
Rock art clearly played a significant role in the spiritual life of prehistoric people. This can be confirmed by two large triangles (symbols of the feminine and fertility?) and the image of a creature with human legs, but with the head and body of a buffalo. Probably, the people of the Stone Age hoped in this way to appropriate at least partially the power of animals. The cave bear, apparently, occupied a special position. 55 bear skulls, one of which lies on a fallen boulder, as if on an altar, suggest a cult of this beast. Which also explains the choice of the Chauvet cave by the artists - dozens of potholes in the floor indicate that it was a hibernation place for giant bears.
Ancient people came again and again to look at the rock art. The 10-meter "horse panel" shows traces of soot left by torches that were fixed in the wall after it was covered with paintings. These tracks, according to Konka, are on top of a layer of mineralized deposits covering the images. If painting is the first step towards spirituality, then the ability to appreciate it is undoubtedly the second.
At least 6 books and dozens of scientific articles have been published about Chauvet Cave, not counting sensational materials in the general press, four large albums of beautiful color illustrations with accompanying text have been published and translated into major European languages. The documentary film "The Cave of Forgotten Dreams 3D" is released on December 15 in Russia. The director of the picture is the German Werner Herzog.
picture Cave of Forgotten Dreams appreciated at the 61st Berlin Film Festival. More than a million people went to see the film. It is the highest grossing documentary film of 2011.
According to new data, the age of the coal with which the drawings on the wall of the Chauvet cave are drawn is 36,000 years old, and not 31,000, as previously thought.
Refined methods of radiocarbon dating show that the settlement of modern man (Homo sapiens) in Central and Western Europe began 3 thousand years earlier than thought, and proceeded faster. The time of joint residence of sapiens and Neanderthals in most parts of Europe has decreased from about 10 to 6 or less thousand years. The final extinction of European Neanderthals may also have occurred several millennia earlier.
Renowned British archaeologist Paul Mellars has published a review of recent advances in radiocarbon dating that have significantly changed our understanding of the chronology of events that took place more than 25,000 years ago.
The accuracy of radiocarbon dating has increased dramatically in recent years due to two factors. First, there appeared methods of high-quality purification of organic substances, primarily collagen, isolated from ancient bones, from all impurities. When it comes to very ancient samples, even a tiny admixture of foreign carbon can lead to serious distortions. For example, if a 40,000-year-old sample contains only 1% of modern carbon, this would reduce the "radiocarbon age" by as much as 7,000 years. As it turned out, most of the ancient archaeological finds contain such impurities, so their age was systematically underestimated.
The second source of errors, which has finally been eliminated, is related to the fact that the content of the radioactive isotope 14C in the atmosphere (and, consequently, in the organic matter formed in different epochs) is not constant. The bones of people and animals that lived during periods of high levels of 14C in the atmosphere initially contained more of this isotope than expected, and therefore their age was again underestimated. In recent years, a number of extremely accurate measurements have been made that have made it possible to reconstruct the fluctuations of 14C in the atmosphere over the past 50 millennia. For this, unique marine deposits were used in some areas of the World Ocean, where precipitation accumulated very quickly, Greenland ice, cave stalagmites, coral reefs, etc. In all these cases, it was possible to compare radiocarbon dates for each layer with others obtained on the basis of ratios of oxygen isotopes 18O/16O or uranium and thorium.
As a result, correction scales and tables were developed, which made it possible to sharply improve the accuracy of radiocarbon dating of samples older than 25 thousand years. What did the updated dates say?
It was previously believed that modern humans (Homo sapiens) appeared in southeastern Europe about 45,000 years ago. From here they gradually settled in a western and northwestern direction. The settlement of Central and Western Europe continued, according to "uncorrected" radiocarbon dates, for about 7 thousand years (43-36 thousand years ago); the average advance rate is 300 meters per year. Refined dates show that the settlement was faster and began earlier (46-41 thousand years ago; the rate of advancement is up to 400 meters per year). Approximately at the same rate, an agricultural culture later spread in Europe (10-6 thousand years ago), which also came from the Middle East. It is curious that both waves of settlement followed two parallel paths: the first along the Mediterranean coast from Israel to Spain, the second along the Danube valley, from the Balkans to South Germany and further to Western France.
In addition, it turned out that the period of cohabitation of modern humans and Neanderthals in most parts of Europe was significantly shorter than thought (not 10,000 years, but only about 6,000), and in some areas, for example, in western France, even less - only 1-2 thousand years. According to updated dates, some of the brightest examples of cave painting turned out to be much older than it was thought; the beginning of the Orignac era, marked by the appearance of various complex products made of bone and horn, also moved back in time (41,000 thousand years ago, according to new ideas).
Paul Mellars believes that the earlier published dates of the latest Neanderthal sites (in Spain and Croatia, both sites, according to "unspecified" radiocarbon dating, are 31-28 thousand years old) also need to be revised. In fact, these finds are most likely several millennia older.
All this shows that the indigenous Neanderthal population of Europe fell under the onslaught of the Middle Eastern newcomers much faster than thought. The superiority of the sapiens - technological or social - was too great, and neither the physical strength of the Neanderthals, nor their endurance, nor their adaptability to the cold climate could save the doomed race.
Chauvet's painting is amazing in many ways. Take, for example, angles. It was common for cave artists to depict animals in profile. Of course, this is also typical for most of the drawings here, but there are breaks, as in the above fragment, where the bison's muzzle is given in three quarters. In the following figure, you can also see a rare frontal image:
Maybe this is an illusion, but a distinct feeling of composition is created - the lions are sniffing in anticipation of the prey, but they still do not see the bison, and he clearly tensed up and froze, feverishly thinking where to run. True, judging by the dull look, it looks bad.
Remarkable running bison:
(source - Donsmaps.com)
At the same time, the "face" of each horse is purely individual:
(source - istmira.com)
The following panel with horses is probably the most famous and widely distributed among the people from the images of Chauvet:
(source - popular-archaeology.com)
In the recently released science fiction film Prometheus, the cave, which promises the discovery of an extraterrestrial civilization that once visited our planet, is copied clean from Chauvet, including this wonderful group, to which people who are completely inappropriate here are added.
Frame from the film "Prometheus" (dir. R. Scott, 2012)
We both know that there are no people on the walls of the Chauvet. What is not, is not. There are bulls.
(source - Donsmaps.com)
During the Pliocene and especially during the Pleistocene, ancient hunters exerted significant pressure on nature. The idea that the extinction of the mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, cave bear, cave lion is associated with warming and the end of the ice age was first questioned by the Ukrainian paleontologist I.G. Pidoplichko, who expressed the then-seeming seditious hypothesis that man was to blame for the extinction of the mammoth. Later discoveries confirmed the validity of these assumptions. The development of methods of radiocarbon analysis showed that the last mammoths ( Elephas primigenius) lived at the very end of the Ice Age, and in some places survived until the beginning of the Holocene. The remains of a thousand mammoths were found at the Predmost site of a Paleolithic man (Czechoslovakia). There are mass finds of mammoth bones (more than 2 thousand individuals) at the Volchya Griva site near Novosibirsk, which are 12 thousand years old. The last mammoths in Siberia lived only 8-9 thousand years ago. The destruction of the mammoth as a species is undoubtedly the result of the activities of ancient hunters.
An important character in Chauvet's painting was a big-horned deer.
The art of the Upper Paleolithic animalists, along with paleontological and archaeozoological finds, serves as an important source of information about what animals our ancestors hunted. Until recently, the Late Paleolithic drawings from the Lascaux caves in France (17 thousand years) and Altamira in Spain (15 thousand years) were considered the oldest and most complete, but later the Chauvet caves were discovered, which gives us a new range of images of the mammalian fauna of that time. Along with relatively rare drawings of a mammoth (among them is an image of a mammoth, strikingly reminiscent of the mammoth Dima found in the permafrost of the Magadan Region) or an alpine ibex ( Capra ibex) there are many images of two-horned rhinos, cave bears ( Ursus spelaeus), cave lions ( Panthera spelaea), tarpanov ( Equus gmelini).
The images of rhinos in the Chauvet Cave raise many questions. This is undoubtedly not a woolly rhinoceros - the drawings depict a two-horned rhinoceros with larger horns, without traces of wool, with a pronounced skin fold, characteristic of living species for a one-horned Indian rhinoceros ( Rhinocerus indicus). Maybe it's Merck's rhinoceros ( Dicerorhinus kirchbergensis), who survived in southern Europe until the end of the Late Pleistocene? However, if from the woolly rhinoceros, which was the object of hunting in the Paleolithic and disappeared by the beginning of the Neolithic, rather numerous remnants of skin with hair, horny growths on the skull were preserved (even the only stuffed animal of this species in the world is kept in Lviv), then from Merck's rhinoceros we have come down to only bone remains, and keratin "horns" were not preserved. Thus, the discovery in the Chauvet Cave raises the question: what kind of rhino was known to its inhabitants? Why are the rhinos from the Chauvet Cave shown in herds? It is very likely that Paleolithic hunters are also to blame for the disappearance of the Merck rhinoceros.
Paleolithic art does not know the concepts of good and evil. Both the peacefully grazing rhinoceros and the lions ensconced in ambush are parts of a single nature, from which the artist himself does not separate himself. Of course, you can’t get into the head of a Cro-Magnon man and don’t talk “for life” when you meet, but I can understand and at least understand the idea that art at the dawn of mankind still does not oppose nature in any way, a person is in harmony with the outside world. Every thing, every stone or tree, not to mention animals, is considered by him as carrying meaning, as if the whole world were a huge living museum. At the same time, there is no reflection yet, and the questions of being are not raised. This is such a pre-cultural, heavenly state. Of course, we will not be able to fully feel it (as well as return to paradise), but suddenly we will be able to at least touch it, communicating through tens of millennia with the authors of these amazing creations.
We do not see them resting alone. Always hunting, and always almost a whole pride.
In general, the admiration of primitive man for the huge, strong and fast animals surrounding him, whether it be a big-horned deer, a bison or a bear, is understandable. It is even somehow ridiculous to put yourself next to them. He didn't set it. We have a lot to learn, filling our virtual "caves" with immeasurable quantities of our own or family photographs. Yes, something, but narcissism was not characteristic of the first people. But the same bear was depicted with the greatest care and trepidation:
The gallery ends with the strangest drawing in the Chauvet, with a definite cult purpose. It is located in the farthest corner of the grotto and is made on a rocky ledge, which has (for good reason, presumably) a phallic shape.
In literature, this character is usually referred to as a "sorcerer" or taurocephalus. In addition to the bull's head, we see another, lion's, female legs and a deliberately enlarged, let's say, bosom, which is the center of the entire composition. Against the background of their colleagues in the Paleolithic workshop, the craftsmen who painted this sanctuary look like pretty avant-garde artists. We know individual images of the so-called. "Venuses", male sorcerers in the form of animals and even scenes hinting at the intercourse of an ungulate with a woman, but to mix all of the above so thickly ... It is assumed (see, for example, http://www.ancient-wisdom.co.uk/ francech auvet.htm) that the image of the female body was the earliest, and the heads of a lion and a bull were completed later. Interestingly, there is no overlay of later drawings on the previous ones. Obviously, the preservation of the integrity of the composition was part of the artist's plans.
and look again at AndMore than three million years ago, the process of formation of the modern species of people began. The sites of primitive man have been found in various countries of the world. Our ancient ancestors, exploring new territories, encountered unfamiliar natural phenomena and formed the first centers of primitive culture.
Among the ancient hunters, people with extraordinary artistic talents stood out, who left many expressive works. There are no corrections in the drawings made on the walls of the caves, since the unique masters had a very firm hand.
Primitive thinking
The problem of the origin of primitive art, reflecting the lifestyle of ancient hunters, has been worrying the minds of scientists for several centuries. Despite its simplicity, it is of great importance in the history of mankind. It reflects the religious and social spheres of the life of that society. The consciousness of primitive people is a very complex interweaving of two principles - illusory and realistic. It is believed that this combination had a decisive impact on the nature of the creative activity of the first artists.
Unlike modern art, the art of past eras is always connected with the everyday aspects of human life and seems more earthly. It fully reflects primitive thinking, which does not always have a realistic coloring. And the point here is not the low level of skill of the artists, but the special purposes of their creativity.
The emergence of art
In the middle of the 19th century, archaeologist E. Larte discovered an image of a mammoth in the La Madeleine cave. So, for the first time, the involvement of hunters in painting was proved. As a result of the discoveries, it was established that art monuments appeared much later than tools.
Representatives of homo sapiens made stone knives, spearheads, and this technique was passed down from generation to generation. Later, people used bones, wood, stone and clay to create their first works. It turns out that primitive art arose when a person had free time. When the problem of survival was solved, people began to leave a huge number of monuments of the same type.
Kinds of art
Primitive art, which appeared in the late Paleolithic era (more than 33 thousand years ago), developed in several directions. The first is represented by rock paintings and megaliths, and the second - by small sculptures and carvings on bone, stone and wood. Unfortunately, wooden artifacts are extremely rare in archaeological sites. However, the objects created by man that have come down to us are very expressive and silently tell about the skill of ancient hunters.
It must be admitted that in the minds of the ancestors, art did not stand out as a separate field of activity, and not all people had the ability to create images. The artists of that era possessed such a powerful talent that he himself burst out, splashing bright and expressive images on the walls and vault of the cave, which overwhelmed the human mind.
The Old Stone Age (Paleolithic) is the earliest but longest period, at the end of which all kinds of art appeared, which are characterized by external simplicity and realism. People did not connect the events with nature or themselves, they did not feel the space.
The most outstanding monuments of the Paleolithic are the drawings on the walls of the caves, which are recognized as the first type of primitive art. They are very primitive and represent wavy lines, prints of human hands, images of animal heads. These are clear attempts to feel part of the world and the first glimpses of consciousness among our ancestors.
The paintings on the rocks were made with a stone chisel or paint (red ocher, black charcoal, white lime). Scientists argue that along with the emerging art, the first rudiments of a primitive society (society) arose.
In the Paleolithic era, carving on stone, wood and bone develops. The figurines of animals and birds found by archaeologists are distinguished by the exact reproduction of all volumes. The researchers claim that they were created as amulets-amulets that protected the inhabitants of the caves from evil spirits. The oldest masterpieces had a magical meaning and oriented man in nature.
Different tasks facing the artists
The main feature of primitive art in the Paleolithic era is its primitivism. Ancient people did not know how to convey space and endow natural phenomena with human qualities. The visual image of animals was originally represented by a schematic, almost conditional, image. And only after a few centuries, colorful images appear that reliably show all the details of the appearance of wild animals. Scientists believe that this is not due to the level of skill of the first artists, but to the various tasks that were set before them.
Contour primitive drawings were used in rituals, created for magical purposes. But detailed, very accurate images appear at a time when animals turn into an object of veneration, and ancient people thus emphasize their mystical connection with them.
The heyday of art
According to archaeologists, the highest flowering of the art of primitive society falls on the Madeleine period (25-12 thousand years BC). At this time, animals are depicted in motion, and a simple contour drawing takes on three-dimensional forms.
The spiritual forces of hunters, who have studied the habits of predators to the smallest subtleties, are aimed at comprehending the laws of nature. Ancient artists convincingly draw images of animals, but the man himself does not receive special attention in art. In addition, not a single image of the landscape has ever been found. It is believed that ancient hunters simply admired nature, and feared predators and worshiped them.
The most famous samples of rock art of this period were found in the caves of Lascaux (France), Altamira (Spain), Shulgan-Tash (Urals).
"Sistine Chapel of the Stone Age"
It is curious that even in the middle of the 19th century, cave painting was not known to scientists. And only in 1877, a famous archaeologist, who got into the Almamir cave, discovered rock paintings, which were later included in the UNESCO World Heritage List. It is no coincidence that the underground grotto was called the Sistine Chapel of the Stone Age. In rock art, one can see the confident hand of ancient artists who made the outlines of animals without any corrections, in single lines. In the light of a torch, which gives rise to an amazing play of shadows, it seems that three-dimensional images are moving.
Later, more than a hundred underground grottoes with traces of primitive people were found in France.
In the Kapova Cave (Shulgan-Tash), located in the Southern Urals, animal images were found relatively recently - in 1959. 14 silhouette and contour drawings of animals are made in red ocher. In addition, various geometric signs were also found.
The first humanoid images
One of the main themes of primitive art is the image of a woman. It was caused by the special specifics of the thinking of ancient people. The drawings were attributed magical powers. The found figures of naked and dressed women testify to the very high level of skill of ancient hunters and convey the main idea of the image - the keeper of the hearth.
These are figurines of very full women, the so-called Venuses. Such sculptures are the first humanoid images symbolizing fertility and motherhood.
Changes that took place during the Mesolithic and Neolithic eras
In the Mesolithic era, primitive art undergoes changes. Rock paintings are multi-figure compositions, on which you can trace various episodes from people's lives. Most often scenes of battles and hunting are depicted.
But the main changes in primitive society occur during the Neolithic period. A person learns to build new types of dwellings and builds structures on piles of brick. The main theme of art is the activity of the collective, and fine art is represented by rock paintings, stone, ceramic and wooden sculpture, clay plastic.
Ancient petroglyphs
It is impossible not to mention the multi-plot and multi-figure compositions, in which the main attention is paid to the animal and man. Petroglyphs (rock carvings that are carved or painted), painted in secluded places, attract the attention of scientists from all over the world. Some experts believe that they are ordinary sketches of everyday scenes. And others see in them some kind of writing, which is based on symbols and signs, and testifies to the spiritual heritage of our ancestors.
In Russia, petroglyphs are called "petroglyphs", and most often they are found not in caves, but in open areas. Made in ocher, they are perfectly preserved, because the paint is perfectly absorbed into the rocks. The subjects of the drawings are very wide and varied: the heroes are animals, symbols, signs and people. Schematic representations of the stars of the solar system have even been found. Despite the very respectable age, the petroglyphs, made in a realistic manner, speak of the great skill of the people who applied them.
And now research is ongoing to get closer to deciphering the unique messages left by our distant ancestors.
Bronze Age
In the Bronze Age, which is associated with the main milestones in the history of primitive art and humanity as a whole, new technical inventions appear, metal is mastered, people are engaged in agriculture and cattle breeding.
The themes of art are enriched with new plots, the role of figurative symbolism increases, and geometric ornament spreads. You can see scenes that are associated with mythology, and images become a special sign system that is understandable to some groups of the population. Appears zoomorphic and anthropomorphic sculpture, as well as mysterious structures - megaliths.
Symbols, through which a variety of concepts and feelings are conveyed, carry a great aesthetic load.
Conclusion
At the earliest stages of its development, art does not stand out as an independent sphere of human spiritual life. In primitive society, there is only nameless creativity, closely intertwined with ancient beliefs. It reflected the ideas of the ancient "artists" about nature, the surrounding world, and thanks to it, people communicated with each other.
If we talk about the features of primitive art, then we cannot fail to mention that it has always been associated with the labor activity of people. Only labor allowed the ancient masters to create real works that excite descendants with the vivid expressiveness of artistic images. Primitive man expanded his ideas about the world around him, enriching his spiritual world. In the course of labor activity, people developed aesthetic feelings and an understanding of beauty took place. From the very moment of its inception, art had a magical meaning, and later existed with other forms of not only spiritual, but also material activity.
When man learned to create images, he gained power over time. Therefore, it can be said without exaggeration that the appeal of ancient people to art is one of the most important events in the history of mankind.
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 journey 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 "dummy" that has absorbed hunting pantomimes fixed for tens of millennia at the carcass of a dead bear. Further, the following row can be 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" - for stability it is leaned against the wall (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 as 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. This is how the sculptures "coming out" from the walls of the cave appear.
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
Rock art - images in caves, made by people of the Paleolithic era, one of the types of primitive art. Most of these objects were found in Europe, since it was there that ancient people were forced to live in caves and grottoes to escape the cold. But there are such caves in Asia, for example, Niah Caves in Malaysia.
For many years, modern civilization had no idea about any objects of ancient painting, but in 1879, the Spanish amateur archaeologist Marcelino-Sans de Sautuola, along with his 9-year-old daughter, accidentally stumbled upon the Altamira Cave, the vaults of which were decorated many drawings of ancient people - an unparalleled find shocked the researcher and encouraged him to study it closely. A year later, Sautuola, together with his friend Juan Vilanov y Pier from the University of Madrid, published their research results, which dated the execution of the drawings to the Paleolithic era. Many scientists took this message extremely ambiguously, Sautuola was accused of falsifying the finds, but later similar caves were discovered in many other parts of the world.
Rock art has been an object of great interest from the scientists of the world since its discovery in the 19th century. The first finds were made in Spain, but subsequently, rock paintings were discovered in different parts of the world, from Europe and Africa to Malaysia and Australia, as well as in North and South America.
Rock paintings are a source of valuable information for many scientific disciplines related to the study of antiquity - from anthropology to zoology.
It is customary to distinguish between single-color, or monochrome, and multi-color, or polychrome images. Developing over time, by the XII millennium BC. e. cave painting began to be performed taking into account the volume, perspective, color and proportion of figures, took into account movement. Later cave painting became more stylized.
To create drawings, dyes of various origins were used: mineral (hematite, clay, manganese oxide), animal, vegetable (charcoal). Dyes were mixed with binders, such as tree resin or animal fat, if necessary, and applied directly to the surface with the fingers; tools were also used, such as hollow tubes through which dyes were applied, as well as reeds and primitive brushes. Sometimes, to achieve greater clarity of contours, scraping or cutting out the contours of figures on the walls was used.
Since almost no sunlight penetrates into the caves in which most of the rock paintings are located, torches and primitive lamps were used to create the paintings for lighting.
Cave painting of the Paleolithic era consisted of lines and was dedicated mainly to animals. Over time, cave painting evolved as primitive communities developed; in the painting of the Mesolithic and Neolithic eras, there are both animals and handprints and images of people, their interactions with animals and with each other, as well as the deities of primitive cults, their rites. A notable proportion of Neolithic drawings are images of ungulates, such as bison, deer, elk and horses, as well as mammoths; handprints also make up a large proportion. Animals were often depicted as wounded, with arrows sticking out of them. Later rock paintings also depict domesticated animals and other subjects contemporary to the authors. Known images of the ships of the sailors of ancient Phenicia, seen by the more primitive communities of the Iberian Peninsula.
Cave painting was widely practiced by primitive hunter-gatherer societies who found shelter in or near caves. The way of life of primitive people has changed little over the millennia, in connection with which both dyes and the plots of rock paintings remained practically unchanged and were common to populations of people who lived thousands of kilometers from each other.
However, there are differences between cave paintings of different time periods and regions. Thus, in the caves of Europe, animals are mainly depicted, while African rock paintings pay equal attention to both man and fauna. The technique of creating drawings also underwent certain changes; later painting is often less crude and shows a higher level of cultural development.
Man has always gravitated towards art. Proof of this are the numerous rock paintings all over the planet, created by our ancestors tens of thousands of years ago. Primitive creativity is evidence that people lived everywhere - from the hot African savannah to the Arctic Circle. America, China, Russia, Europe, Australia - everywhere the ancient artists left their marks. One should not think that primitive painting is completely primitive. There are among the rock masterpieces and very skillful works, surprising with beauty and technique of execution, painted with bright colors and carrying a deep meaning.
Petroglyphs and rock art of ancient people
Cueva de las Manos Cave
The cave is located in the south of Argentina. For a long time, the ancestors of the Indians of Patagonia lived here. Drawings depicting a hunting scene for wild animals were found on the walls of the cave, as well as many negative images of the hands of teenage boys. Scientists have suggested that drawing the outline of the hand on the wall is part of the initiation rite. In 1999, the cave was included in the UNESCO World Heritage List.
Serra da Capivara National Park
After the discovery of many monuments of rock art, the area, located in the Brazilian state of Piaui, was declared a national park. Back in the days of pre-Columbian America, the Serra da Capivara Park was a densely populated area, a large number of communities of the ancestors of modern Indians were concentrated here. Rock paintings created with coal, red hematite and white gypsum date back to 12-9 millennium BC. They belong to the Nordesti culture.
Lascaux cave
A monument of the late Paleolithic period, one of the best preserved in Europe. The cave is located in France in the valley of the river Weser. In the middle of the 20th century, drawings created 18-15 thousand years ago were discovered in it. They belong to the ancient Solutrean culture. Images are located in several cave halls. The most impressive 5 meter drawings of animals resembling bison are in the "Hall of the Bulls".
Kakadu National Park
The area is located in northern Australia, about 170 km from the city of Darwin. Over the past 40 thousand years, Aboriginal people have lived in the territory of the present national park. They left curious samples of primitive painting. These are images of hunting scenes, shamanic rites and scenes of the creation of the world, made in a special "X-ray" technique.
Nine Mile Canyon
The gorge in the USA in the east of Utah is almost 60 km long. It was even called the longest art gallery because of the series of rock petroglyphs. Some are created using natural dyes, others are carved directly into the rock. Most of the images were created by the Indians of the Fremont culture. In addition to drawings, cave dwellings, well houses and ancient grain storages are of interest.
Kapova cave
An archaeological monument located in Bashkortostan on the territory of the Shulgan-Tash reserve. The length of the cave is more than 3 km, the entrance is in the form of an arch 20 meters high and 40 meters wide. In the 1950s, primitive drawings from the Paleolithic era were discovered in four halls of the grotto - about 200 images of animals, anthropomorphic figures and abstract symbols. Most of them are created using red ocher.
Valley of Wonders
Mercantour National Park, which is called the "Valley of Wonders", is located near the Côte d'Azur. In addition to natural beauties, tourists are attracted by Mount Bego - a real archaeological monument, where tens of thousands of ancient paintings of the Bronze Age were discovered. These are geometric figures of incomprehensible purpose, religious symbols and other mysterious signs.
Cave of Altamira
The cave is located in northern Spain in the autonomous community of Cantabria. She became famous for her rock paintings, which are made in polychrome technique using many natural dyes: ocher, hematite, coal. The images refer to the Madeleine culture that existed 15-8 thousand years BC. Ancient artists were so skilled that they were able to give images of bison, horses and wild boars a three-dimensional appearance, using the natural unevenness of the wall.
Chauvet cave
Historical monument of France, located in the valley of the river Ardèche. About 40 thousand years ago, the cave was inhabited by ancient people who left behind more than 400 drawings. The oldest images are over 35,000 years old. The murals are perfectly preserved due to the fact that for a long time they could not reach Chauvet, it was discovered only in the 1990s. Unfortunately, tourists are not allowed to enter the cave.
Tadrart-Acacus
Once upon a time, on the territory of the hot and almost barren Sahara, there was a fertile and green area. There is a lot of evidence for this, including rock paintings found in Libya on the territory of the Tadrart-Acacus mountain range. From these images, one can study the evolution of the climate in this part of Africa, and trace the transformation of a flowering valley into a desert.
Wadi Methandush
Another masterpiece of rock art in Libya, located in the southwest of the country. The drawings of Wadi Methandush depict scenes with animals: elephants, cats, giraffes, crocodiles, bulls, antelopes. It is believed that the most ancient were created 12 thousand years ago. The most famous painting and unofficial symbol of the area is two large cats in a duel.
Laas Gaal
A cave complex in the unrecognized state of Somaliland with perfectly preserved ancient drawings. These murals are considered the most surviving among all on the African continent, they date back to 9-3 millennia BC. Basically, they are dedicated to the sacred cow - a cult animal that was worshiped in these places. The images were discovered in the early 2000s by a French expedition.
Bhimbetka rock dwellings
Located in India, Madhya Pradesh. It is believed that erectus (Homo erectus - Homo erectus) lived in the Bhimbetka cave complex, the immediate ancestors of modern people. The drawings discovered by Indian archaeologists date back to the Mesolithic era. Interestingly, many of the rites of the inhabitants of the surrounding villages are similar to the scenes depicted by ancient people. In total, there are about 700 caves in Bhimbetka, of which more than 300 are well studied.
White Sea petroglyphs
Drawings of primitive people are located on the territory of the archaeological complex "Belomorskiye petroglyphs", which includes several dozen sites of ancient people. The images are located in a place called Zalavruga on the shores of the White Sea. In total, the collection consists of 2000 grouped illustrations depicting people, animals, battles, rituals, hunting scenes, and there is also a curious picture of a man on skis.
Petroglyphs of Tassilin-Adjer
A mountain plateau in Algiers, on the territory of which are located the largest drawings of ancient people discovered in northern Africa. Petroglyphs began to appear here from the 7th millennium BC. The main plot is hunting scenes and figures of animals of the African savannah. The illustrations are made in different techniques, which indicates their belonging to different historical eras.
Tsodilo
The Tsodilo mountain range is located in the Kalahari Desert in Botswana. Here, on an area of more than 10 km², thousands of images created by ancient people were discovered. The researchers claim that they cover a time period of 100,000 years. The most ancient creations are primitive contour drawings, the later ones represent an attempt by artists to give the drawings a three-dimensional effect.
Tomsk pisanitsa
A natural museum-reserve in the Kemerovo region, created in the late 1980s with the aim of preserving rock art. About 300 images are located on its territory, many of them were created about 4 thousand years ago. The earliest dates back to the 10th century BC. In addition to the creativity of the ancient man, tourists will be interested to look at the ethnographic exhibition and museum collections that are part of the Tomsk petroglyph.
Magura Cave
The natural object is located in northwestern Bulgaria near the town of Belogradchik. During archaeological excavations in the 1920s, the first evidence of the stay of an ancient man was found here: tools, ceramics, jewelry. More than 700 examples of rock paintings were also found, presumably created 100-40 thousand years ago. In addition to figures of animals and people, they depict stars and the sun.
Gobustan reserve
The protected area includes mud volcanoes and ancient rock art. More than 6 thousand images were created by people who lived on this earth from the primitive era to the Middle Ages. The plots are quite simple - scenes of hunting, religious rites, figures of people and animals. Gobustan is located in Azerbaijan about 50 km from Baku.
Onega petroglyphs
Petroglyphs were discovered on the eastern shore of Lake Onega in the Pudozh region of Karelia. Drawings dating back to 4-3 millennium BC are placed on the rocks of several capes. Some of the illustrations are quite impressive 4 meters in size. In addition to the standard images of people and animals, there are also mystical symbols of incomprehensible purpose, which have always frightened the monks of the nearby Murom Holy Dormition Monastery.
Rock reliefs at Tanum
A group of petroglyphs discovered in the 1970s on the territory of the Swedish commune of Tanum. They are located along a 25-kilometer line, which in the Bronze Age, presumably, was the shore of the fjord. In total, archaeologists have discovered about 3 thousand drawings, collected in groups. Unfortunately, under the influence of unfavorable natural conditions, petroglyphs are endangered. Gradually, it becomes more and more difficult to distinguish their outlines.
Rock paintings in Alta
Primitive people lived not only in a comfortable warm climate, but also near the Arctic Circle. In the 1970s, in the north of Norway, near the city of Alta, scientists discovered a large group of prehistoric drawings, consisting of 5,000 fragments. These paintings depict the life of a person in harsh weather conditions. Some illustrations contain ornaments and signs that scientists have not been able to decipher.
Coa Valley Archaeological Park
An archaeological complex created at the site of the discovery of prehistoric paintings dating back to the Paleolithic and Neolithic periods (the so-called Solutrean culture). There are not only ancient images here, some elements were created in the Middle Ages. The drawings are located on the rocks, stretching for 17 km along the Koa River. Also in the park there is the Museum of Art and Archeology, dedicated to the history of the area.
Newspaper Rock
In translation, the name of the archaeological site means "newspaper stone". Indeed, the petroglyphs covering the rock resemble a characteristic typographical seal. The mountain is located in the US state of Utah. It has not been established for certain when these signs were created. It is believed that the Indians applied them to the cliff both before the European conquerors came to the continent, and after that.
Edakkal caves
Edakkal caves in the state of Kerala can be attributed to one of the archaeological treasures of India and all mankind. During the Neolithic period, prehistoric petroglyphs were painted on the walls of the grottoes. These characters have not yet been deciphered. The area is a popular tourist attraction, visiting the caves is possible only as part of an excursion. Self-entry is prohibited.
Petroglyphs of the archaeological landscape of Tamgaly
The Tamgaly tract is located about 170 km from Alma-Ata. In the 1950s, about 2 thousand rock paintings were discovered on its territory. Most of the images were created in the Bronze Age, there are also modern creations that appeared in the Middle Ages. Based on the nature of the drawings, scientists have suggested that an ancient sanctuary was located in Tamgaly.
Petroglyphs of the Mongolian Altai
The complex of rock signs, located on the territory of Northern Mongolia, covers an area of 25 km² and stretches for 40 km in length. The images were created in the Neolithic era more than 3 thousand years ago, there are also older drawings, 5 thousand years old. Most of them depict deer with chariots, there are also figures of hunters and fabulous animals resembling dragons.
Rock art in the Hua Mountains
Chinese rock art has been discovered in the south of the country in the Hua mountain range. They are figures of people, animals, ships, celestial bodies, weapons, painted in rich ocher. In total, there are about 2 thousand images, which are conventionally divided into 100 groups. Some pictures add up to full-fledged stories, where you can see a solemn ceremony, ritual or procession.
Swimmer's Cave
The grotto is located in the Libyan desert on the border of Egypt and Libya. In the 1990s, ancient petroglyphs were discovered there, the age of which exceeds 10 thousand years (the Neolithic era). They depict people floating in the sea or in another body of water. That is why the cave was called by its modern name. After people began to visit the grotto en masse, many drawings began to deteriorate.
horseshoe canyon
The gorge is part of the Canyonlands National Park, which is located in the US state of Utah. Horseshoe Canyon became famous due to the discovery in the 1970s of ancient drawings created by nomadic hunter-gatherers. The images are printed on panels about 5 meters high and 60 meters wide, they are 2-meter humanoid figures.
Petroglyphs of Val Camonica
In the first half of the 20th century, in the Italian Val Camonica valley (Lombardy region), the largest collection of rock carvings in the world was discovered - more than 300 thousand drawings. Most of them were created in the Iron Age, the latest ones belong to the Kamun culture, about which ancient Roman sources write. It is curious that when B. Mussolini was in power in Italy, these petroglyphs were considered proof of the birth of the highest Aryan race.
Twyfelfontein Valley
The most ancient settlements appeared in the Namibian Twyfelfontein valley more than 5 thousand years ago. Around the same time, rock paintings were created depicting the typical life of hunters and nomads. In total, scientists counted more than 2.5 thousand fragments, most of them are about 3 thousand years old, the youngest are about 500 years old. In the middle of the 20th century, someone stole an impressive part of the petroglyphs.
Chumashskaya painted cave
A national park in the state of California, on the territory of which there is a small sandstone grotto with a wall painting of the Chumash Indians. The plots of the paintings reflect the ideas of the natives about the world order. According to various estimates, the drawings were created in the period from 1 thousand to 200 years ago, which makes them quite modern compared to prehistoric rock art elsewhere in the world.
Petroglyphs of Toro Muerto
A group of petroglyphs in the Peruvian province of Castilla, which were created in the 6th-12th centuries during the Huari culture. Some scholars suggest that the Incas had a hand in them. The drawings depict animals, birds, celestial bodies, geometric ornaments, as well as people in a dance, probably performing some kind of ritual. In total, about 3 thousand painted stones of volcanic origin were discovered.
Petroglyphs of Easter Island
One of the most mysterious places on the planet, Easter Island, can surprise you not only with giant stone heads. Ancient petroglyphs painted on rocks, boulders, cave walls are of no less interest and are considered an important archaeological heritage. They are either schematic representations of a technical process, or non-existent animals and plants - scientists have yet to figure out this issue.
