Cave painting
Description
In archaeology, cave paintings are a type of parietal art (which category also includes petroglyphs, or engravings), found on the wall or ceilings of caves. The term usually implies prehistoric origin. Several groups of scientists suggest that the oldest of such paintings were created not by Homo sapiens, but by Denisovans and Neanderthals.
Discussion around prehistoric art is important in understanding the history of Homo sapiens and how human beings have come to have unique abstract thoughts. Some point to these prehistoric paintings as possible examples of creativity, spirituality, and sentimental thinking in prehistoric humans. Read more ↗
Key Artists
Aurignacian Culture Painters (Chauvet Cave)
Earliest known figurative master cave painters; created sophisticated, dynamic charcoal and red-ochre depictions of lions, mammoths, and rhinos around 36,000–30,000 BCE. (Note: As individual Paleolithic artists are anonymous by historical necessity, primary archaeological cultures and foundational caves represent the creators).
Magdalenian Culture Painters (Lascaux & Altamira)
Peak Upper Paleolithic cave artists active c. 17,000–12,000 BCE who developed polychrome painting, perspective techniques, and scaffolding to paint cavern ceilings.
Sulawesi Prehistoric Painters (Lubang Jeriji Saléh)
Early Southeast Asian cave artists who produced some of humanity's earliest known figurative animal paintings and hand stencils dating to over 40,000 BCE.
San Rock Artists
Indigenous Southern African hunter-gatherer artists who created enduring rock and cave paintings depicting eland hunts and shamanic trance experiences.
Abbé Henri Breuil
Pioneering archaeologist and priest who produced the first systematic, canonical tracings and scholarly monographs on Paleolithic cave art across France and Spain.
Famous Artworks
Fun Facts
Paleolithic cave painters often worked in pitch darkness using stone lamps fueled by animal fat, and engineered sophisticated wooden scaffolding to reach cavern ceilings up to twelve feet high.
↗ Source: metmuseum.org
When the Cave of Altamira was first presented at the 1880 Lisbon archaeological congress, leading European scholars dismissed the magnificent polychrome bison paintings as modern forgeries because they could not believe prehistoric humans possessed such artistic sophistication.
↗ Source: britannica.com