Why did ancient man depict animals? What and how did primitive man draw?

As a result, it seemed that the ancients looked at images of animals in the same way as modern man admiring artistic paintings in the Louvre. The art of cave dwellers was proposed to be perceived for the most part as purely artistic phenomenon, naturalistic in character. It was argued that it was intended to decorate and ennoble the life of savages, who were most excited by the images of animals. Of course, it was the animals that provided them with the bulk of their food. It is useless to look for any “hidden ideas” behind these images. True, timid voices were heard that noted some strange features in the art of “antediluvian” artists and called for finding some extraordinary meaning in these ancient zoomorphic images. However, most archaeologists were not yet ready to decide difficult task. The mysterious world of ideas of primitive man has not yet been amenable to their understanding.

But there were also those who, pondering the meaning of the artistic creativity of the troglodytes, began to guess that perhaps something very significant was hidden behind its images. Edouard Piette, perhaps more prepared than anyone else to discuss this subject, drew attention first of all to the fact that not every camp kept objects of art in the ground. He regarded this as a sign that in Ice Age, along with artistically gifted people, there were those “who had no other desires than satisfying animal needs.” Other “tribes rose above the needs of material existence and devoted their leisure time to art...” As for the latter, Piette explained the appearance, for example, of sculptural images of women as follows: “Love prompted the first sculptor to reproduce his beloved woman.”

Another important motive of creativity is the reproduction in images of art of what gave a person food: “Glyptic artists often painted what was well known to them - animals and fish that were eaten. They did not look for other motives. Most often they depicted horses, which by that time had been half-domesticated in order to have a constant source of meat. Dreaded rhinoceroses were prey and were rarely engraved. Large cats posed a serious danger to humans at that time. He was not able to fight them, and therefore there are no images of them. Fox, wolf and hyena meat had a disgusting taste and was not valued in the diet. Therefore, they were rarely painted. People of that time were not vegetarians, preferring to eat meat. Therefore, plants were rarely depicted.” In these cursory remarks one can see the beginnings of a future concept about the reflection of magical ideas in the art of the Ice Age: the depiction of those animals that were desired by people in real life.

Of no less interest are Piette’s brief remarks about the possibility of reflecting religious ideas in Cro-Magnon art objects, the appearance of which in such distant times was far from an indisputable fact for the leading archaeologists of the “prehistory” of Europe. So, in the sculptures of women he saw amulets or some sacred objects. In the same vein, Piette assessed 37 engraved and sculptural images of snakes that he found during excavations: “It seems that they were then objects of superstitious fear, these amulets in the form of snakes discovered in Gurdan, Mas d'Azil and Lorte. They were symbols of the cult , As in ancient times. This is the only way to explain the presence of spirals in their images.” The characteristic drawings with diverging rays allowed him to suggest that they reflected the image of the solar deity, the possibility of whose existence in the ideas of “Man of Nature” was hinted at in his time by Boucher de Pert. In connection with the likelihood of religious ideas being reflected in the images of troglodyte art, Piette’s thought about two directions in their artistic creativity is of exceptional interest: “During almost the entire glyptic era, two currents can be traced in art, according to which artists are divided - realism and fantasy.” He considered all kinds of ornaments to be the fruits of the “art of imagination,” including the same spirals that became especially popular during the period of the appearance of bas-reliefs.

Discovery of caves art galleries raised a number of questions for archaeologists: what did the primitive artist draw with, how did he draw, where did he place the 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 main colors - black, white, red and yellow. To obtain white images, chalk and chalk-like limestones were used; 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. Stone slabs on which ocher was ground, as well as pieces of dark red manganese dioxide, were found in caves and grottoes in France. Judging by the painting technique, pieces of paint were ground and mixed with bone marrow, animal fat or blood. Chemical and X-ray analysis of paints from the Lascaux cave showed that not only natural dyes were used, mixtures of which give different shades primary colors, but also quite complex connections, obtained by firing them and adding other components (kaolinite and aluminum oxides).

Serious study of cave dyes is just beginning. And questions immediately arise: why were only inorganic paints used? The primitive man-gatherer distinguished more than 200 different plants, among which were dyeing plants. 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 does it take so long to enter early painting colors of the green-blue-blue part of the spectrum? 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 flavor of life at that time: the sun's disk on the horizon and the flame of a fire, the darkness of the night full of dangers and the darkness of the caves bringing relative peace. Red and black were associated with opposites 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 20th century cosmonaut who took a set of 120 colored pencils on his first flights around the Earth.

The second group of questions that arise when studying cave painting, concerns drawing technology. The problem can be formulated as follows: the animals shown in the pictures paleolithic man, “came out” of the wall or “went” into it?

In 1923, N. Casteret discovered a Late Paleolithic clay figure of a bear lying on the ground in the Montespan cave. It was covered with indentations - traces of dart strikes, and numerous prints were found on the floor bare feet. A thought arose: this is a “model” that incorporates hunting pantomimes around the carcass of a dead bear, established over tens of thousands of years. Then the following series can be traced, confirmed by finds in other caves: a model of a bear, made in life size, dressed in his skin and decorated with a real skull, is replaced by his clay likeness; the animal gradually “gets to its feet” - it is leaned against the wall for stability (this is already a step towards creating a bas-relief); then the animal gradually “retracts” into it, leaving a drawn and then a pictorial outline... This is how archaeologist A. Solar imagines the emergence of Paleolithic painting.

Another way is no less likely. According to Leonardo da Vinci, the first drawing is the shadow of an object illuminated by a fire. Primitive begins to draw, mastering the “outlining” technique. The caves have preserved dozens of such examples. On the walls of the Gargas cave (France) 130 “ghost hands” are visible - human handprints on the wall. It is interesting that in some cases they are depicted with a line, in others - by filling in the external or internal contours (positive or negative stencil), then drawings appear, “torn off” from the object, which is no longer depicted in life-size, in profile or frontally. Sometimes objects are drawn as if in different projections (face and legs - profile, chest and shoulders - frontal). Skill gradually increases. The drawing acquires clarity and confidence of the stroke. By best drawings biologists confidently determine not only the genus, but also the species, and sometimes the subspecies of an animal.

The Magdalenian artists take the next step: through painting they convey dynamics and perspective. Color helps a lot with this. Full of life the horses of the Grand Ben cave seem to be running in front of us, gradually decreasing in size... Later this technique was forgotten, and similar drawings are not found in rock paintings either in the Mesolithic or Neolithic. The last step is the transition from a perspective image to a three-dimensional one. This is how sculptures appear, “emerging” from the walls of the cave.

Which of the above points of view is correct? A comparison of the absolute dating of figurines made of bones and stone indicates that they are approximately the same age: 30-15 thousand years BC. e. Maybe in different places cave artist took different paths?

Another of the mysteries of cave painting is the lack of background and frame. Figures of horses, bulls, and mammoths are scattered freely along the rock wall. The drawings seem to hang in the air; not even a symbolic line of ground 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 the landscape background. Only in the 17th century. n. e. in Holland the landscape is designed into a special genre.

The study of Paleolithic painting provides specialists with abundant material for searching for the origins various styles and trends in contemporary art. For example, a prehistoric master, 12 thousand years before the advent of pointillist artists, depicted animals on the wall of the Marsoula cave (France) using tiny colored dots. The number of similar examples can be multiplied, but something else is more important: the images on the walls of caves are a fusion of the reality of existence and its reflection in the brain of Paleolithic man. 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 Eldorado for all sorts of hypotheses on this matter.

Dublyansky V.N., popular science book

In the previous article we talked about how you can play with your child in prehistoric times and introduce him to the life and way of life of primitive people. And today let’s pay attention to the art of those years and try to act as an artist ourselves.

Skillful artists

Tell your child a story: “Once upon a time, a Spanish archaeologist, Marcelino de Sautuola, was exploring an ancient cave. With him was his little daughter Maria. One day a girl decided to look into the very depths of the cave, and, running to her father, shouted: “There’s a bull there!” Bull!" The father began to reassure his daughter: “Where do the bulls come from here?”

Ask your child if there could be any animals in the cave? Come up with several options together. Then continue the story: “Marcelino walked deep into the cave and froze in amazement. No, there was more than one bull! And a whole herd! The bison stood, lay, and kicked. And they were all painted on the wall of the cave, each one and a half to two meters long, so naturally and realistically that they could really be confused with the living.”

With your child, look at the pictures of bison painted on the cave wall.

Scientists for a long time I couldn’t believe that these were creations created at the dawn of humanity. At one time it was even believed that this was a joke by some modern artist.
Show your young “archaeologist” some more cave paintings.

Carefully study the pictures and ask the question: what unites the drawings of primitive people, what do they have in common? That's right, they all depict animals. Why did I draw them? ancient man? Not plants or landscapes. Remind your “discoverer” of the games when you were introduced to life in prehistoric times. And your child will guess that all the life activity of primitive people was connected with animals that provided them with food, clothing, and shelter (skins were stretched over huts made of mammoth bones).

Draw the child's attention to the skill and skill with which the drawings were made. Appearance, body parts, poses of animals - observation helped to draw all this correctly. Why did primitive people pay so much attention to detail? Without this, the hunt would not have been successful.

Unseen prehistoric animals

Show your child illustrations of ancient animals, compare them with modern ones.

Platybelodon
Pakicetus
Pantolambda
Arsinotherium
Titanoides
Celodont
Fororakos

Amazing creatures! You can find out more about them on the Animal World website. Say the names of each of them; for sure, they will not leave the young “scientist” indifferent. The child will love to come up with his own similar sophisticated names; to do this, draw an imaginary prehistoric beast.

Play another game of imagination and fantasy: draw the attention of the young researcher to the features of the appearance of animals and come up with “telling” names by which you can easily guess who is who. For example, look for the Long-tailed Striper among all the specimens on display.

Magic rituals

Scientists found that animals depicted in caves often had dents and scratches from stones and spears. Why? Allow your child to express his or her thinking and Creative skills and make assumptions.

Ancient people believed that the painted animals were alive, that they felt pain, fear, were born and died. Typically, primitive artists painted them before a hunt and acted out scenes from it: how they pursue prey, track it, surround it and kill it with stones and spears. They believed that if the drawn animal was killed, then the real hunt would be successful. People often put magical meaning into these rituals, which real life helped them train their bodies and develop coordination of actions.

It is interesting that the rock paintings do not depict fish, although they were part of the human diet of that time. Again, let your researcher come up with their own versions of the answer. Remind your child of the purpose of drawing animals. Of course, training, a rehearsal for a real hunt! And catching fish was relatively simple; fishing did not require magical rituals.

Primitive colors

Remind your child that primitive era there were no modern brushes or paints. What did prehistoric people use to paint entire herds of bulls? Which natural materials could they paint well and leave a color mark? Perhaps in the life of your young “archaeologist” you already have experience with clay, which stains clothes and hands. For example, when on the shore he extracted building material from great depths. Or another “paint” that appears after extinguishing a fire at a picnic in the forest - coal. Or marks on the fingers, tongue, teeth from honeysuckle. These are all examples of natural paint.

Invite the little explorer to independently guess what primitive people could use to draw, and put several objects in front of him: felt-tip pens (or pencils, paints), toys (or something that cannot paint), and coal, chalk, colored clay, berries .
In addition, prehistoric people used colored minerals by grinding them and mixing them with animal fat. You and your child can mix fat-soluble dyes with sunflower oil or butter.

Brushes in primitive times

Now invite your child to “invent” an ancient brush. Listen to all the ideas, including the option to draw with your finger, this is one of the correct answers. Then offer to make a prehistoric brush from the suggested items:

a long, hollow chicken bone with the ends cut off (can be taken from the broth);
a tuft of fur (pets shed);
a piece of moss (if you find it).

Ancient people made tubes from bones and attached moss or animal hair at one end, and filled it with paint through the other. Now the brush is ready for use. Sometimes they simply painted with moss or a piece of skin.

At home, it is permissible to replace moss with a piece of cotton wool. Explain to your child that this is also a plant, cotton. IN as a last resort, you can get by cotton swab. Fill a homemade brush with beet juice and start creating.

Drawing in a primitive way

Find a large boulder on your walk and use it as a canvas. If the weather does not allow it, then for the sake of a good cause, deliver it to your home little artist. Residents of mountainous areas can, like no one else, feel like ancient creators and draw in the caves themselves. If it is not possible to get a suitable stone, then place a large box vertically under the table and imagine yourself and your child in a makeshift cave.

There are many ways to draw: just with your fingers, with moss (or cotton wool), using a homemade brush (made from a hollow bone), charcoal, colored clays, berries, decoction onion peel, dandelion juice or other highly pigmented vegetables and fruits. And also a modern, but nevertheless natural dye - a thick solution of coffee.

What to draw? The animal your child liked best. Or come up with your own prehistoric animal, give it a name, tell us how it lives, what it eats, and how it gets food. His appearance and lifestyle are inextricably linked. If an animal has powerful fangs, then it cannot be a herbivore. But if he has Long neck, which helps to reach the foliage of tall trees, then it is precisely a herbivore.

What to do if a child cannot convey all the details of animals exactly like primitive artists. Leave random prints, spots, blots, add eyes and ears to them - and your unprecedented prehistoric beast is ready. The colored dots are his traces. Bushy imprints with moss are plants on which it feeds or in which it hides from primitive hunters.

It's time to play ancient hunters! Practice your dexterity and accuracy using balls of thread or crumpled paper instead of stones.

After such ritual actions, primitive people always asked for forgiveness from the painted animals, because they considered them alive. Apologize to both you and your child to your “rock” animal.

So, while playing, you and your child will get acquainted with another facet of life prehistoric people and get great pleasure, creating masterpieces in the style of primitive times.
In the following articles we will see pictograms, Caves of Hands and relief images.

Oksana Yaremchuk, teacher additional education, psychologist

The masterpieces of ancient rock painting amaze not only people far from art, but also venerable artists. Their creators have long since sunk into the darkness of millennia, but their works continue to live, delighting distant descendants. Neither the meager palette of colors, nor the lack of brushes, nor poor lighting prevented primitive artists from beautifully and realistically depicting the world around them.

Self-expression or ancient magic?

The first drawings by primitive artists, which amazed scientists, were discovered in Spain in the second half of the 19th century. These drawings did not turn out to be as primitive as one might expect. It turned out that primitive artists painted no worse than many representatives contemporary art. After Spain ancient rock art discovered in other European countries, and then on almost all continents except Antarctica. Paleolithic cave painting was mainly devoted to animals. With the development of primitive communities in the Mesolithic and Neolithic, in addition to animals, images of people and their interactions with each other and with animals began to be found in the subjects of drawings. Images of certain religious rituals have appeared, and ufologists even distinguish aliens and flying saucers in a number of drawings.

Some cave paintings are done in one color, while others use multiple colors. It should be noted that primitive artists did not have a rich palette; they used only natural dyes. Kaolin gave them White color; ocher - red or yellow; manganese - black. They also used hematite, marl, quartz, soot, charcoal, plants and animal blood. To protect the drawing from being washed out by water flowing down the walls, tree resin or animal fat was added to the paints. Thanks to such tricks, cave painting outlived its creators for thousands of years.

When creating drawings, paints were applied using fingers; later, hollow tubes made of bird bones and some kind of homemade brushes were used to apply them. It happened that prehistoric artists scraped or knocked out the outline of a drawing to give it clarity and expressiveness. To create a three-dimensional effect, drawings were often applied to wall projections, which were selected with great skill. Due to poor lighting or its complete absence, masterpieces of cave painting were created by the light of fires or torches.

Why did ancient artists spend so much time creating? We can no longer ask them about this, but scientists put forward their own assumptions on this matter. For example, Henri Breuil saw rock paintings as part of the rituals of “hunting magic.” Ancient artists painted herds of bison pierced by animal spears, thus attracting good luck in the hunt. According to other researchers, the artists simply depicted the world, expressing your creativity.

The main artists were women and children?!

When the first cave paintings were discovered, no one doubted that they were created by men. The primitive woman has long been considered a downtrodden creature without a shadow of intelligence, capable only of giving birth and feeding children, maintaining a fire and tanning skins. However, as soon as scientists began to study in detail the palm prints left by ancient artists, their views changed. In publication scientific journal National Geographic American researchers directly say that ancient cave paintings were made by women. This conclusion was made based on an analysis of handprints found on the walls of caves next to ancient rock paintings. It turned out that the length of the phalanges and the proportions of the fingers correspond exactly to a woman’s palm. It turns out that the authors of about 75% of the detected rock paintings there were women. It was previously established that artistic creativity Children were also involved in the caves.

It turns out that the “team”, consisting mainly of women, partly of children and men, created the masterpieces of cave painting. Among these masterpieces are drawings from the Font de Gaume cave in the Dordogne. Numerous images of mammoths, bison, wild horses, deer and other animals were found in this cave.

It is curious that they are made in different manners; the most ancient ones are also found here. line drawings, made with black and red paint. There are also amazing polychrome compositions created at a later time. It is worth remembering the famous Lascaux cave, discovered by French schoolchildren in September 1940 near the town of Montignac. On the walls of the cave there were hundreds of yellow, red, brown, made with ocher, soot and marl, images of animals - deer, goats, bulls, bison, horses, rhinoceroses. All of them were executed with such skill that some even speculated about a grand prank staged by contemporary artists. However, there was no talk of any kind of prank; all the drawings were genuine and very ancient. Soon the Lascaux cave was nicknamed " Sistine Chapel primitive painting."

One of the masterpieces of cave painting was discovered relatively recently, in 1995, in the Chauvet Cave in France. The ancient artist, using ocher, hematite and charcoal, depicted mammoths, bison, bison, horses, deer, cave lions, bears, wild sheep, as well as hyenas, panthers and owls on its walls. The most interesting thing is that these drawings turned out to be the oldest known - they are 31 thousand years old. It is surprising that they are made with amazing skill. A specialist in rock art, French scientist Jean Clotte, said: “The people who painted this were great artists.”

And now it’s time to remember the famous Altamira cave in Spain, from which the history of the study of ancient cave painting practically began.

Picasso was delighted with Altamira's masterpieces

After visiting the Altamira cave and examining its rock art, famous artist Pablo Picasso exclaimed: “After Altamira everything is in decline! Neither of contemporary artists I couldn’t write something like that!” He was delighted with the expression of the drawings, their composition, selection of colors, the delicate taste of the ancient painter, knowledge of proportions and peculiarities of animal movement. Before Altamira, no one even suspected that Stone Age people were capable of creating real masterpieces of painting. It was in this cave that the very first drawings of the times were discovered Late Paleolithic(35-10 thousand BC) The epoch-making discovery was made by the Spanish amateur archaeologist Count Marcelino de Savtuola.

This cave, located 30 km from the city of Santander (Cantabria), was accidentally discovered by a shepherd in 1868. True, he didn’t find anything special then, except bones and animal horns. In 1875, Count de Savtuola visited the cave for the first time; he managed to discover only stone tools of Paleolithic man, but there was nothing sensational in this find. In 1879, the count decided to examine the cave again and took his 6-year-old daughter Maria with him. It was she who, pointing her finger at the cave ceiling, suddenly shouted: “Bulls, bulls!” Her father laughed, but still raised his eyes to the ceiling and froze in amazement: there were huge colorful figures of bison. Some of them ancient artist depicted standing still, others in dynamics - with inclined horns rushing at the enemy. The count began to carefully examine the ceiling and walls of the cave, and he managed to discover a number of drawings made in black, brown and red paints.

The animal drawings were made with high skill and great realism. Savtuola published a message about his find, but scientific world greeted him with obvious distrust. It ended with the drawings of the Altamira cave being recognized as a fake and being forgotten for a while. The discovery of Savtuola was remembered in 1895, when the French archaeologist Emile Riviere found drawings of primitive man on the walls of the La Mout cave in the Dordogne. After this discovery, scientists began a thorough examination of the walls and ceilings of all caves known at that time. Rock art has been discovered in dozens of caves in Spain and France.

Some of the drawings were hidden by stalagmites, others were covered with limestone crust, but it was clear that they were very ancient, and there could be no question of any forgery. After this, scientists turned close attention to the 270-meter Altamira cave and its unique paintings. Researchers have concluded that their age is about 20 thousand years. In 1902, alas, after the death of the discoverer Count de Savtuola, the rock paintings of Altamira were recognized as authentic. Numerous tourists began to visit the cave, so due to the disruption of the microclimate, the ancient drawings began to collapse. Altamira had to be closed to visitors, and only scientists were allowed into the cave for a limited time. Near the cave they organized museum complex, in 2001, an exact copy of the Great Plafond panel was opened in it; since then, tourists, without disturbing the peace of the cave, can see what has been hidden in it for tens of millennia.

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“Primitive history” is the history of modern times. The history of the emergence of man is complex and contradictory. What era in history was the longest? history of the Middle Ages. Why did primitive artists paint animals? Hunting and fishing. History of mankind. Why the most ancient era history of mankind is called primitive?

"The First Ancient People" - Many Tribes. Austalopithecines were vertically challenged. Mastery of fire. Hunting of ancient people. If the fire went out, the culprits were expelled. Lesson assignment. Pithecanthropus. Flakes. Tools. Australopithecus lived in trees. Use of fire. The first people appeared in east africa. The most ancient people. The most ancient tools.

“The History of Ancient Man” - History in symbols and signs. Inventions and discoveries (50). Archaeologists have discovered a site of primitive people. How did the stone chopper come about? Inventions and discoveries (10). Inventions and discoveries (60). History in architectural monuments(50). Religion. What does the word history mean? 40 BC for 80 years.

“The Emergence of Art and Religious Beliefs” - Religion. Determine the main occupation of the inhabitants of the Teshik-Tash grotto. Art is a creative reflection of reality. The emergence of art and religious beliefs. Life of primitive people. Drawings on the walls of caves. Why do archaeologists dig up people's graves? Petroglyphs. What word can be used to replace it? Algorithm independent work with an electronic textbook.

“Lesson Ancient People” - Draw a conclusion. Task No. 2. Terminal. Task No. 3. Traveling through stations. Grading. Task No. 4. Life of primitive people. Card No. 2 Prepare a detailed answer to the question “Why did inequality appear?” Zadachkino. Crossword. The purpose of the lesson. Systematization and quality control of knowledge on the topic “Life of primitive people.”

“Agriculture and cattle breeding” - Hoe farming. Sheep. Fishing. A group of relatives running a common household. Agriculture originated more than 10 thousand years ago in Western Asia. Agriculture. Clay dishes. Gathering. The most powerful spirits were called gods. Grain grater. From gathering to farming. Cattle breeding. ...Housekeeping.

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