What kind of pictures did primitive people draw? Rock art of primitive people: what is hidden behind it? Chauvet Cave, south of France
More than three million years ago, the formation process began modern look of people. Parking lots primitive man found in various countries around 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 stood out with extraordinary artistic talents, who left many expressive works. There are no corrections to be found in the drawings made on the walls of the caves, since unique masters there was a very steady hand.
Primitive thinking
Origin problem primitive art, reflecting the lifestyle of ancient hunters, has been exciting the minds of scientists for several centuries. Despite its simplicity, it is of great importance in the history of mankind. It reflects religious and social sphere life of that society. Consciousness primitive people represents a very complex interweaving of two principles - illusory and realistic. It is believed that this combination had a decisive influence 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 goals of their work.
The emergence of art
IN mid-19th century, archaeologist E. Larte discovered an image of a mammoth in the La Madeleine cave. Thus, for the first time, the involvement of hunters in painting was proven. As a result of discoveries, it was established that monuments of art appeared much later than tools.
Representatives of homo sapiens made stone knives and spearheads, and this technique was passed on 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 great amount 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 sculpture and carvings on bone, stone and wood. Unfortunately, wooden artifacts are extremely rare in archaeological excavations. However, the man-made objects that have come down to us are very expressive and silently tell the story of the skill of ancient hunters.
It must be admitted that in the minds of our ancestors, art was not identified as a separate sphere of activity, and not all people had the ability to create images. The artists of that era had such a powerful talent that it burst out on its own, splashing out on the walls and roof of the cave with bright and expressive images that overwhelmed the human consciousness.
The Old Stone Age (Paleolithic) represents the earliest but longest period, at the end of which all types of art appeared, which are characterized by external simplicity and realism. People did not connect the events taking place with nature or themselves, and did not feel space.
The most outstanding monuments Paleolithic paintings on cave walls are considered 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.
Paintings on rocks were done with a stone cutter or paint (red ocher, black charcoal, white lime). Scientists claim that along with the emerging art, the first rudiments of a primitive society (society) arose.
During the Paleolithic era, carvings on stone, wood and bone developed. The figurines of animals and birds found by archaeologists are distinguished by accurate reproduction of all volumes. Researchers say that they were created as amulets that protected cave dwellers from evil spirits. The most ancient masterpieces had magical meaning and guided man in nature.
Various tasks facing artists
The main feature of primitive art in the Paleolithic era is its primitivism. Ancient people did not know how to convey space and give natural phenomena human qualities. The visual image of animals was initially presented as a schematic, almost conventional, image. And only after several centuries do colorful images appear that reliably show all the details appearance 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 and created for magical purposes. But very detailed exact images appear during a period when animals turn into objects of veneration, and ancient people thus emphasize their mystical connection with them.
The Rise of Art
According to archaeologists, the highest flowering of the art of primitive society occurred in the Magdalenian period (25-12 thousand years BC). At this time, animals are depicted in motion, and a simple contour drawing takes on volumetric forms.
The spiritual powers of hunters, who have studied the habits of predators to the smallest detail, are aimed at comprehending the laws of nature. Ancient artists convincingly draw images of animals, but man himself does not receive special attention in art. In addition, not a single image of the landscape has ever been discovered. It is believed that ancient hunters simply admired nature, and feared and worshiped predators.
The most famous examples of rock art of this period were found in the caves of Lascaux (France), Altamira (Spain), Shulgan-Tash (Urals).
"The 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 found himself in the Almamira cave discovered rock paintings, which were later included in the List World Heritage UNESCO. It is no coincidence that the underground grotto received the name " Sistine Chapel Stone Age." In the rock paintings one can see the confident hand of ancient artists, who made the outlines of animals without any corrections, using single lines. In the light of a torch, which gives rise to a stunning play of shadows, it seems that volumetric images 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, images of animals were found relatively recently - in 1959. 14 silhouette and contour drawings animals are made with red ocher. In addition, various geometric signs were discovered.
The first humanoid images
One of the main themes of primitive art is the image of a woman. It was caused by the special specificity of the thinking of ancient people. Magical powers were attributed to the drawings. The found figurines of naked and clothed women indicate a very high level of skill of ancient hunters and convey main idea image - the keeper of the hearth.
These figures are very overweight women, the so-called Venus. Such sculptures are the first humanoid images symbolizing fertility and motherhood.
Changes that occurred during the Mesolithic and Neolithic eras
During the Mesolithic era, primitive art underwent changes. Rock paintings are multi-figure compositions in which one 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 housing and erects structures on stilts made of brick. The main topic art becomes a collective activity, and visual creativity is represented by rock paintings, stone, ceramic and wooden sculpture, clay plastic.
Ancient petroglyphs
It is impossible not to mention multi-plot and multi-figure compositions in which the main attention is paid to animals and humans. 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 a kind of writing, which is based on symbols and signs, and testifies to the spiritual heritage of our ancestors.
In Russia, petroglyphs are called "pisanits", and most often they are found not in caves, but on open area. Made with ocher, they are perfectly preserved, since the paint is perfectly absorbed into rocks. The themes of the drawings are very wide and varied: the heroes are animals, symbols, signs and people. Even schematic images of stars have been found solar system. Despite their very respectable age, the petroglyphs, made in a realistic manner, speak of the great skill of the people who made them.
And now research is ongoing to get closer to deciphering the unique messages left by our distant ancestors.
Bronze Age
During the Bronze Age, which is associated with the main milestones in the history of primitive art and humanity in general, new technical inventions appear, metal is being mastered, people are engaged in agriculture and cattle breeding.
The themes of art are enriched with new subjects, the role of figurative symbolism, geometric ornament spreads. You can see scenes that are associated with mythology, and the images become a special symbolic system that is understandable to certain groups of the population. Zoomorphic and atropomorphic sculpture appears, as well as mysterious structures - megaliths.
Symbols, with the help of 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 and the surrounding world, and thanks to it, people communicated with each other.
If we talk about the features of primitive art, then it is impossible not to mention that it has always been associated with the labor activity of people. Only labor allowed 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 their work, people developed aesthetic feelings and an understanding of beauty. From the very moment of its inception, art had a magical meaning, and later it existed with other forms of not only spiritual, but also material activity.
When man learned to create images, he gained power over time. Therefore, without exaggeration, we can say that the turn of ancient people to art is one of the most important events in the history of mankind.
The cave was discovered on December 18, 1994 in the south of France, in the Ardèche department, on 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, Elette Brunel Deschamps and Christian Hillaire.
All of them already had extensive experience in exploring caves, including those containing traces of prehistoric man. The half-buried entrance to the then unnamed cave was already known to them, but the cave had not yet been explored. When Elette, squeezing through the narrow opening, saw a large cavity going into the distance, she realized that she needed to return to the car for 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 snatched an ocher spot on the wall from the darkness. It turned out to be a “portrait” of a mammoth. No other cave in the south-east of France, rich in “paintings,” can compare with the newly discovered one, named after Chauvet, either in size, or in the preservation and skill of the drawings, and the age of some of them reaches 30-33 thousand years.
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 been established at that time, based, in particular, on the classification of the French scientist Henri Leroy-Gourhan . According to his theory (as well as the opinion of most other experts), the development of art went from primitive forms to more complex ones, and then the earliest drawings from Chauvet should generally belong to the pre-figurative stage (dots, spots, stripes, winding lines, other scribbles) . However, researchers of Chauvet's paintings found themselves face to face with the fact that ancient images almost the most perfect in their execution from the Paleolithic known to us (Paleolithic is at least: it is not known what Picasso, who admired the Altamiran bulls, would say if he had a chance to see Chauvet’s lions and bears!). Apparently, art is not very friendly with evolutionary theory: avoiding any stadiality, it somehow inexplicably arises immediately, out of nothing, in highly artistic forms.
Here is what the largest expert in the field of Paleolithic art Z. A. Abramova writes about this: " Paleolithic art appears like a bright flash of flame in the depths of centuries. Having developed unusually quickly from the first timid steps to polychrome frescoes, this art just as abruptly disappeared. It does not find 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 echoes of the art of the Ice Age penetrated into Picasso’s brilliant work" (quoted from: Sher Ya. When and how did it arise art?).
(source - Donsmaps.com)
The drawing of black rhinoceroses from Chauvet is considered to be the oldest in the world (32,410 ± 720 years ago; there is information on the Internet about a certain “new” dating, giving Chauvet’s painting from 33 to 38 thousand years old, but without credible references).
On this moment, This oldest example human creativity, the beginning of art, unencumbered by history. Typically, Paleolithic art is dominated by drawings of animals that people hunted - horses, cows, deer, and so on. The walls of Chauvet are covered with images of predators - cave lions, panthers, owls and hyenas. There are drawings depicting rhinoceros, tarpans and a number of other animals of the Ice Age.
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In addition, no other cave contains so many images of a woolly rhinoceros, an animal whose “dimensions” and strength are not inferior to a mammoth. In size and strength, the woolly rhinoceros was almost equal to the mammoth, its weight reached 3 tons, body length - 3.5 m, the size of the front horn - 130 cm. The rhinoceros became extinct at the end of the Pleistocene, earlier than the mammoth and the cave bear. Unlike mammoths, rhinoceroses 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 scenes of fierce “rock” fights between rhinoceroses from Chauvet.
The cave is located in the south of France, on the steep bank of the canyon of the Ardège River, a tributary of the Rhone, in a very picturesque place, in the vicinity of the Pont d’Arc (“Arch 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. And even those are allowed to enter it only twice a year, in spring and autumn, and work there only for a couple of weeks, a few hours a day. Unlike Altamira and Lascaux, Chauvet has not yet been “cloned,” so ordinary people like you and me can only admire the reproductions, which we will certainly do, but a little later.
“In the fifteen-odd years since its discovery, many more people have been to the summit of Everest than have seen these drawings,” writes Adam Smith in his review of Werner Herzog’s documentary about Chauvet. Haven't tested it, but sounds good.
So, the famous German film director somehow miraculously managed to get permission to film. The film "Cave of Forgotten Dreams" was shot in 3D and shown at the Berlin Film Festival in 2011, which, presumably, attracted the attention of the general public to Chauvet. It’s not good for us to lag behind the public either.
Researchers agree that the caves containing drawings in such quantities were clearly not intended for habitation and did not represent prehistoric art galleries, but were sanctuaries, places of rituals, in particular, the initiation of young men entering adulthood (this is evidenced, for example, by preserved children's traces).
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-figure compositions, were discovered.
Elette Brunel Deschamps and Christian Hillaire - participants in the discovery of the Chauvet Cave.
The paintings also answered the question: did tigers or lions live in prehistoric Europe? It turned out to be 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 as impressive. Often these images show the characteristic tuft on the tail of lions. The coloring of the fur, apparently, was one color.
Paleolithic art mostly features drawings of animals from the “menu” of primitive people - bulls, horses, deer (although this is not entirely accurate: it is known, for example, that for the inhabitants of Lascaux the main “forage” animal was the reindeer, while on It is found in single copies on the walls of the cave). In general, one way or another, commercial ungulates predominate. Chauvet is unique in this sense because of the abundance of images of predators - cave lions and bears, as well as rhinoceroses. It makes sense to dwell on the latter in more detail. Such a number of rhinoceroses as in Chauvet has never been found in any other cave.
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It is noteworthy that the first “artists” to leave their mark on the walls of some Paleolithic caves, including Chauvet, were... bears: in some places the engravings and paintings were applied directly on top of the traces of powerful claws, the so-called griffads.
In the late Pleistocene, at least two species of bears could coexist: brown bears survived safely to this day, and their relatives, cave bears (large and small) died out, unable to adapt to the damp gloom of caves. The big cave bear wasn't just big - it was huge. Its weight reached 800-900 kg, the diameter of the skulls found is about half a meter. A person most likely could not emerge victorious from a fight with such an animal in the depths of a cave, but some zoological experts are inclined to assume that, despite its terrifying size, this animal was slow, non-aggressive and did not pose a real danger.
An image of a cave bear made with red ocher in one of the first halls.
The oldest Russian paleozoologist, Professor N.K. Vereshchagin believes that “among Stone Age hunters, cave bears were a kind of meat cattle that did not require care for grazing and feeding.” The appearance of a cave bear is conveyed in Chauvet more clearly than anywhere else. It seems that it played a special role in the life of primitive communities: the beast was depicted on rocks and pebbles, its figurines were sculpted from clay, its teeth were used as pendants, the skin probably served as a bed, and the skull was preserved for ritual purposes. Thus, in Chauvet a similar skull was discovered resting on a rocky base, which most likely indicates the existence of a bear cult.
The woolly rhinoceros became extinct a little earlier than the mammoth (according to different sources from 15-20 to 10 thousand liters. AD), and, at least, in the drawings of the Magdalenian period (15-10 thousand years BC) it almost never appears. In Chauvet, we generally see a two-horned rhinoceros with larger horns, without any traces of fur. This may be the Merka 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 short, it was a monster.
There are practically no images of people. Only chimera-like figures are found - for example, a man with the head of a bison. No traces of human habitation were found in the Chauvet Cave, but in some places the footprints of the cave's primitive visitors were preserved on the floor. 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. French archaeologist Jean Clotte, having carefully examined Chauvet, stated that our ancestors probably 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 you can see perspective, chiaroscuro, and different angles etc.
Interestingly, the artists of the Chauvet Cave used methods that were not applicable anywhere else. Before applying the design, the walls were scraped and leveled. Ancient artists first scratched the outlines of the animal and used paint to give them the necessary volume. “The people who painted this were great artists,” confirms French rock art specialist Jean Clotte.
A detailed study of the cave will take several decades. However, it is already clear that its total length is more than 500 m at one level, the ceiling height is from 15 to 30 m. There are four consecutive “halls” and numerous side branches. In the first two rooms, the images are made in red ocher. The third contains 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. About 300 images were found. The painting is perfectly preserved.
(source - Flickr.com)
There is an assumption that such images with multiple contours layered on top of each other are a 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 the effect this had on the cave “spectators” - “The Arrival of a Train” by the Lumiere brothers is resting.
There are other considerations in this regard. For example, that in this way a group of animals is depicted in perspective. Nevertheless, the same Herzog in his film adheres to “our” version, and he can be trusted in matters of “moving pictures”.
Chauvet Cave is currently closed to public access because any noticeable change in air humidity could damage the wall paintings. Only a few archaeologists can gain access, for only a few hours and subject to restrictions. The cave was cut off from outside world since the Ice Age due to the fall of a rock in front of its entrance.
The drawings of the Chauvet cave amaze with their knowledge of the laws of perspective (overlapping drawings of mammoths) and the ability to put shadows - until now it was believed that this technique was discovered several thousand years later. And an eternity before Seurat had the idea, primitive artists discovered pointillism: the image of one animal, it seems, a bison, consists entirely of red dots.
But the most surprising thing is that, as already mentioned, artists give preference to rhinoceroses, lions, cave bears and mammoths. Typically, the models for rock art were the animals that were hunted. “From the entire bestiary of that era, artists choose the most predatory, most dangerous animals,” says archaeologist Margaret Conkey of the University of Berkeley in California. By depicting animals that were clearly not on the menu of Paleolithic cuisine, but symbolized danger, strength, and power, artists, according to Klott, “understood their essence.”
Archaeologists paid attention to exactly how the images were included in the wall space. In one of the rooms, a cave bear is depicted in red ocher without the lower part of its body, so that it appears, says Klott, “as if it were coming out of the wall.” In the same room, archaeologists also discovered images of two stone goats. The horns of one of them are natural crevices in the wall, which the artist widened.
Image of a horse in a niche (source - Donsmaps.com)
Rock art clearly played significant role in spiritual life prehistoric people. This can be confirmed by two large triangles (symbols of femininity and fertility?) and an image of a creature with human legs, but with the head and body of a bison. Probably, Stone Age people hoped in this way to appropriate at least partially the power of animals. The cave bear, apparently, occupied special position. 55 bear skulls, one of which lies on a fallen boulder, as if on an altar, suggest the cult of this beast. Which also explains the choice of Chauvet Cave by the artists - dozens of potholes in the floor indicate that this was the hibernation site of giant bears.
Ancient people came again and again to look at the rock paintings. The 10-meter-long “horse panel” shows traces of soot left by torches that were mounted in the wall after it was covered with painting. These marks, according to Conkey, are on top of a layer of mineralized sediments covering the images. If painting is the first step on the path to spirituality, then the ability to appreciate it is undoubtedly the second.
At least 6 books and dozens have been published about Chauvet Cave scientific articles, not counting sensational materials in the general press, have been published and translated into major European languages four large albums of beautiful color illustrations with accompanying text. The documentary film “Cave of Forgotten Dreams 3D” will be released in Russian theaters on December 15. The director of the film is 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. This is the highest-grossing documentary film in 2011.
According to new data, the age of the coal used to paint the pictures on the wall of the Chauvet cave is 36,000 years old, and not 31,000, as previously thought.
Refined radiocarbon dating methods show that occupation by modern humans ( Homo sapiens) Central and Western Europe began 3 thousand years earlier than thought, and happened faster. The time of cohabitation between sapiens and Neanderthals in most parts of Europe was reduced from about 10 to 6 thousand years or less. The final disappearance of European Neanderthals may also have occurred several millennia earlier.
The famous British archaeologist Paul Mellars published a review latest achievements in the development of the radiocarbon dating method, which led to significant changes in our ideas about the chronology of events that occurred more than 25 thousand years ago.
The accuracy of radiocarbon dating in last years increased sharply due to two circumstances. Firstly, methods have emerged for high-quality purification of organic substances, primarily collagen isolated from ancient bones, from all foreign impurities. When we're talking about For very ancient samples, even an insignificant admixture of foreign carbon can lead to serious distortions. For example, if a 40,000-year-old sample contained only 1% modern carbon, this would reduce the “radiocarbon age” by as much as 7,000 years. As it turned out, most ancient archaeological finds contain such impurities, so their age was systematically underestimated.
The second source of errors, which was finally eliminated, is due to the fact that the content of the radioactive isotope 14C in the atmosphere (and, consequently, in organic matter formed in different eras) 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 precise 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 sediment accumulated very quickly, Greenland ice, cave stalagmites, coral reefs, etc. In all these cases, it was possible for each layer to compare radiocarbon dates with others obtained on the basis ratio of oxygen isotopes 18O/16O or uranium and thorium.
As a result, correction scales and tables were developed that dramatically increased the accuracy of radiocarbon dating of samples older than 25 thousand years. What did the updated dates tell us?
It was previously believed that modern humans (Homo sapiens) appeared in southeastern Europe approximately 45,000 years ago. From here they gradually settled in a western and northwestern direction. The peopling of Central and Western Europe continued, according to “uncorrected” radiocarbon dates, for approximately 7 thousand years (43-36 thousand years ago); average speed advancement - 300 meters per year. Refined dating shows that settlement occurred faster and began earlier (46-41 thousand years ago; advancement speed up to 400 meters per year). At about the same speed, agricultural culture later spread in Europe (10-6 thousand years ago), also coming 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 Southern Germany and further to Western France.
In addition, it turned out that the period of cohabitation modern people and Neanderthals in most areas 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 dating , some of the brightest examples of cave painting turned out to be much older than thought; the beginning of the Aurignac era, marked by the appearance of various complex products made of bone and horn, also moved into the depths of time (41,000 thousand years ago according to new ideas).
Paul Mellars believes that previously published datings 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 reality, these finds are most likely several thousand years older.
All this shows that the indigenous Neanderthal population of Europe fell to the onslaught of 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, camera angles. It was common for cave artists to depict animals in profile. Of course, here too this is typical for most of the drawings, but there are breakthroughs, as in the above fragment, where the buffalo’s face is shown in three-quarters. In the following picture you can also see a rare image from the front:
Maybe this is an illusion, but a distinct feeling of composition is created - the lions are sniffing in anticipation of prey, but have not yet seen the bison, and it has clearly tensed and frozen, feverishly wondering where to run. True, judging by the dull look, he doesn’t think well.
Remarkable running bison:
(source - Donsmaps.com)
Moreover, the “face” of each horse is purely individual:
(source - istmira.com)
The following panel with horses is probably the most famous and widely circulated of Chauvet’s images:
(source - popular-archaeology.com)
In the recently released science-fiction film Prometheus, a cave promises discovery extraterrestrial civilization, which once visited our planet, was copied completely from Chauvet, including this wonderful group, to which people who are completely inappropriate here were added.
Still from the film “Prometheus” (dir. R. Scott, 2012)
You and I know that there are no people on the walls of Chauvet. What is not there is not. There are bulls.
(source - Donsmaps.com)
During the Pliocene and especially in the Pleistocene, ancient hunters exerted significant pressure on nature. The idea that the extinction of the mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, cave bear, and 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 what seemed at the time a seditious hypothesis that man was to blame for the extinction of the mammoth. Later discoveries confirmed the validity of these assumptions. The development of radiocarbon analysis methods showed that the last mammoths ( Elephas primigenius) lived at the very end of the Ice Age, and in some places lived until the beginning of the Holocene. At the Predmost site of Paleolithic man (Czechoslovakia), the remains of a thousand mammoths were found. There are known massive finds of mammoth bones (more than 2 thousand individuals) at the Volchya Griva site near Novosibirsk, dating back 12 thousand years. 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 paintings was the big-horned deer.
The art of Upper Paleolithic animalists serves, along with paleontological and archaeozoological finds, as an important source of information about what animals our ancestors hunted. Until recently, the Late Paleolithic drawings from the caves of Lascaux in France (17 thousand years old) and Altamira in Spain (15 thousand years old) were considered the oldest and most complete, but later the Chauvet caves were discovered, which gives us a new range of images of the mammal fauna of that time. Along with relatively rare drawings of a mammoth (including an image of a baby mammoth, strikingly reminiscent of one discovered in permafrost Magadan region baby mammoth Dima) or alpine ibex ( Capra ibex) there are many images of two-horned rhinoceroses, cave bears ( Ursus spelaeus), cave lions ( Panthera spelaea), Tarpanov ( Equus gmelini).
The images of rhinoceroses in 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 hair, with a pronounced skin fold, characteristic of the living species of the one-horned Indian rhinoceros ( Rhinocerus indicus). Perhaps this is Merck's rhinoceros ( Dicerorhinus kirchbergensis), who lived 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, quite numerous remains of skin with hair, horny growths on the skull have been preserved (in Lvov there is even the only stuffed animal of this species in the world), then from the Merck rhinoceros we have only bone remains, and the keratin “horns” were not preserved. Thus, the discovery in Chauvet Cave poses the question: what type of rhinoceros was known to its inhabitants? Why are the rhinoceroses from Chauvet Cave depicted in herds? It is very likely that Paleolithic hunters were 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 ambushed 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 you can’t talk “for life” when you meet, but I am close and, at least, understandable to the idea that art at the dawn of humanity is not in any way opposed to nature, man is in harmony with the world around him. Every thing, every stone or tree, not to mention animals, is viewed 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 questions of existence are not raised. This is such a pre-cultural, heavenly state. We, of course, will not be able to feel it fully (as well as return to heaven), but suddenly we will be able to at least touch it, communicating through tens of thousands of years with the authors of these amazing creations
We don’t see them vacationing alone. Always hunting, and always with almost a whole pride.
In general, the admiration of primitive man for the huge, strong and fast animals around him, be it a big-horned deer, a bison or a bear, is understandable. It’s even somehow absurd to put yourself next to them. He didn't bet. There is much to learn from us who fill our virtual “caves” with our own or family photos in immeasurable quantities. 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 Chauvet, definitely of 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 one, a lion's, female legs and a deliberately enlarged size, let’s say, the womb, which forms the center of the entire composition. Compared to 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. “Venus”, male sorcerers in the form of animals and even scenes hinting at the intercourse of an ungulate with a woman, but in order 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 the lion and bull were painted later. Interestingly, there is no overlay of more later drawings to the previous ones. Obviously, maintaining the integrity of the composition was part of the artist’s plans.
, and also look again at AndRock painting - 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 also such caves in Asia, for example, Niah Caves in Malaysia.
Long years modern civilization had no idea about any objects of ancient painting, however, in 1879, the Spanish amateur archaeologist Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola, along with his 9-year-old daughter, during a walk, accidentally came across the Altamira cave, the vaults of which were decorated with many drawings of ancient people - the discovery, which had no analogues, extremely shocked the researcher and prompted him to study it closely. A year later, Sautuola, together with his friend Juan Vilanova y Pierre from the University of Madrid, published the results of their research, which dated the execution of the drawings to the Paleolithic era. Many scientists perceived this message extremely ambiguously; Sautuola was accused of falsifying the finds, but later similar caves were discovered in many other parts of the planet.
Rock art was the object great interest from the outside world scientists since its discovery in the 19th century. The first discoveries were made in Spain, but later cave paintings were discovered in different corners 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 12th millennium BC. e. Cave painting began to be carried out taking into account volume, perspective, color and proportion of figures, and took into account movement. Later, cave painting became more stylized.
To create the designs, dyes of various origins were used: mineral (hematite, clay, manganese oxide), animal, vegetable (charcoal). Dyes were mixed, if necessary, with binders such as tree resin or animal fat, 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 the contours, scraping or cutting out the contours of figures on the walls was used.
Since the caves in which most of the rock paintings are located are practically not penetrated sunlight, when creating drawings, torches and primitive lamps were used 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 and their rituals. A significant proportion of Neolithic paintings are depictions of ungulates, such as bison, deer, elk and horses, as well as mammoths; a large proportion is also made up of handprints. 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. There are known images of the ships of the seafarers of ancient Phenicia, noticed by the more primitive communities of the Iberian Peninsula.
Cave painting was widely practiced primitive societies who hunted and gathered and found shelter in caves or lived next to them. The lifestyle of primitive people changed little over thousands of years, and therefore both the dyes and the subjects of rock paintings practically did not change and were common to populations of people living thousands of kilometers from each other.
However, differences exist between cave paintings from different time periods and regions. Thus, the caves of Europe mainly depict animals, while African cave paintings pay equal attention to both humans and fauna. The technique of creating drawings also underwent certain changes; later painting is often less crude and shows more high level cultural development.
") drew pictures of the animals they hunted. They were the first people to paint using paints, although they probably painted their bodies long before that with a crushed type of red, the so-called ocher.
Apparently, the Cro-Magnons used these drawings for cult purposes. They believed that the drawings would protect against evil forces and help during the hunt, on the success of which their very existence depended. So far, no drawings made by more ancient people have been found. Perhaps they drew or scratched with something sharp on pieces of wood that had long since rotted away.
Cro-Magnons painted horses, bison and deer. Often in the drawings there are also images of copies, which, according to the artist’s plan, was supposed to bring good luck during a real hunt.
One of the Cro-Magnon artists placed his palm on the rock and then sprayed paint around it through a reed. Images of people or plants are extremely rare in early drawings.
Before you is an image of a woolly mammoth carved on the cave wall, in which its long, shaggy fur is clearly visible. Rock art often shows us what prehistoric animals looked like.
Cro-Magnons carved figures of very fat or pregnant women into stone. They also sculpted figurines from clay, after which they burned them on fire. Probably, primitive people believed that such figurines would bring them good luck.
Cave drawings
Take up rock painting
You will need plaster of paris, a box like a large matchbox, twine, duct tape and paints.
Take a 6cm piece of twine and fold it in half to make a loop. Attach this loop with duct tape to the bottom of the box from the inside.
Mix the plaster with so that you get a thin solution, and pour it into the box, there should be a layer about 3 cm thick. Let the plaster harden, then tear the box away from it.
Copy one of the rock paintings on this page onto this piece of plaster. Then color it using the same colors as the caveman: red, yellow, brown and black.
You can also reproduce a carved image of an animal. Transfer the outline of the mammoth shown on this page onto a piece of plaster. Then use an old fork to press lines into the plaster along the entire contour.
September 12, 1940 Four French teenagers accidentally stumbled upon a narrow hole created by the fall of a pine tree, which was struck by lightning. They decided that this was the exit from an underground passage leading to the nearby ruins of a castle, and hoped to find treasure there. But when they got inside and saw huge drawings on the walls, they realized that this was not just an underground passage, and reported their discovery to the teacher. This is how the Lascaux cave was discovered. 
All the walls of the cave were completely covered with amazing drawings of animals - bulls, bison, rhinoceroses, horses, deer, even a unicorn, drawn with ocher, soot and marl (a rock like clay) and outlined in dark outlines. Some of the drawings were real size!
The scientist A. Breuil spent several months in this cave, making all kinds of measurements and studying primitive painting. At first, art historians doubted the authenticity of the drawings, but a thorough examination rejected all suspicions of forgery, and the age of the images was estimated at 15 thousand years.
Very soon, many tourists began to come to the Lascaux cave and soon scientists noticed that the drawings were slowly beginning to collapse. This was due to the excess carbon dioxide exhaled by people visiting the caves. Soon tourists were no longer allowed into the Lascaux cave and it was mothballed, and a copy of it was created next to it - Lascaux II. It is a concrete structure, inside which rock paintings of selected parts of Lascaux have been accurately reproduced.
Osya and I really liked that on the official website you can take a virtual tour of the cave. In some places you can stop, zoom in on the drawing, look at it and read a short text about it (there is no Russian language on the site, but there is English). Here is the website: http://www.lascaux.culture.fr/#/en/02_00.xml
The figures of animals are drawn mainly in profile, in motion. It is interesting that when several animals accumulate in one scene at once, different sizes And different colors, and at the same time drawn so that one figure overlaps another, then the feeling of a cartoon is created if you move the window on the site. Probably, the same effect will happen if you move next to these drawings with a flashlight in your hands, it’s a pity that we can’t check it :)
On the walls of the cave there is only one image of a person: here you can see four figures combined into one compositional space - a bison pierced by a spear, a lying man, a small bird and a fuzzy silhouette of a retreating rhinoceros. The bison stands in profile, but its head is turned towards the viewer. The person is depicted schematically, as in children's drawings. Everything is drawn with a thick black line and is not filled with color. Scientists are still arguing about what exactly is shown in this picture: did the bison kill the man, and did the horse inflict a mortal wound on the bison? Or is it the other way around?
I showed Osya this picture and told him that the paints were mineral back then. The black paint was based on manganese, and the red paint was based on iron oxide. Pieces of minerals were ground into powder on stone slabs or on animal bones, for example, on the shoulder blade of a bison. This colored powder was stored in hollowed out bones or leather bags that were worn on the belt.
In this picture you can see the image of a huge bull. The figure of the right bull is the largest rock art in the world, its length is 5.2 meters.
To make it clearer what five meters is, we measured this distance in the apartment and estimated how huge the bull was.
Interestingly, in the Lascaux cave there is an image of a mythical animal - a unicorn:
But this big black bull, 3.71 meters long, is interesting because it was painted with paint sprayed through a special tube:
What you can do if your child is interested in these drawings:
- you can take craft paper, crumple it properly (we didn’t figure it out right away, but when we came across a crumpled piece of wrapping paper, Osya himself noticed that it turned out more textured and the surface resembled the surface of a stone) and hang it on the wall to draw memorable memories on it figures in charcoal, sanguine or multi-colored pastels. Or you can use paints if the child doesn’t want to get his hands dirty. The main thing is not to forget to cover the floor around it.
Or you can make natural paints - from clay and berries, and paint animals with them. And then make an outline separately with charcoal.
You can also try painting with homemade brushes. Offer your child a small stick, some grass/flower stems, and some string. Will he guess what can be done with them? And if you cut off the top layer of a dishwashing sponge, you can play that it is an animal skin that ancient people used to paint over a large area of the design. Shall we try?
To draw pictures, you can simply sit on a table or on the floor, or you can imagine that we are in a cave and draw on its walls and arches. Once, when we were playing at primitive people, we covered the area under the table with paper, and Osya left rock carvings while lying on his back.
This time we hung the drawings under desk, then Osya blocked the entrance to the “cave” with pillows from the sofa, and we played as if we ourselves were walking and unexpectedly found such a treasure - a cave with ancient rock paintings. In the evening, when it was already dark, we turned off the light and climbed into the cave with flashlights and candles and looked at the images on the walls.