Stone Age Art

What is Stone Age Art?

The period of prehistory known as the Stone Age, is divided into three separate periods: the Paleolithic (2,500,000-10,000 BCE) Mesolithic (aka Epi-paleolithic) (Europe, 10,000-4,000) and Neolithic (Europe, 4,000-2,000 BCE). Of these, the Paleolithic is by far the longer period, accounting for about 98 percent of the entire prehistoric era.

The term "Stone Age art" refers loosely to any works created during these three periods. It is also commonly referred to as "prehistoric art".

Lascaux Cave Painting (c.17,000 BCE)

What are the Main Types of Stone Age Art?

Before answering this, it's important to realize that our concept of "art" and especially "fine art" is often limited to images we see in books and museums, or at least to those forms that relate to our modern culture. This includes Greek art, as well as famous works from the Renaissance, all the way up to contemporary items by the likes of Damien Hirst. Put simply, when we think of art, we think of painting, sculpture, ceramics and modern forms including photography, installation, video art and so on.

"The Thinker From Cernavoda"
(c.5,000 BCE)

Cupules

Some of the earliest art of prehistory is quite different. I'm not talking about the famous venus figurines or the beautiful cave paintings of Lascaux and Altamira - these resemble our modern-style art quite sufficiently. I'm talking about the earliest forms of prehistoric artistic expression, specifically, "cupules", which represent one of the oldest and most prevalent forms of Stone Age art. A cupule is a cup-shaped hollow, pounded out of a rock surface (horizontal, inclined or even vertical). Typically found in groups, varying in number from half a dozen to several hundreds, they can be found in random groupings or in geometric patterns. Although many examples of cupules are the result of geological or climatic forces, archeologists and paleoanthropologists have discovered thousands of prehistoric cupule-sites spread across every continent except Antarctica.

Stonehenge, Wilts, UK. (c.2800 BCE)

For reasons no one understands, cupule-creation was a major form of artistic expression during the Stone Age, and - rather surprisingly - a form which has been largely ignored by many art historians as well as archeologists.

Recently, the world famous archeologist Robert G. Bednarik has been drawing attention to cupules as a creative phenomenon of prehistory, but even he concedes that their cultural significance remains a mystery. He also makes the point that part of the reason for the lack of attention paid to these strange hollows, is that some experts don't even see them as art. In any event, they are worth checking out, not least because they were popular with so many Paleolithic artists!

Main Forms of Stone Age Art

PREHISTORIC ARCHITECTURE
For more about architectural visual
arts during the Stone Age, see:
Architecture: History & Styles.

PREHISTORIC ART
For more information, see:
Bronze Age Art
Iron Age Art

IRISH PREHISTORIC ART
Irish Stone Age
Irish Bronze Age
Irish Iron Age

The main form of prehistoric art is "rock art" (also known as petroglyphs), which includes things like cupules, engravings, drawings, symbols, ideomorphs, and so on. Found in caves, rock shelters, cliff faces - indeed any type of rock surface. Dating from the Lower Paleolithic (2,500,000-200,000 BCE), this type of creative activity continued throughout the Middle and Upper Paleolithic, and can be seen in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australasia, Oceania and the Americas.

In addition to petroglyphs, there are two other types of Stone Age art: sculpture or carving, and cave painting - known sometimes, as "portable art" or "parietal art" (of caves) respectively.

Primitive Stone Age Sculpture/Carving

Known carvings date from the end of the Lower Paleolithic, around 200,000 BCE or possibly earlier, although these early examples are exceptionally primitive and display so little overt creativity that some experts doubt they can even be considered as art (eg. the Venus of Berekhat Ram, and the Venus of Tan-Tan).

Later Stone Age Sculpture/Carving

After the Lower Paleolithic, the next oldest known art is the Middle Paleolithic engraving at Blombos Cave (c.70,000 BCE), discovered on the southern coast of South Africa, and the La Ferrassie Cave cupules. Later examples of Upper Paleolithic carving include the celebrated "venuses" (a specific style of figurine not to be confused with the earlier and more primitive Berekhat Ram and Tan-Tan figures) which emerged in western, central and eastern Europe during the Upper Paleolithic (40,000-10,000 BCE). These venus figurines, mostly only a few inches in height, depicted obese female figures with enlarged breasts, bellies, hips and thighs, almost to the point of caricature (see Venus of Willendorf or Venus of Gagarino). Experts consider them to be portable icons of a religious or supernatural nature, although their cultural significance remains a mystery. Other carvings include animal figurines (eg. the mammoth and lion ivory carvings from the Swabian Jura in SW Germany) and a few therianthropic figures (eg. the Lion Man of Hohlenstein-Stadel) but almost no carvings of male figures from this period. The Upper Paleolithic also witnessed the first examples of bas-relief sculptures, such as the Venus of Laussel, a bas-relief of a reclining female figure, carved in limestone.

Stone Age Cave Painting

As prehistoric society became sufficiently advanced to accept ritual and ceremony - of a quasi-religious or shaman-type nature - certain caves were reserved as prehistoric art galleries, where artists began to create a series of extraordinary paintings of animals, hunting scenes and other graphic illustrations of prehistoric life, as well as symbolic pictographs and patterns of abstract art. One of the finest sites of Stone Age cave painting is the cave complex of Altamira in Cantabria, Spain, which paleoanthropologists and others have described as "the Sistine Chapel of prehistoric art." An unusual example of an underwater cave, is Cosquer.

What is the Oldest Stone Age Art?

The oldest known art in the world is the Bhimbetka Petroglyphs - 10 cupules and a groove, discovered in the quartzite Auditorium rock shelter at Bhimbetka in Madhya Pradesh, central India, dating to at least 290,000 BCE. Archeological excavations in a second rock shelter at Indragarh Hill in the same region, are thought to be as old. The oldest known rock murals are those found at Chauvet cave in the Ardeche area of France, which dates from about 30,000 BCE. For more, see: Oldest Art: Top 10 Works.

What are the Finest Examples of Stone Age Art?

Among the most magnificent examples of Paleolithic art are: the "Dappled Horses of Pech-Merle" (c.25,000 BCE), a polychrome Gravettian-era painting in charcoal and ochre on limestone at Pech-Merle; the "Cave of the Bulls" at the Solutrean/Magdalenian-era Lascaux caves, which contain the largest known images of aurochs (male cattle); and the images in the Magdalenian-era Altamira cave, renowned for its extraordinary realism and colours.

What Art Was Created During Mesolithic and Neolithic Times?

These periods are noted for their ceramic pottery, monumental architecture (Egyptian, Sumerian and megalithic) and early bronze sculptures. Painting comes out of the caves and into the open-air, while portable art (pots, ornaments), often called mobiliary art, becomes more common.

The Neolithic period is characterized by the development of agriculture, and animal husbandry, leading to a more settled way of life. This stimulated the growth of arts and crafts. With greater settlement in villages and other small communities, rock painting begins to be replaced by more portable art which becomes progressively enhanced by the use of precious metals (eg. copper is first used in Mesopotamia, while metallurgy is discovered in South-East Europe), and the design of new tools. Free standing sculpture, in stone and wood begins to be seen, as well as statues, ceramics, primitive jewellery and decorative designs on a variety of artifacts.

Other important art-related trends which surface during the Neolithic period include writing and religion. The appearance of early hieroglyphic writing systems in Sumer heralds the arrival of pictorial methods of communication, while increased prosperity and security permits greater attention to religious formalities of (eg) worship (in temples) and burial, in megalithic tombs.

The emergence of the first city state (Uruk, in Mesopotamia) predicts the establishment of more secure communities around the world, many of which will compete to establish their own independent cultural and artistic identity, creating permanent large scale artworks in the process. Meanwhile, new types of monumental public art began to appear in the form of Egyptian pyramids, and other religious complexes such as Newgrange in Ireland and Stonehenge in England. (For facts about the development of Celtic visual arts in Ireland during this period, see the history of Irish art.)

What Sort of Art Materials Were Used by Stone Age Artists?

Prehistoric sculptors used almost every sort of material they could lay their hands on, including stone such as quartzite, steatite, sandstone, serpentine and limestone, as well as mammoth ivory, animal bones and reindeer antlers. Stone Age painters employed numerous combinations of materials to make pigments, including various shades of clay ochre, manganese dioxide and charcoal. It is quite possible their knowledge of pigments derived from the practice of body painting and face painting.

What Caused the Creation of Stone Age Art?

The reason behind all human evolutionary advances, especially in both tool-making and art, was undoubtedly the gradual increase brain size, as measured by the volume of the inside of the brain case (cranial capacity). In early hominids like Australopithecus afarensis and Australopithecus africanus, brain capacity was about 350 to 500 cubic centimetres, compared to roughly 1350 cc for modern humans such as Homo sapiens. However, since Neanderthals had a brain capacity as large or even larger than more modern Homo sapiens, the relative complexity of the internal architecture of the brain is also an important factor. In any event, brain functionality is directly associated with linguistic and creative expression.

What Sort of Human Artists Created Stone Age Art?

According to most paleontologists, the human species (Homo or hominids) separated from gorillas in Africa about 8 million years ago, and from chimpanzees no later than five million years ago. (The discovery of a hominid skull [Sahelanthropus tchadensis] dated about 7 million years ago, may indicate an earlier separation). The very early hominids included species like Australopithecus afarensis, Australopithecus africanus and Paranthropus robustus (brain size 350-500 cc). Around 2.5 million years BCE, humans started making stone tools, and newer species like Homo habilis and Homo rudolfensis appeared (brain size 590-690 cc). By 2 million years BCE more species emerged, such as Homo erectus (brain size 800-1250 cc). Over the next 500,000 years, Homo erectus spread from Africa to the Middle East, Asia and Europe. Between 1.5 million BCE and 500,000 BCE, Homo erectus and other contemporaneous sub-species spawned several more advanced types of Homo, known as Archaic Homo sapiens. It was a group of artists from one of the Archaic Homo sapiens species that created the artworks in the Auditorium rock shelter at Bhimbetka in India. From 500,000 BCE onwards, these new types morphed into Homo sapiens, as exemplified by Neanderthal Man (from 200,000 BCE or earlier). It was probably Neanderthal sculptors (or their contemporaries) who created the Near East Berekhat Ram and Tan-Tan figures, as well as the African Blombos cave art. Finally, around 100,000 BCE, modern man (or "anatomically modern man) emerged in sub-Saharan Africa, and, like his ancestors before him, made his way northwards: reaching North Africa by about 70,000 BCE and becoming established in Europe no later than the end of the Middle Paleolithic (40,000 BCE). Painters and sculptors belonging to modern man (eg. Cro-Magnon Man, Grimaldi Man) were responsible for the dazzling Upper Paleolithic cave painting and venus statuettes like the Venus of Kostenky and the Venus of Brassempouy portrait.

Stone Age Art: Brief Summary

The earliest prehistoric art consisted of petroglyphs and cupules, dating to the Lower Paleolithic. This was followed, at the end of the period, by primitive rock carvings. Not much has been found of Middle Paleolithic art, other than the Blombos cave art. During the Upper Paleolithic, Stone Age art begins to flourish via the venus figurines and the cave painting at Chauvet, Pech-Merle, Cosquer, Lascaux and Altamira. The more recent Mesolithic and Neolithic periods of the Stone Age are memorable for portable artworks, such as ceramic pottery, as well as monumental architecture and early bronzes.

• For other pre-historic civilizations, see: Ancient Art.
• For the main index, see: Irish Art: Guide to Visual Arts in Ireland

• To update this mini-review of Stone Age art, click Here.