Cave paintings are paintings Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects may be used. In art the term describes both the act and the result which is called a painting. Paintings may have for their support such surfaces as walls, paper, on cave A cave or cavern is a natural underground space large enough for a human to enter. Some people[who?] suggest that the term cave should only apply to cavities that have some part that does not receive daylight; however, in popular usage, the term includes smaller spaces like sea caves, rock shelters, and grottos walls and ceilings, and the term is used especially for those dating to prehistoric Prehistory is a term used to describe the period before recorded history. Paul Tournal originally coined the term Pré-historique in describing the finds he had made in the caves of southern France.[citation needed] It came into use in France in the 1830s to describe the time before writing, and the word "prehistoric" was introduced into times. The earliest known European cave paintings date to Aurignacian The Aurignacian culture is an archaeological culture of the Upper Palaeolithic, located in Europe and southwest Asia. It began about 40,000[citation needed] to 36,000 years ago, and lasted until about 28,000 to 26,000 years ago. The name originates from the type site of Aurignac in the Haute Garonne area of France. The Aurignacian culture is, some 32,000 years ago.^[1] The purpose of the paleolithic cave paintings is not known. The evidence suggests that they were not merely decorations of living areas, since the caves in which they have been found do not have signs of ongoing habitation. Also, they are often in areas of caves that are not easily accessed. Some theories hold that they may have been a way of communicating with others, while other theories ascribe them a religious or ceremonial purpose.

Age

Nearly 350 caves have now been discovered in France and Spain that contain art from prehistoric times. The age of the paintings in many sites has been a contentious issue, since methods like radiocarbon dating Radiocarbon dating, or carbon dating, is a radiometric dating method that uses the naturally occurring radioisotope carbon-14 to determine the age of carbonaceous materials up to about 58,000 to 62,000 years. Raw, i.e. uncalibrated, radiocarbon ages are usually reported in radiocarbon years "Before Present" (BP), "Present" can be easily misled by contaminated samples of older or newer material,^[2] and caves and rocky overhangs (parietal art) are typically littered with debris from many time periods. Recent advances make it possible to date the paintings by sampling the pigment itself.^[3]

"The choice of subject matter can also indicate date, as for instance in the reindeer The reindeer , also known as the caribou in North America, is a deer from the Arctic and Subarctic, including both resident and migratory populations. While overall widespread and numerous, some of its subspecies are rare and one (or two, depending on taxonomy) has already gone extinct at the Spanish cave of Cueva de las Monedas which place the art in the last Ice Age The last glacial period was the most recent glacial period within the current ice age occurring during the Pleistocene from ~110,000—10,000 years ago, a period of ~0.1 million years. The oldest known cave is that of Chauvet The Chauvet Cave or Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc Cave is a cave in the Ardèche department of southern France that contains the earliest known cave paintings, as well as other evidence of Upper Paleolithic life. It is located near the commune of Vallon-Pont-d'Arc on a limestone cliff above the former bed of the Ardèche River. Discovered in 1994, it is, the paintings of which may be 32,000 years old according to radiocarbon Carbon-14, 14C, or radiocarbon, is a radioactive isotope of carbon with a nucleus containing 6 protons and 8 neutrons. Its presence in organic materials is the basis of the radiocarbon dating method to date archaeological, geological, and hydrogeological samples. Carbon-14 was discovered on 27 February 1940, by Martin Kamen and Sam Ruben at the dating.^[4] Some researchers believe the drawings are too advanced for this era and question this age.^[5]

Other examples may date as late as the Early Bronze Age, but the well known prolific and sophisticated style from Lascaux and Altamira died out about 10,000 years ago, coinciding with the advent of the Neolithic period The Neolithic Age, Era, or Period, or New Stone Age, was a period in the development of human technology, beginning about 9500 BCE in the Middle East that is traditionally considered the last part of the Stone Age. The Neolithic followed the terminal Holocene Epipalaeolithic period, beginning with the rise of farming, which produced the ".

Some caves continued to be painted in for a long time.^[6]

Themes and patterns

The most common themes in cave paintings are large wild animals, such as bison Members of the genus Bison are large even-toed ungulates within the subfamily Bovinae. Two extant species and four extinct species are recognized. The surviving species are the American bison, Bison bison , found in North America, and the European bison, or wisent (Bison bonasus), found in Europe and the Caucasus. While these species are usually, horses The horse is a hooved (ungulate) mammal, a subspecies of the family Equidae. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature into the large, single-toed animal of today. Humans began to domesticate horses around 4000 BCE, and their domestication is believed to have been widespread by 3000 BCE. Although, aurochs The aurochs or urus , the ancestor of domestic cattle, was a type of huge wild cattle which inhabited Europe, Asia and North Africa, but is now extinct; it survived in Europe until 1627, and deer Deer are the ruminant mammals forming the family Cervidae. They include for example Moose, Red Deer, Reindeer, Roe and Chital. Male deer of all species but the Chinese Water deer and female reindeer grow and shed new antlers each year. In this they differ from permanently horned animals such as antelope; these are in the same order as deer and may, and tracings of human hands A hand is a prehensile, multi-fingered body part located at the end of an arm or forelimb of primates and some[which?] other vertebrates as well as abstract patterns, called finger flutings. Drawings of humans were rare and are usually schematic rather than the more naturalistic animal subjects. One explanation for this is that realistically painting the human form was forbidden by a powerful religious taboo.^[7] Cave art may have begun in the Aurignacian The Aurignacian culture is an archaeological culture of the Upper Palaeolithic, located in Europe and southwest Asia. It began about 40,000[citation needed] to 36,000 years ago, and lasted until about 28,000 to 26,000 years ago. The name originates from the type site of Aurignac in the Haute Garonne area of France. The Aurignacian culture is period (Hohle Fels, Germany), but reached its apogee in the late Magdalenian The Magdalenian, also spelled Magdalénien, refers to one of the later cultures of the Upper Paleolithic in western Europe, dating from around 17,000 BP to 9,000 BP. It is named after the type site of La Madeleine, a rock shelter located in the Vézère valley, commune of Tursac, in the Dordogne department of France (Lascaux, France).

Many of the paintings were drawn with red and yellow ochre Ochre or Ocher is term for both a golden-yellow or light yellow brown color and for a form of earth pigment which produces the color. The pigment can also be used to create a reddish tint known as Red ochre. The more rarely used terms Purple ochre and Brown ochre also exist for variant hues. Because of these other hues, the color Ochre is, hematite Hematite, also spelled as hæmatite, is the mineral form of iron oxide (Fe2O3), one of several iron oxides. Hematite crystallizes in the rhombohedral system, and it has the same crystal structure as ilmenite and corundum. Hematite and ilmenite form a complete solid solution at temperatures above 950°C, manganese oxide and charcoal Charcoal is the dark grey residue consisting of impure carbon obtained by removing water and other volatile constituents from animal and vegetation substances. Charcoal is usually produced by slow pyrolysis, the heating of wood, sugar, bone char, or other substances in the absence of oxygen . The resulting soft, brittle, lightweight, black, porous. Sometimes the silhouette of the animal was incised in the rock first.

Theories and interpretations

Henri Breuil interpreted the paintings as being hunting magic, meant to increase the number of animals. As there are some clay sculptures that seem to have been the targets of spears, this may partly be true, but does not explain the pictures of predators such as the lion The lion is one of the four big cats in the genus Panthera, and a member of the family Felidae. With some males exceeding 250 kg (550 lb) in weight, it is the second-largest living cat after the tiger. Wild lions currently exist in Sub-Saharan Africa and in Asia with a critically endangered remnant population in Gir Forest National Park in India, or the bear.

An alternative theory, developed by David Lewis-Williams and broadly based on ethnographic studies of contemporary hunter-gatherer A hunter-gatherer society is one whose primary subsistence method involves the direct procurement of edible plants and animals from the wild, foraging and hunting without significant recourse to the domestication of either. Up to 80% of the food is obtained by gathering. The demarcation between hunter-gatherers and other societies which rely more societies, is that the paintings were made by Cro-Magnon The Cro-Magnon were the first early modern humans (early Homo sapiens sapiens) of the European Upper Paleolithic in Europe. The earliest known remains of Cro-Magnon-like humans are radiometrically dated to 35,000 years before present shamans Shamanism is an anthropological term referencing a range of beliefs and practices regarding communication with the spiritual world. A practitioner of shamanism is known as a shaman. The shaman Shamanism is an anthropological term referencing a range of beliefs and practices regarding communication with the spiritual world. A practitioner of shamanism is known as a shaman would retreat into the darkness of the caves, enter into a trance state and then paint images of their visions, perhaps with some notion of drawing power out of the cave walls themselves. This goes some way toward explaining the remoteness of some of the paintings (which often occur in deep or small caves) and the variety of subject matter (from prey animals to predators In ecology, predation describes a biological interaction where a predator feeds on its prey (the organism that is attacked). Predators may or may not kill their prey prior to feeding on them, but the act of predation always results in the death of its prey and the eventual absorption of the prey's tissue through consumption. The other main and human hand-prints).

R. Dale Guthrie^[8] has studied not only the most artistic and publicized paintings but also a variety of lower quality art and figurines, and he identifies a wide range of skill and ages among the artists. He also points out that the main themes in the paintings and other artifacts (powerful beasts, risky hunting scenes and the representation of women in the Venus figurines) are to be expected in the fantasies of adolescent males, who made a big part of the human population at the time. However, in analysing hand prints and stencils in French and Spanish caves, Dean Snow of Pennsylvania State University The Pennsylvania State University is a state-related, land-grant, space grant public research university located in the University Park area and within State College and College Township in Pennsylvania, United States. The University has 24 campuses throughout the state of Pennsylvania, including a virtual World Campus, with University Park being has shown that a proportion of them, including those around the spotted horses in Pech Merle, were of female hands ^[9]

Locations

Africa

At uKhahlamba / Drakensberg Park, South Africa Coordinates: 29°02′46″S 25°03′47″E / 29.046°S 25.063°E The Republic of South Africa is a country located at the southern tip of Africa, with a 2,798 kilometres coastline on the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. To the north lie Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe; to the east are Mozambique and Swaziland; while Lesotho is an independent, now thought to be some 3,000 years old, the paintings by the San The indigenous people of southern Africa, whose territory spans most areas of South Africa, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Mozambique, Swaziland, Botswana, Namibia, and Angola, are variously referred to as Bushmen, San, Sho, Basarwa, Kung, or Khwe. These people were traditionally hunter-gatherers, part of the Khoisan group and are related to the traditionally people who settled in the area some 8,000 years ago depict animals and humans, and are thought to represent religious beliefs. Human figures are much more common in African than in European rock art.^[10]

Recently, an archeological team discovered the Laas Gaa'l cave paintings outside Hargeisa Hargeisa is the capital of the Woqooyi Galbeed region and the 2nd largest city in Somalia with a population of approximately 1.3 million. Hergesia is the capital of Somaliland, a de facto independent republic that is internationally recognized as a part of Somalia. It was the colonial capital of British Somaliland from 1941 to 1960 when it gained in Somaliland Somaliland is an unrecognized state located in the Horn of Africa. It is regarded internationally as being an autonomous region of Somalia. The government of Somaliland, however, regards itself as the successor state to British Somaliland which was independent for a few days in 1960 as the State of Somaliland. They show the ancient inhabitants of the area worshipping cattle Cattle are the most common type of large domesticated ungulates. They are a prominent modern member of the subfamily Bovinae, are the most widespread species of the genus Bos, and are most commonly classified collectively as Bos primigenius. Cattle are raised as livestock for meat (beef and veal), as dairy animals for milk and other dairy products, and performing religious ceremonies.

Cave paintings found at the "Apollo 11 caves" in Namibia Namibia, officially the Republic of Namibia , is a country in southern Africa whose western border is the Atlantic Ocean. It shares land borders with Angola and Zambia to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south and east. It gained independence from South Africa on 21 March 1990 following the Namibian War of Independence. Its may be among the earliest cave art. The estimated age of the images date from approximately 23,000 - 25,000 B.C.

Cave paintings are found in the Tassili n'Ajjer Tassili n'Ajjer is a mountain range in the Sahara desert in southeast Algeria, North Africa. It extends about 500 km from 26°20′N 5°00′E / 26.333°N 5°E east-south-east to 24°00′N 10°00′E / 24°N 10°E, and the highest point is Adrar Afao, 2158 m, at 25°10′N 8°11′E / 25.167°N 8.183°E. The nearest town is mountains in southeast Algeria Algerian Arabic is the language used by the majority of the population. Although French has no official status, Algeria is the second Francophone country in the world in terms of speakers also in the Akakus, Mesak Settafet and Tadrart in Libya and other Sahara regions including: Ayr mountains, Niger and Tibesti, Chad.^{[citation needed]}

The Cave of Swimmers is a cave A cave or cavern is a natural underground space large enough for a human to enter. Some people[who?] suggest that the term cave should only apply to cavities that have some part that does not receive daylight; however, in popular usage, the term includes smaller spaces like sea caves, rock shelters, and grottos in southwest Egypt Egypt (pronounced /ˈiːdʒɪpt/ ; Arabic: مصر‎ Miṣr, pronounced [misˤɾ] ( listen); Arabic: مِصْر Miṣr [ˈmisˤɾ]; Egyptian Arabic: مَصْر Maṣr [ˈmɑsˤɾ]; Coptic: Ⲭⲏⲙⲓ, kīmi; Egyptian: 𓆎𓅓𓏏𓊖 Kemet), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula, near the border with Libya Libya (Arabic: ليبيا ‎ Lībiyā pronunciation ; Libyan vernacular: Lībya pronunciation (help·info); Amazigh: ), officially the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya ( Arabic: الجماهيرية العربية الليبية الشعبية الإشتراكية العظمى ‎ Al-Jamāhīriyyah al-ʿArabiyyah al-Lībiyyah aš-Š, in the mountainous Gilf Kebir region of the Sahara Desert The Sahara is the world's largest non-arctic desert, and technically the world's third largest desert. At over 9,000,000 square kilometres (3,500,000 sq mi), it covers most of Northern Africa, making it almost as large as the United States or the continent of Europe. The desert stretches from the Red Sea, including parts of the Mediterranean. It was discovered in October 1933 by the Hungarian Hungary /ˈhʌŋɡəri/ (Hungarian: Magyarország [ˈmɒɟɒrorsaːɡ] ( listen)), officially the Republic of Hungary (Magyar Köztársaság listen (help·info)), is a landlocked country in the Carpathian Basin in Central Europe, bordered by Austria, Slovakia, Ukraine, Romania, Serbia, Croatia, and Slovenia. Its capital is Budapest. Hungary is a explorer László Almásy. It contains rock painting images of people swimming estimated to have been created 10,000 years ago during the time of the most recent Ice Age.

Australia

Significant early cave paintings have also been found in Kakadu National Park Kakadu National Park is in the Northern Territory of Australia, 171 km southeast of Darwin in Australia For at least 40,000 years before European settlement in the late 18th century, Australia was inhabited by indigenous Australians, who belonged to one or more of the roughly 250 language groups. After sporadic visits by fishermen from the immediate north and discovery by Dutch explorers in 1606, Australia's eastern half was claimed by Britain in 177.

The park has a large collection of ochre Ochre or Ocher is term for both a golden-yellow or light yellow brown color and for a form of earth pigment which produces the color. The pigment can also be used to create a reddish tint known as Red ochre. The more rarely used terms Purple ochre and Brown ochre also exist for variant hues. Because of these other hues, the color Ochre is paintings. Ochre is a not an organic material Organic matter is matter that has come from a once-living organism; is capable of decay, or the product of decay; or is composed of organic compounds. The definition of organic matter varies upon the subject it is being used for, so carbon dating Radiocarbon dating, or carbon dating, is a radiometric dating method that uses the naturally occurring radioisotope carbon-14 to determine the age of carbonaceous materials up to about 58,000 to 62,000 years. Raw, i.e. uncalibrated, radiocarbon ages are usually reported in radiocarbon years "Before Present" (BP), "Present" of these pictures is impossible. Sometimes the approximate date, or at least, an epoch In the fields of chronology and periodization, an epoch means an instant in time chosen as the origin of a particular era. The "epoch" then serves as a reference point from which time is measured. Time measurement units are counted from the epoch so that the date and time of events can be specified unambiguously, can be guessed from the content.^{[citation needed]}

Europe

Well known cave paintings include those of:

• Cussac Cave, France
• Lascaux Lascaux is the setting of a complex of caves in southwestern France famous for its Paleolithic cave paintings. The original caves are located near the village of Montignac, in the Dordogne département. They contain some of the best-known Upper Paleolithic art. These paintings are estimated to be 17,000 years old. They primarily consist of, France
• Pech Merle Pech Merle is a cave which opens onto a hillside at Cabrerets in the Lot département of the Midi-Pyrénées region in France, about 35 minutes by road east of Cahors. It is the home of one of the few prehistoric cave painting sites in France which remain open to the general public. Extending for more than a mile from the entrance are caverns the, near Cabrerets Cabrerets is a commune in the Lot department in south-western France, France Official Site
• La Marche, in Lussac-les-Châteaux, France
• Chauvet Cave, near Vallon-Pont-d'Arc, France
• Cave of Niaux, France
• Cave of Altamira, near Santillana del Mar, Cantabria, Spain
• Cueva de La Pasiega, Cuevas de El Castillo, Cantabria, Spain
• Cosquer Cave, with an entrance below sea level near Marseille, France
• Font de Gaume, in the Dordogne Valley in France

Other sites include Creswell Crags, Nottinghamshire, England, (Cave etchings and bas-reliefs discovered in 2003), and Magura [1], Belogradchik, Bulgaria. Rock painting was also performed on cliff faces, but fewer of those have survived because of erosion. One well-known example is the rock paintings of Astuvansalmi in the Saimaa area of Finland. When Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola first encountered the Magdalenian paintings of the Altamira cave, Cantabria, Spain in 1879, the academics of the time considered them hoaxes. Recent reappraisals and numerous additional discoveries have since demonstrated their authenticity, while at the same time stimulating interest in the artistry of Upper Palaeolithic peoples. Cave paintings, undertaken with only the most rudimentary tools, can also furnish valuable insight into the culture and beliefs of that era.

India

The Bhimbetka rock shelters exhibit the earliest traces of human life in India; a number of analyses suggest that some of these shelters were inhabited by humans for in excess of 100,000 years. The earliest paintings on the cave walls are believed to be of the Mesolithic period, dating to 12,000 years ago. The most recent painting, consisting of geometric figures, date to the medieval period. Executed mainly in red and white with the occasional use of green and yellow, the paintings depict the lives and times of the people who lived in the caves, including scenes of childbirth, communal dancing and drinking, religious rites and burials, as well as indigenous animals.^[11]

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