Interesting facts about rock paintings. Primitive art, When did the first images created by man appear? Step-by-step drawing with children “Rock painting” on natural stones

After visiting the Altamira cave in northern Spain, Pablo Picasso exclaimed: “After the work in Altamira, all art began to decline.” He wasn't joking. The art in this cave and in many other caves that are found in France, Spain and other countries is among the greatest artistic treasures that have ever been created.

Magura Cave

Magura Cave is one of the largest caves in Bulgaria. It is located in the northwestern part of the country. The cave walls are decorated with prehistoric cave paintings created approximately 8,000 to 4,000 years ago. More than 700 drawings were discovered. The drawings depict hunters, dancing people and many animals.

Cueva de las Manos

Cueva de las Manos is located in Southern Argentina. The name can be literally translated as “Cave of Hands”. Most of the images in the cave are left hands, but there are also hunting scenes and images of animals. The paintings are believed to have been created between 13,000 and 9,500 years ago.

Bhimbetka

Located in central India, Bhimbetka contains over 600 prehistoric rock art. The drawings depict people living in the cave at that time. The animals were also given a lot of space. Images of bison, tigers, lions and crocodiles were found. The oldest painting is believed to be 12,000 years old.

Serra da Capivara

Serra da Capivara is a national park in northeastern Brazil. This place is home to many stone shelters, which are decorated with rock paintings that represent ritual scenes, hunting, trees, animals. Some scientists believe that the oldest rock art in this park is from 25,000 years ago.

Laas Gaal

Laas Gaal is a complex of caves in northwestern Somalia that contain some of the earliest known art on the African continent. Prehistoric cave paintings are estimated by scientists to be between 11,000 and 5,000 years old. They show cows, ceremonially dressed people, domestic dogs and even giraffes.

Tadrart Akakus

Tadrart Akakus forms a mountain range in the Sahara Desert, in western Libya. The area is famous for its rock art dating back to 12,000 BC. up to 100 years. The paintings reflect the changing conditions of the Sahara Desert. 9,000 years ago, the surrounding area was full of greenery and lakes, forests and wild animals, as evidenced by rock paintings depicting giraffes, elephants and ostriches.

Chauvet Cave

Chauvet Cave, in the south of France, contains some of the earliest known prehistoric cave paintings in the world. The images preserved in this cave may be about 32,000 years old. The cave was discovered in 1994 by Jean Marie Chauvet and his team of speleologists. The paintings found in the cave represent images of animals: mountain goats, mammoths, horses, lions, bears, rhinoceroses, lions.

Rock art of Kakadu

Located in the Northern Territory of Australia, National Park Kakadu contains one of the largest concentrations of Aboriginal art. The oldest works are believed to be 20,000 years old.

Altamira Cave

Discovered in the late 19th century, Altamira Cave is located in northern Spain. Surprisingly, the paintings found on the rocks were like this High Quality that scientists have long doubted their authenticity and even accused the discoverer, Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola, of forging the painting. Many people don't believe in intellectual potential primitive people. Unfortunately, the discoverer did not live to see 1902. In this mountain the paintings were recognized as authentic. The images were made with charcoal and ocher.

Paintings of Lascaux

The Lascaux Caves, located in southwest France, are decorated with impressive and famous cave paintings. Some of the images are 17,000 years old. Most of the rock paintings are depicted far from the entrance. The most famous images This cave contains images of bulls, horses and deer. The largest rock painting in the world is a bull in the Lascaux cave, which is 5.2 meters long.

A person’s desire to capture the world around him, events that inspire fear, the hope of being successful in hunting, life, fighting with other tribes, nature, is demonstrated in drawings. They are found all over the world from South America to Siberia. Rock painting primitive people is also called a cave, since mountain, underground shelters were often used by them as shelters, reliably sheltering them from bad weather and predators. In Russia they are called “pisanitsa”. Scientific name drawings - petroglyphs. After discovery, scientists sometimes paint them over for better visibility and preservation.

Rock Art Themes

Drawings carved on the walls of caves, open, vertical surfaces of rocks, free-standing stones, drawn with coal from a fire, chalk, mineral or plant substances, essentially represent objects of art - engravings, paintings of ancient people. They usually depict:

1. Figures of large animals (mammoths, elephants, bulls, deer, bison), birds, fish, which were coveted prey, as well as dangerous predators - bears, lions, wolves, crocodiles.
2. Scenes of hunting, dancing, sacrifices, war, boating, fishing.
3. Images of pregnant women, leaders, shamans in ritual robes, spirits, deities, and other mythical creatures, sometimes attributed by sensationalists to aliens.

These paintings have given scientists a lot to understand the history of the development of society, the animal world, and changes in the Earth’s climate over thousands of years, because the early petroglyphs date back to the late Paleolithic and Neolithic eras, and the later ones to the Bronze Age. For example, this is how the periods of domestication of the buffalo, wild bull, horse, and camel in the history of the use of animals by humans were determined. Unexpected discoveries included confirmation of the existence of bison in Spain, woolly rhinoceroses in Siberia, and prehistoric animals on the great plain, which today represents a huge desert - the Central Sahara.

History of discovery

This discovery is often attributed to the Spanish amateur archaeologist Marcelino de Sautuole, who found in late XIX centuries of magnificent paintings in the Altamira cave in his homeland. There, the rock paintings, made with charcoal and ocher, available to primitive people, were so good that they were long considered a fake and a hoax.

In fact, such drawings had long been known all over the world by that time, with the exception of Antarctica. Thus, rock paintings along the banks of the rivers of Siberia and the Far East have been known since the 17th century and were described by famous travelers: scientists Spafariy, Stallenberg, Miller. Therefore, the discovery in the Altamira cave and the subsequent hype is just an example of successful, albeit unintentional, propaganda in the scientific world.

Famous drawings

Art galleries, “photo exhibitions” of ancient people, amazing with their plot, variety, and quality of detail:

1. Magura Cave (Bulgaria). Animals, hunters, ritual dances are depicted.
2. Cueva de las Manos (Argentina). The “Cave of Hands” depicts the left hands of the ancient inhabitants of this place, hunting scenes, painted in red, white and black.
3. Bhimbetka (India). People, horses, crocodiles, tigers and lions “mixed” here.
4. Serra da Capivara (Brazil). Many caves depict hunting and scenes of rituals. The oldest drawings are at least 25 thousand years old.
5. Laas Gaal (Somalia) – cows, dogs, giraffes, people in ceremonial clothes.
6. Chauvet Cave (France). Opened in 1994. The age of some of the drawings, including mammoths, lions, and rhinoceroses, is about 32 thousand years.
7. Kakadu National Park (Australia) with images made by the ancient Aborigines of the mainland.
8. Newspaper Rock (USA, Utah). Native American heritage, with an unusually high concentration of paintings on a flat rocky cliff.

Rock art in Russia has a geography from the White Sea to the banks of the Amur and Ussuri. Here are a few of them:

1. White Sea petroglyphs (Karelia). More than 2 thousand drawings - hunting, battles, ritual processions, people on skis.
2. Shishkinsky writings on rocks in the upper reaches of the Lena River (Irkutsk region). More than 3 thousand different drawings were described in the middle of the 20th century by Academician Okladnikov. A convenient path leads to them. Although climbing there is prohibited, this does not stop those who want to see the drawings up close.
3. Petroglyphs of Sikachi-Alyan ( Khabarovsk region). At this place there was an ancient camp of the Nanais. The drawings show scenes of fishing, hunting, and shamanic masks.

It must be said that the rock paintings of primitive people in different places differ significantly in preservation, plot scenes, and quality of execution by ancient authors. But to see them at least, and if you’re lucky in reality, is like looking into the distant past.

Primitive (or, in other words, primitive) art geographically covers all continents except Antarctica, and in time - the entire era of human existence, preserved by some peoples living in remote corners of the planet to this day.

Most ancient paintings were found in Europe (from Spain to the Urals).

Well preserved on the walls of the caves - the entrances turned out to be tightly blocked thousands of years ago, the same temperature and humidity were maintained there.

Not only wall paintings have been preserved, but also other evidence of human activity - clear traces of the bare feet of adults and children on the damp floor of some caves.

Causes of origin creative activity and functions of primitive art. Human need for beauty and creativity.

Beliefs of the time. The man portrayed those whom he revered. People of that time believed in magic: they believed that with the help of paintings and other images they could influence nature or the outcome of the hunt. It was believed, for example, that it was necessary to hit a drawn animal with an arrow or spear in order to ensure the success of a real hunt.

Periodization

Now science is changing its opinion about the age of the earth and the time frame is changing, but we will study according to the generally accepted names of periods.
1. Stone Age
1.1 Ancient Stone Age - Paleolithic. ... up to 10 thousand BC
1.2 Middle Stone Age - Mesolithic. 10 – 6 thousand BC
1.3 New Stone Age - Neolithic. From 6th to 2nd thousand BC
2. Bronze Age. 2 thousand BC
3. Age of Iron. 1 thousand BC

Paleolithic

Tools were made of stone; hence the name of the era - the Stone Age.
1. Ancient or Lower Paleolithic. up to 150 thousand BC
2. Middle Paleolithic. 150 – 35 thousand BC
3. Upper or Late Paleolithic. 35 – 10 thousand BC
3.1 Aurignac-Solutrean period. 35 – 20 thousand BC
3.2. Madeleine period. 20 – 10 thousand BC The period received this name from the name of the La Madeleine cave, where paintings dating back to this time were found.

The most early works Primitive art dates back to the late Paleolithic. 35 – 10 thousand BC
Scientists are inclined to believe that naturalistic art and the depiction of schematic signs and geometric figures arose simultaneously.
Pasta drawings. Impressions of a person's hand and a random interweaving of wavy lines pressed into damp clay by the fingers of the same hand.

The first drawings from the Paleolithic period (ancient Stone Age, 35–10 thousand BC) were discovered at the end of the 19th century. Spanish amateur archaeologist Count Marcelino de Sautuola three kilometers from his family estate, in the Altamira cave.

It happened like this:
“The archaeologist decided to explore a cave in Spain and took his little daughter with him. Suddenly she shouted: “Bulls, bulls!” The father laughed, but when he raised his head, he saw huge painted figures of bison on the ceiling of the cave. Some of the bison were depicted standing still, others rushing at the enemy with inclined horns. At first, scientists did not believe that primitive people could create similar works of art. Only 20 years later were numerous works of primitive art discovered in other places and the authenticity cave painting was recognized."

Paleolithic painting

Altamira Cave. Spain.
Late Paleolithic (Madeleine era 20 - 10 thousand years BC).
On the vault of the Altamira cave chamber there is a whole herd of large bison located close to each other.


Bison panel. Located on the ceiling of the cave. Wonderful polychrome images contain black and all shades of ocher, rich colors, applied somewhere densely and monochromatically, and somewhere with halftones and transitions from one color to another. A thick paint layer up to several cm. In total, 23 figures are depicted on the vault, if you do not take into account those of which only outlines have been preserved.

Fragment. Buffalo. Altamira Cave. Spain. Late Paleolithic. The caves were illuminated with lamps and reproduced from memory. Not primitivism, but highest degree stylization. When the cave was opened, it was believed that this was an imitation of hunting - the magical meaning of the image. But today there are versions that the goal was art. The beast was necessary for man, but he was terrible and difficult to catch.

Fragment. Bull. Altamira. Spain. Late Paleolithic.
Beautiful brown shades. Tense stop of the beast. They used the natural relief of the stone and depicted it on the convexity of the wall.

Fragment. Bison. Altamira. Spain. Late Paleolithic.
Transition to polychrome art, darker strokes.

Cave of Font de Gaume. France

Late Paleolithic.
Silhouette images, deliberate distortion, and exaggeration of proportions are typical. On the walls and vaults of the small halls of the Font-de-Gaume cave there are at least about 80 drawings, mostly bison, two undisputed figures of mammoths and even a wolf.

Grazing deer. Font de Gaume. France. Late Paleolithic.
Perspective image of horns. Deer at this time (the end of the Madeleine era) replaced other animals.

Fragment. Buffalo. Font de Gaume. France. Late Paleolithic.
The hump and crest on the head are emphasized. The overlap of one image with another is a polypsest. Detailed study. Decorative solution for the tail. Picture of houses.

Wolf. Font de Gaume. France. Late Paleolithic.

Nio's Cave. France

Late Paleolithic.
Round hall with drawings. There are no images of mammoths or other animals of glacial fauna in the cave.

Horse. Nio. France. Late Paleolithic.
Depicted already with 4 legs. The silhouette is outlined with black paint, and the inside is retouched with yellow. The character of a pony-type horse.

Stone ram. Nio. France. Late Paleolithic. Partially contoured image, the skin is drawn on top.

Deer. Nio. France. Late Paleolithic.

Buffalo. Nio. Nio. France. Late Paleolithic.
Most of the images include bison. Some of them are shown wounded, with black and red arrows.

Buffalo. Nio. France. Late Paleolithic.

Lascaux Cave

It so happened that it was the children, and quite accidentally, who found the most interesting cave paintings in Europe:
“In September 1940, near the town of Montignac, in the southwest of France, four high school students set off on an archaeological expedition they had planned. In place of a tree that had long been uprooted, there was a hole in the ground that aroused their curiosity. There were rumors that this was the entrance to a dungeon leading to a nearby medieval castle.
There was another smaller hole inside. One of the guys threw a stone at it and, judging by the sound of the fall, concluded that it was quite deep. He widened the hole, crawled inside, almost fell, lit a flashlight, gasped and called others. From the walls of the cave in which they found themselves, some huge animals were looking at them, breathing such confident power, sometimes seeming ready to turn into rage, that they felt terrified. And at the same time, the power of these animal images was so majestic and convincing that they felt as if they were in some kind of magical kingdom.”

Lascaux Cave. France.
Late Paleolithic (Madeleine era, 18 - 15 thousand years BC).
Called primitive Sistine Chapel. Consists of several large rooms: rotunda; main gallery; passage; apse.
Colorful images on the calcareous white surface of the cave.
The proportions are greatly exaggerated: large necks and bellies.
Contour and silhouette drawings. Clear images without layers. A large number of male and female signs (rectangle and many dots).

Hunting scene. Lasko. France. Late Paleolithic.
Genre image. A bull killed by a spear gored a man with a bird's head. There’s a bird on a stick nearby—maybe his soul.

Buffalo. Lasko. France. Late Paleolithic.

Horse. Lasko. France. Late Paleolithic.

Mammoths and horses. Kapova cave. Ural.
Late Paleolithic.

KAPOVA CAVE- to the South. m Ural, on the river. White. Formed in limestones and dolomites. The corridors and grottoes are located on two floors. The total length is over 2 km. On the walls are Late Paleolithic paintings of mammoths and rhinoceroses

Paleolithic sculpture

Art of small forms or mobile art (small plastic art)
An integral part of the art of the Paleolithic era consists of objects that are commonly called “small plastic”.
These are three types of objects:
1. Figurines and other three-dimensional products carved from soft stone or other materials (horn, mammoth tusk).
2. Flattened objects with engravings and paintings.
3. Reliefs in caves, grottoes and under natural canopies.
The relief was embossed with a deep outline or the background around the image was cramped.

Relief

One of the first finds, called small plastic, was a bone plate from the Chaffo grotto with images of two fallow deer:
Deer crossing the river. Fragment. Bone carving. France. Late Paleolithic (Magdalenian period).

Everyone knows a wonderful one French writer Prosper Merimee, author exciting novel"Chronicle of the reign of Charles IX", "Carmen" and other romantic stories, but few people know that he served as an inspector for the protection of historical monuments. It was he who handed over this record in 1833 to the historical museum of Cluny, which was just being organized in the center of Paris. It is now kept in the Museum of National Antiquities (Saint-Germain en Lay).
Later, a cultural layer of the Upper Paleolithic era was discovered in the Chaffo Grotto. But then, just as it was with the painting of the Altamira cave, and with other visual monuments of the Paleolithic era, no one could believe that this art was older than ancient Egyptian. Therefore, such engravings were considered examples of Celtic art (V-IV centuries BC). Only at the end of the 19th century, again, like cave paintings, were they recognized as the most ancient after they were found in the Paleolithic cultural layer.

The figurines of women are very interesting. Most of these figurines are small in size: from 4 to 17 cm. They were made from stone or mammoth tusks. Their most noticeable distinguishing feature is their exaggerated “plumpiness”; they depict women with overweight figures.

"Venus with a Cup" Bas-relief. France. Upper (Late) Paleolithic.
Goddess of the Ice Age. The canon of the image is that the figure is inscribed in a rhombus, and the stomach and chest are in a circle.

Sculpture- mobile art.
Almost everyone who has studied Paleolithic female figurines, with varying degrees of detail, explains them as cult objects, amulets, idols, etc., reflecting the idea of ​​motherhood and fertility.

"Venus of Willendorf". Limestone. Willendorf, Lower Austria. Late Paleolithic.
Compact composition, no facial features.

"The Hooded Lady from Brassempouy." France. Late Paleolithic. Mammoth bone.
Facial features and hairstyle have been worked out.

In Siberia, in the Baikal region, a whole series of original figurines of a completely different stylistic appearance was found. Along with the same overweight figures of naked women as in Europe, there are figurines of slender, elongated proportions and, unlike European ones, they are depicted dressed in thick, most likely fur clothes, similar to “overalls”.
These are finds from the Buret sites on the Angara and Malta rivers.

conclusions
Rock painting. Peculiarities pictorial art Paleolithic – realism, expression, plasticity, rhythm.
Small plastic.
The depiction of animals has the same features as in painting (realism, expression, plasticity, rhythm).
Paleolithic female figurines are cult objects, amulets, idols, etc., they reflect the idea of ​​motherhood and fertility.

Mesolithic

(Middle Stone Age) 10 - 6 thousand BC

After the glaciers melted, the familiar fauna disappeared. Nature becomes more pliable to humans. People become nomads.
With a change in lifestyle, a person’s view of the world becomes broader. He is not interested in an individual animal or a random discovery of cereals, but in the active activity of people, thanks to which they find entire herds of animals and fields or forests rich in fruits.
This is how the art of multi-figure composition arose in the Mesolithic, in which it was no longer the beast, but man, who played the dominant role.
Changes in the field of art:
The main characters of the image are not an individual animal, but people in some kind of action.
The task is not in a believable, accurate depiction of individual figures, but in conveying action and movement.
Multi-figure hunts are often depicted, scenes of honey collection, and cult dances appear.
The character of the image changes - instead of realistic and polychrome, it becomes schematic and silhouetted. Local colors are used - red or black.

A honey collector from a hive, surrounded by a swarm of bees. Spain. Mesolithic.

Almost everywhere where planar or three-dimensional images of the Upper Paleolithic era were discovered, in artistic activity people of the subsequent Mesolithic era seemed to be experiencing a pause. Maybe this period is still poorly studied, maybe the images made not in caves, but on outdoors, over time, washed away by rain and snow. Perhaps among the petroglyphs, which are very difficult to date accurately, there are those dating back to this time, but we do not yet know how to recognize them. It is significant that small plastic objects are extremely rare during excavations of Mesolithic settlements.

Of the Mesolithic monuments, literally a few can be named: Stone Tomb in Ukraine, Kobystan in Azerbaijan, Zaraut-Sai in Uzbekistan, Shakhty in Tajikistan and Bhimpetka in India.

In addition to rock paintings, petroglyphs appeared in the Mesolithic era.
Petroglyphs are carved, carved, or scratched rock images.
When carving a design, ancient artists used a sharp tool to knock off the upper, darker part rock, and therefore the images stand out noticeably against the background of the rock.

In the south of Ukraine, in the steppe there is a rocky hill made of sandstone rocks. As a result of severe weathering, several grottoes and canopies were formed on its slopes. In these grottoes and on other planes of the hill, numerous carved and scratched images have been known for a long time. In most cases they are difficult to read. Sometimes images of animals are guessed - bulls, goats. Scientists attribute these images of bulls to the Mesolithic era.

Stone grave. South of Ukraine. General view and petroglyphs. Mesolithic.

South of Baku between the southeastern slope of the Bolshoi Caucasian ridge and the coast of the Caspian Sea there is a small plain of Gobustan (a country of ravines) with hills in the form of table mountains composed of limestone and other sedimentary rocks. On the rocks of these mountains there are many petroglyphs of different times. Most of them were discovered in 1939. Large (more than 1 m) images of female and male figures made with deep carved lines received the greatest interest and fame.
There are many images of animals: bulls, predators and even reptiles and insects.

Kobystan (Gobustan). Azerbaijan (territory of the former USSR). Mesolithic.

Grotto Zaraout-Qamar
In the mountains of Uzbekistan, at an altitude of about 2000 m above sea level, there is a monument widely known not only among archaeological specialists - the Zaraut-Kamar grotto. The painted images were discovered in 1939 by local hunter I.F. Lamaev.
The painting in the grotto is made with ocher of different shades (from red-brown to lilac) and consists of four groups of images, which include anthropomorphic figures and bulls.

Here is the group in which most researchers see bull hunting. Among the anthropomorphic figures surrounding the bull, i.e. There are two types of “hunters”: figures in clothes that flare out at the bottom, without bows, and “tailed” figures with raised and drawn bows. This scene can be interpreted as a real hunt by disguised hunters, and as a kind of myth.

The painting in the Shakhty grotto is probably the oldest in Central Asia.
“I don’t know what the word Shakhty means,” writes V.A. Ranov. “Perhaps it comes from the Pamir word “shakht,” which means rock.”

In the northern part of Central India, huge cliffs with many caves, grottoes and canopies stretch along river valleys. A lot of rock carvings have been preserved in these natural shelters. Among them, the location of Bhimbetka (Bhimpetka) stands out. Apparently these picturesque images date back to the Mesolithic. True, we should not forget about the unevenness in the development of cultures in different regions. The Mesolithic of India may be 2-3 millennia older than in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

Some scenes of driven hunts with archers in the paintings of the Spanish and African cycles are, as it were, the embodiment of the movement itself, taken to the limit, concentrated in a stormy whirlwind.

Neolithic

(New Stone Age) from 6 to 2 thousand BC.

Neolithic- New Stone Age, the last stage of the Stone Age.
Periodization. The entry into the Neolithic coincides with the transition of culture from an appropriating (hunters and gatherers) to a producing (farming and/or cattle breeding) type of economy. This transition is called the Neolithic Revolution. The end of the Neolithic dates back to the time of the appearance of metal tools and weapons, that is, the beginning of the Copper, Bronze or Iron Age.
Different cultures entered this period of development in different time. In the Middle East, the Neolithic began around 9.5 thousand years ago. BC e. In Denmark, the Neolithic dates back to the 18th century. BC, and among the indigenous population of New Zealand - the Maori - the Neolithic existed back in the 18th century. AD: Before the arrival of Europeans, Maori used polished stone axes. Some peoples of America and Oceania have still not completely transitioned from the Stone Age to the Iron Age.

Neolithic, like other periods primitive era, is not a specific chronological period in the history of mankind as a whole, but characterizes only cultural characteristics of certain peoples.

Achievements and activities
1. New features public life of people:
- The transition from matriarchy to patriarchy.
- At the end of the era in some places (Anterior Asia, Egypt, India) a new formation class society, that is, social stratification began, the transition from a tribal-communal system to a class society.
- At this time, cities begin to be built. Jericho is considered one of the most ancient cities.
- Some cities were well fortified, which indicates the existence of organized wars at that time.
- Armies and professional warriors began to appear.
- We can quite say that the beginning of the formation of ancient civilizations is associated with the Neolithic era.

2. The division of labor and the formation of technologies began:
- The main thing is that simple gathering and hunting as the main sources of food are gradually being replaced by agriculture and cattle breeding.
The Neolithic is called the “age of polished stone.” In this era, stone tools were not just chipped, but already sawed, ground, drilled, and sharpened.
- Among the most important tools in the Neolithic is the ax, previously unknown.
spinning and weaving developed.

Images of animals begin to appear in the design of household utensils.

Ax in the shape of a moose head. Polished stone. Neolithic. Historical Museum. Stockholm.

A wooden ladle from the Gorbunovsky peat bog near Nizhny Tagil. Neolithic. State Historical Museum.

For the Neolithic forest zone, fishing became one of the leading types of economy. Active fishing contributed to the creation of certain reserves, which, combined with hunting animals, made it possible to live in one place all year round.
The transition to a sedentary lifestyle led to the appearance of ceramics.
The appearance of ceramics is one of the main signs of the Neolithic era.

The village of Catal Huyuk (Eastern Turkey) is one of the places where the most ancient examples of ceramics were found.

Cup from Ledce (Czech Republic). Clay. Bell Beaker culture. Chalcolithic (Copper-Stone Age).

Monuments of Neolithic painting and petroglyphs are extremely numerous and scattered over vast territories.
Clusters of them are found almost everywhere in Africa, eastern Spain, in the territory former USSR- in Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, on Lake Onega, near the White Sea and in Siberia.
Neolithic rock art is similar to Mesolithic, but the subject matter becomes more varied.

"Hunters". Rock painting. Neolithic (?). Southern Rhodesia.

For approximately three hundred years, the attention of scientists has been captivated by a rock known as the Tomsk Pisanitsa.
“Pisanitsa” are images painted with mineral paint or carved on the smooth surface of walls in Siberia.
Back in 1675, one of the brave Russian travelers, whose name, unfortunately, remained unknown, wrote down:
“Before reaching the fortress (Verkhnetomsk fortress), on the edges of the Tom River there lies a large and high stone, and on it are written animals, and cattle, and birds, and all sorts of similar things...”
Real scientific interest in this monument arose already in the 18th century, when, by order of Peter I, an expedition was sent to Siberia to study its history and geography. The result of the expedition was the first images of Tomsk writing published in Europe by the Swedish captain Stralenberg, who participated in the trip. These images were not an exact copy of the Tomsk writing, but conveyed only the most general outline rocks and placing drawings on it, but their value lies in the fact that on them you can see drawings that have not survived to this day.

Images of Tomsk writing made by the Swedish boy K. Shulman, who traveled with Stralenberg across Siberia.

For hunters, the main source of subsistence was deer and elk. Gradually, these animals began to acquire mythical features - the elk was the “master of the taiga” along with the bear.
The image of a moose belongs to the Tomsk Pisanitsa the main role: Shapes are repeated many times.
The proportions and shapes of the animal’s body are conveyed absolutely correctly: its long massive body, hump on the back, heavy big head, a characteristic protrusion on the forehead, a swollen upper lip, bulging nostrils, thin legs with cloven hooves.
Some drawings show transverse stripes on the neck and body of moose.

On the border between the Sahara and Fezzan, on the territory of Algeria, in a mountainous area called Tassili-Ajjer, bare rocks rise in rows. Nowadays this region is dried up by the desert wind, scorched by the sun and almost nothing grows in it. However, the Sahara used to have green meadows...

- Sharpness and precision of drawing, grace and elegance.
- Harmonic combination of shapes and tones, the beauty of people and animals depicted with a good knowledge of anatomy.
- Swiftness of gestures and movements.

The small plastic arts of the Neolithic, like painting, acquire new subjects.

"The Man Playing the Lute." Marble (from Keros, Cyclades, Greece). Neolithic. National Archaeological Museum. Athens.

The schematism inherent in Neolithic painting, which replaced Paleolithic realism, also penetrated into small plastic art.

Schematic image of a woman. Cave relief. Neolithic. Croisard. Department of the Marne. France.

Relief with a symbolic image from Castelluccio (Sicily). Limestone. OK. 1800-1400 BC National Archaeological Museum. Syracuse.

conclusions

Mesolithic and Neolithic rock paintings
It is not always possible to draw a precise line between them.
But this art is very different from typically Paleolithic:
- Realism, accurately capturing the image of the beast as a target, as a cherished goal, is replaced by a broader view of the world, the image of multi-figure compositions.
- There appears a desire for harmonious generalization, stylization and, most importantly, for the transmission of movement, for dynamism.
- In the Paleolithic there was monumentality and inviolability of the image. Here there is liveliness, free imagination.
- In human images, a desire for grace appears (for example, if you compare the Paleolithic “Venuses” and the Mesolithic image of a woman collecting honey, or Neolithic Bushman dancers).

Small plastic:
- New stories appear.
- Greater mastery of execution and mastery of craft and material.

Achievements

Paleolithic
- Lower Paleolithic
> > taming fire, stone tools
- Middle Paleolithic
>> exit from Africa
- Upper Paleolithic
> > sling

Mesolithic
- microliths, bow, canoe

Neolithic
- Early Neolithic
> > agriculture, cattle breeding
- Late Neolithic
>> ceramics

Chalcolithic (Copper Age)
- metallurgy, horse, wheel

Bronze Age

The Bronze Age is characterized by the leading role of bronze products, which was associated with improved processing of metals such as copper and tin obtained from ore deposits, and the subsequent production of bronze from them.
The Bronze Age replaced the Copper Age and preceded iron age. In general, the chronological framework of the Bronze Age: 35/33 - 13/11 centuries. BC e., but they differ among different cultures.
Art is becoming more diverse and spreading geographically.

Bronze was much easier to process than stone; it could be cast into molds and polished. Therefore, in the Bronze Age, all kinds of household items were made, richly decorated with ornaments and of high artistic value. Ornamental decorations consisted mostly of circles, spirals, wavy lines and similar motifs. Particular attention was paid to decorations - they were large in size and immediately caught the eye.

Megalithic architecture

In 3 - 2 thousand BC. unique, huge structures made of stone blocks appeared. This ancient architecture called megalithic.

The term “megalith” comes from the Greek words “megas” - “large”; and "lithos" - "stone".

Megalithic architecture owes its appearance to primitive beliefs. Megalithic architecture is usually divided into several types:
1. A menhir is a single vertical stone, more than two meters high.
On the Brittany Peninsula in France, the so-called fields stretch for kilometers. menhirov. In the language of the Celts, the later inhabitants of the peninsula, the name of these stone pillars several meters high means “long stone.”
2. Trilith is a structure consisting of two vertically placed stones and covered with a third.
3. A dolmen is a structure whose walls are made of huge stone slabs and covered with a roof made of the same monolithic stone block.
Initially, dolmens served for burials.
Trilith can be called the simplest dolmen.
Numerous menhirs, trilithons and dolmens were located in places that were considered sacred.
4. Cromlech is a group of menhirs and trilithes.

Stone grave. South of Ukraine. Anthropomorphic menhirs. Bronze Age.

Stonehenge. Cromlech. England. Bronze Age. 3 – 2 thousand BC Its diameter is 90 m, it consists of stone blocks, each of which weighs approx. 25 tons. It is curious that the mountains from where these stones were delivered are located 280 km from Stonehenge.
It consists of trilithons arranged in a circle, inside a horseshoe of trilithons, in the middle there are blue stones, and in the very center there is a heel stone (on the day of the summer solstice the luminary is exactly above it). It is assumed that Stonehenge was a temple dedicated to the sun.

Age of Iron (Iron Age)

1 thousand BC

In the steppes of Eastern Europe and Asia, pastoral tribes created the so-called animal style.

"Deer" plaque. 6th century BC Gold. Hermitage Museum. 35.1x22.5 cm. From the mound in the Kuban region. The relief plate was found attached to a round iron shield in the chief's burial. An example of zoomorphic art (“animal style”). The deer's hooves are made in the form of a "big-beaked bird."
There is nothing accidental or superfluous - a complete, thoughtful composition. Everything in the figure is conditional and extremely truthful and realistic.
The feeling of monumentality is achieved not by size, but by the generality of the form.

Panther. Badge, decoration of a shield. From a mound near the village of Kelermesskaya. Gold. Hermitage Museum.
Age of Iron.
Served as a decoration for the shield. The tail and paws are decorated with figures of curled up predators.

Iron Age

Age of Iron. The balance between realism and stylization is broken in favor of stylization.

Cultural connections with Ancient Greece, countries ancient East and China contributed to the emergence of new subjects, images and visual means in artistic culture tribes of southern Eurasia.

Scenes of a battle between barbarians and Greeks are depicted. Found in the Chertomlyk mound, near Nikopol.

Zaporozhye region Hermitage Museum.

conclusions

Scythian art – “animal style”. Amazing sharpness and intensity of images. Generalization, monumentality. Stylization and realism.

On December 18, 1994, the famous French speleologist Jean Marie Chauvet discovered a cave gallerycancient images of animals. The discovery was named in honor of its discoverer — Chauvet cave. We decided to talk about the most beautiful caves with rock paintings.

Chauvet Cave

The discovery of the Chauvet cave in the south of France near the town of Pont d'Arc became scientific sensation, which forced us to reconsider the existing understanding of the art of ancient people: previously it was believed that primitive painting developed in stages. At first, the images were very primitive, and more than one thousand years had to pass for the drawings on the walls of the caves to reach their perfection. Chauvet's find suggests the opposite: the age of some images is 30-33 thousand years, which means that our ancestors learned to draw even before moving to Europe. The discovered rock art represents one of the oldest examples of cave art in the world, in particular, the drawing of black rhinoceroses from Chauvet is still considered the most ancient. The south of France is rich in such caves, but none of them can compare with the Chauvet Cave either in size, or in the preservation and skill of the drawings. Mostly animals are depicted on the walls of the cave: panthers, horses, deer, as well as woolly rhinoceros, tarpan, cave lion and other animals ice age. In total, 13 images were found in the cave. various types animals.
Now the cave is closed to tourists, as changes in air humidity can damage the images. Archaeologists can only work in a cave for a few hours a day. Today the Chauvet Cave is national treasure France.

Caves of Nerja

The Caves of Nerja are an amazingly beautiful series of huge caves near the city of Nerja in Andalusia, Spain. They received the nickname "Prehistoric Cathedral". They were discovered by accident in 1959. They are one of the main attractions of Spain. Some of their galleries are open to the public, and one of them, which forms a natural amphitheater and has excellent acoustics, even hosts concerts. In addition to the world's largest stalagmite, several mysterious drawings were discovered in the cave. Experts believe that seals or fur seals are depicted on the walls. Fragments of charcoal were found near the drawings, the radiocarbon dating of which gave an age between 43,500 and 42,300 years. If experts prove that the images were made with this charcoal, the seals of the Nerja Cave will turn out to be significantly older than the cave paintings from the Chauvet Cave. This will once again confirm the assumption that Neanderthals had the ability to creative imagination no less than that of Homo sapiens.

Kapova Cave (Shulgan-Tash)

This karst cave was found in Bashkiria, on the Belaya River, in the area of ​​which the Shulgan-Tash nature reserve is now located. This is one of the longest caves in the Urals. Cave paintings of ancient people from the Late Paleolithic era, the likes of which can only be found in very limited places in Europe, were discovered in Kapova Cave in 1959. Images of mammoths, horses and other animals are made mainly with ocher, a natural pigment based on animal fat, their age is about 18 thousand years. There are several charcoal drawings. In addition to animals, there are images of triangles, stairs, and oblique lines. The most ancient drawings, dating back to the early Paleolithic, are in the upper tier. On the lower tier of the Kapova Cave there are later images of the Ice Age. The drawings are also notable for the fact that human figures are shown without the realism inherent in the animals depicted. Researchers suggest that the images were made in order to appease the “gods of the hunt.” In addition, cave paintings are designed to be perceived not from one specific point, but from several angles. To preserve the drawings, the cave was closed to the public in 2012, but an interactive kiosk was installed in the museum on the territory of the reserve for everyone to look at the drawings virtually.

Cueva de las Manos cave

Cueva de las Manos (“Cave of Many Hands”) is located in Argentina, in the province of Santa Cruz. Cueva de las Manos became world famous in 1964 thanks to the research of archeology professor Carlos Gradin, who discovered many wall paintings and human handprints in the cave, the oldest of which date back to the 9th millennium BC. e. More than 800 prints, overlapping each other, form a multi-colored mosaic. So far, scientists have not come to a consensus about the meaning of the images of hands, from which the cave got its name. Mostly left hands were captured: out of 829 prints, only 36 were right hands. Moreover, according to some researchers, the hands belong to teenage boys. Most likely, drawing an image of one’s hand was part of the initiation rite. In addition, scientists have built a theory about how such clear and clear handprints were obtained: apparently, a special composition was taken into the mouth and forcefully blown through a tube onto a hand attached to the wall. In addition to handprints, on the walls of the cave there are depictions of people, rhea ostriches, guanacos, cats, geometric figures with ornaments, hunting processes (the drawings show the use of bolas, a traditional throwing weapon of the Indians of South America) and observations of the sun. In 1999, the cave was included in the UNESCO World Heritage List.

The discovery of cave art galleries raised a number of questions for archaeologists: what did the primitive artist paint with, how did he paint, where did he place the drawings, what did he paint 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 diffraction 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 did the colors of the green-blue-blue part of the spectrum enter early painting for so long? 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 the opposites of the 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 the technology of drawing. The problem can be formulated as follows: did the animals depicted in the drawings of Paleolithic man “come out” of the wall or “go 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 of bare feet were found on the floor. 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 life-size model of a bear, dressed in its skin and decorated with a real skull, is replaced by its 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 - frontally). Skill gradually increases. The drawing acquires clarity and confidence of the stroke. Using the 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 the cave artist took different paths in different places?

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 land 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 of 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