Human civilization has come a long way and achieved impressive results. Contemporary art is one of them. But everything has its beginning. How did painting arise and who were they - the first artists of the world?
In the Paleolithic, primitive art first appeared. It had different shapes. These were rituals, music, dances and songs, as well as drawing images on different surface- rock paintings of primitive people. The creation of the first man-made structures - megaliths, dolmens and menhirs, the purpose of which is still unknown, dates back to this period. The most famous of them is Stonehenge in Salisbury, consisting of cromlechs (vertical stones).
Household items, such as jewelry, children's toys, also belong to the art of primitive people.
Scientists have no doubts about the time of the birth of primitive art. It began to form in the middle of the Paleolithic era, during the period of the late Neanderthals. The culture of that time is called Mousterian.
Neanderthals knew how to process stone, creating tools. On some objects, scientists found indentations and notches in the form of crosses, forming a primitive ornament. In that era they could not yet paint, but ocher was already in use. Pieces of it were found ground down, like a pencil that had been used.
This is one of the types. It is an image painted on the surface of a cave wall by an ancient man. Most of such objects were found in Europe, but drawings of ancient people are also found in Asia. The main area of distribution of rock art is the territory of modern Spain and France.
For a long time modern science it was not known that art primitive man reached such a high level. Drawings were not found in caves until the 19th century. Therefore, when they were first discovered, they were mistaken for fraud.
The ancient cave painting was discovered by an amateur archaeologist, Spanish lawyer Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola.
This discovery is associated with dramatic events. In the Spanish province of Cantabria in 1868, a hunter discovered a cave. The entrance to it was littered with fragments of crumbled rock. In 1875 she was examined by de Sautuola. That time he found only tools. The find was the most ordinary. Four years later, the amateur archaeologist again visited the Altamira cave. He was accompanied on the trip by his 9-year-old daughter, who discovered the drawings. Together with his friend, archaeologist Juan Vilanova y Piera, de Sautuola began excavating the cave. Not long before, at an exhibition of Stone Age objects, he saw images of bison, surprisingly reminiscent of the cave painting of an ancient man that his daughter Maria saw. Sautuola suggested that the animal images found in the Altamira cave belong to the Paleolithic. Vilanov-i-Pierre supported him in this.
Scientists have published the shocking results of their excavations. And they were immediately accused scientific world in falsification. Leading experts in the field of archeology categorically rejected the possibility of finding paintings from Paleolithic times. Marcelino de Sautuola was accused that the drawings of ancient people, allegedly found by him, were drawn by a friend of the archaeologist, who was visiting him in those days.
Only 15 years later, after the death of the man who had revealed to the world beautiful examples of painting by ancient people, his opponents admitted that Marcelino de Sautuola was right. By that time, similar drawings in the caves of ancient people had been found in Fonts-de-Gaume, Trois-Freres, Combarel and Rouffignac in France, Tuc d'Auduber in the Pyrenees and other regions. All of them were attributed to the Paleolithic era. Thus, the honest name of the Spanish scientist, who made one of the notable discoveries in archeology, was restored.
The rock art, photos of which are presented below, consists of many images of different animals. Among them, bison figurines predominate. Those who first saw the drawings of ancient people found in are amazed at how professionally they were made. This magnificent skill of ancient artists made scientists at one time doubt their authenticity.
Ancient people did not immediately learn to create accurate images of animals. Drawings have been found in which the outlines are barely outlined, so it is almost impossible to find out who the artist wanted to depict. Gradually, the drawing skill became better and better, and it was already possible to quite accurately convey the appearance of the animal.
The first drawings of ancient people can also include handprints found in many caves.
A hand smeared with paint was applied to the wall, the resulting print was outlined in a different color and enclosed in a circle. According to researchers, this action had important ritual significance for ancient man.
The rock painting of an ancient man reflected the reality that surrounded him. It reflected what worried him most. In the Paleolithic, the main occupation and method of obtaining food was hunting. Therefore animals main motive drawings of that period. As already mentioned, numerous images of bison, deer, horses, goats, and bears were discovered in Europe. They are conveyed not statically, but in motion. Animals run, jump, frolic and die, pierced by a hunter's spear.
Located in France, there is the largest ancient image of a bull. Its size is more than five meters. In other countries, ancient artists also painted those animals that lived next to them. In Somalia, images of giraffes were found, in India - tigers and crocodiles, in the caves of the Sahara there are drawings of ostriches and elephants. In addition to animals, the first artists painted scenes of hunting and people, but extremely rarely.
It is not known exactly why ancient man depicted animals and people on the walls of caves and other objects. Since by that time a religion had already begun to take shape, they most likely had deep ritual significance. The “Hunting” drawing of ancient people, according to some researchers, symbolized the successful outcome of the fight against the beast. Others believe that they were created by tribal shamans who went into a trance and tried to gain special power through the image. Ancient artists lived a very long time ago, and therefore the motives for creating their drawings are unknown to modern scientists.
To create drawings, primitive artists used a special technique. First, they scratched an image of an animal on the surface of a rock or stone with a chisel, and then applied paint to it. It was made from natural materials- ocher different colors and black pigment, which was extracted from charcoal. Animal organic matter (blood, fat, brain matter) and water were used to fix the paint. Ancient artists had few colors at their disposal: yellow, red, black, brown.
The drawings of ancient people had several features. Sometimes they overlapped each other. Artists often depicted a large number of animals. In this case, the figures in the foreground were depicted carefully, and the rest - schematically. Primitive people did not create compositions; the vast majority of their drawings were a chaotic jumble of images. To date, only a few “paintings” have been found that have a single composition.
During the Paleolithic period, the first painting tools were already created. These were sticks and primitive brushes made from animal fur. Ancient artists also took care of lighting their “canvases.” Lamps were discovered that were made in the form of stone bowls. Fat was poured into them and a wick was placed.
She was found in 1994 in France, and her collection of paintings is recognized as the oldest. Laboratory research helped determine the age of the drawings - the very first of them were made 36 thousand years ago. Here were found images of animals that lived in glacial period. These are the woolly rhinoceros, bison, panther, tarpan (ancestor of the modern horse). The drawings are perfectly preserved due to the fact that thousands of years ago the entrance to the cave was blocked.
It is now closed to the public. The microclimate in which the images are located may disturb human presence. Only its researchers can spend several hours in it. It was decided to open a replica of the cave nearby for visiting spectators.
This is another one famous place, where drawings of ancient people were found. The cave was discovered by four teenagers in 1940. Now her collection of paintings by ancient Paleolithic artists includes 1,900 images.
The place has become very popular with visitors. The huge influx of tourists led to damage to the drawings. This was due to an oversupply carbon dioxide exhaled by people. In 1963, it was decided to close the cave to visitors. But problems with the preservation of ancient images still exist today. The microclimate of Lascaux has been irreversibly disrupted, and the drawings are now under constant control.
The drawings of ancient people delight us with their realism and skillful execution. Artists of that time were able to convey not only the authentic appearance of the animal, but also its movement and habits. In addition to aesthetic and artistic value, the painting of primitive artists is important material to study the animal world of that period. Thanks to what was found in the drawings, scientists made an astonishing discovery: it turned out that lions and rhinoceroses, the original inhabitants of hot southern countries, lived in Europe during the Stone Age.
Rock 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 has been the object of great interest among scientists around the world since its discovery in the 19th century. The first discoveries were made in Spain, but subsequently cave paintings were discovered in different parts of the 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 drawings, dyes of various origins were used: mineral (hematite, clay, manganese oxide), animal, plant ( 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. Known images of seafaring ships ancient Phenicia, seen 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.
Modern man is surrounded by an incredible number of artistic images. Wherever we turn our gaze, everything abounds in paintings, ornaments, photographs, starting from the very simple life and ending with works of art.
Throughout history, man has strived to convey the internal or external through the image. “Truly, art lies in nature; whoever knows how to discover it owns it.” Albrecht Durer
The artistic culture of mankind dates back to time immemorial - the Paleolithic itself. Everyone knows the oldest rock painting. It was in the Paleolithic (2.5 million-10,000 BC) that art as such arose.
A time when agriculture did not yet exist, and the Earth was inhabited by extinct species of animals, during the Stone Age, when primitive man was engaged in gathering and hunting with the help of primitive weapons.
Even then, people began to feel the need to express simple images artistically.
Ancient rock carvings carved on stone are called petroglyphs. These drawings, differing in the manner of execution, were located in caves where Paleolithic people lived, sometimes in inaccessible places.
Rock painting performed on stone using rough cutting tool, as evidenced by stone chisels found at sites of primitive people.
Mineral dyes were often used, which were applied as a second layer; they were prepared from manganese oxide, coal, kaolite and gave color variations from ocher to black. “The authors of cave paintings had a better understanding of the anatomy of four-legged animals than most contemporary artists, and made fewer mistakes in drawings of walking mammoths and other mammals” It is assumed that meaning of rock drawings was ritual, but debates on this topic continue to this day. Mostly animals were depicted, including those that had already become extinct. The image of a person is much less common and dates back to a later period.
For rock paintings characterized by a lack of proportions, a simple primitive depiction technique, sometimes a primitive hunting plot is visible, and often the drawings of primitive people conveyed movement.
Rock painting distributed throughout the world. Its most striking examples are in Kazakhstan (Tamgaly), Karelia, Spain (Altamira cave), France (Fond-de-Gaume, Montespan caves, etc.), Siberia, on the Don (Kostenki), Italy, England , Germany, Algeria.
“After the work in Altamira, all art began to decline.” Pablo Picasso Cave drawings were carefully hidden in numerous caves not in one place, but all over the world. They first attracted public attention only 120 years ago.
Why did this happen relatively recently, despite the fact that they were probably found several times before? Apparently, their ease of execution, often similar to children's drawings, was simply unremarkable.
In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the entire artistic heritage of our planet was systematized and comprehended. In the middle of the 19th century, no art older than Egyptian or Celtic was known.
The existence of some ancient rudimentary forms of art was assumed, but it was believed that they would have to be extremely primitive. This is probably why it took half a century to recognize and comprehend the already found, very meaningful and multifaceted cave drawings.
Marcelino de Sautuola is considered the discoverer of rock art. He explored the caves that were located in the area where he lived since 1875. In 1879, while exploring the Altamira Cave, his nine-year-old daughter discovered amazing drawings, which were later called the “Sistine Chapel of Primitive Art” of the Altamira Cave.
It took Marcelino de Sautuola a whole year to dare to make a public statement. He was right to worry, since his statement caused an incredible storm of unrest in scientific circles.
It took a lot of time and discovery to recognize the authenticity rock paintings Altamira. With the passage of time and numerous similar discoveries, experts were forced to admit that Marcelio was right; unfortunately, he did not live to see these days.
Spanish cave of Nerja with finds found in it rock paintings may revolutionize ideas about Neanderthals. These caves were discovered in 1959 by boys hunting bats. Excavations in these caves continue to this day.
It was in Nerja that they were discovered cave drawings strange spiral shape, reminiscent of the structure of DNA. Scientists claim that similar look had pinnipeds, which the inhabitants of that time ate.
“Art must first of all be clear and simple; its meaning is too great and important.” M. Gorky The coal found in the images was studied by radiocarbon dating, which determined the approximate age of the drawings. Their age stunned everyone - it turned out that the drawings were about 43 thousand years old. This is 13 thousand years older than the drawings of the Chauvey cave, France, which were still considered the most ancient.
At the moment, there have been no official statements about the Nerja Cave, since they could have a great influence on ideas about human development, cave drawings need numerous studies and confirmation.
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Niramin - Jun 14th, 2016
Ancient rock paintings are nothing more than a chronicle of the most distant times, when the only way to convey impressions about the world around us and the events taking place in it were drawings made by the most common means of labor and creativity at that time - stone and coal.
In these simple, but sometimes very impressive stories, the everyday life primitive man, his thoughts about eternity and his place in the Universe, about who or what he is, where he came from and what is the meaning of his life full of fears and anxiety. The surviving petroglyphs are silent witnesses to the everyday life of disappeared tribes and peoples, their rituals and traditions. It is thanks to ancient rock paintings that we can learn about the past of humanity, the ways of its development, the customs of ancient peoples, the formation of civilizations, etc.
One of the most famous rock art sites is located in the Chauvet Cave in the south of France. Drawings that are 32 thousand years old have been preserved here. On the walls of the cave you can see images of animals, scenes of hunting, cooking, household items, etc. The first ancient drawings are one-color. Later, two-color images appeared, in which red ocher was most often used.
Many rock paintings are very picturesque: expressive figures of people chasing game, scenes of rituals, images of animals and plants. In the era of pastoralists, pictures of hunting are replaced by visual stories about the life of shepherds. During this period, images of herds of cattle were more often found on the walls, where figures of bulls, cows, antelopes, and goats were carefully painted.
The creation of rock paintings is caused by the natural need of man to convey his understanding of the world around him. The appearance of the first images of gods is connected with this, mythical creatures, masks.
Gallery of photos of rock paintings:
Photo: Ancient rock painting. 
Photo: Rock art - Lascaux cave in France. 
Photo: Chauvet Cave in France.
See the rock paintings of the Altamira cave in Spain:
Video: A copy of the Chauvet grotto is a new landmark in France (news)
Video: Rock paintings in caves along ... (UNESCO/NHK)
Video: Rock Art in the Twyfelfontein Valley
Video: Drawings of the Altamira cave turned out to be older
Video: Mysterious rock paintings. Ancient petroglyphs of shamans.
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.
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 various plants, among which there were also painters. 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 opposites ancient world: red - warmth, light, life with hot scarlet blood; black - cold, darkness, death... This symbolism is universal. It was a long way from the cave artist, who had only 4 colors in his palette, to the Egyptians and Sumerians, who added two more (blue and green) to them. But even further from them is the 20th century cosmonaut who took a set of 120 colored pencils on his first flights around the Earth.
The second group of questions that arise when studying cave painting concerns 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 model of a bear, made in life size, dressed in his skin and decorated with a real skull, is replaced by his clay likeness; the animal gradually “gets to its feet” - it is leaned against the wall for stability (this is already a step towards creating a bas-relief); then the animal gradually “retracts” into it, leaving a drawn and then a pictorial outline... This is how archaeologist A. Solar imagines the emergence of Paleolithic painting.
Another way is no less likely. According to Leonardo da Vinci, the first drawing is the shadow of an object illuminated by a fire. Primitive begins to draw, mastering the “outlining” technique. The caves have preserved dozens of such examples. On the walls of the Gargas cave (France) 130 “ghost hands” are visible - human handprints on the wall. It is interesting that in some cases they are depicted with a line, in others - by filling in the external or internal contours (positive or negative stencil), then drawings appear, “torn off” from the object, which is no longer depicted in life-size, in profile or frontally. Sometimes objects are drawn as if in different projections (face and legs - profile, chest and shoulders - 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. The horses of the Grand Ben cave, full of life, seem to be running in front of us, gradually decreasing in size... Later this technique was forgotten, and similar drawings are not found in rock paintings either in the Mesolithic or Neolithic. The last step is the transition from a perspective image to a three-dimensional one. This is how sculptures appear, “emerging” from the walls of the cave.
Which of the above points of view is correct? A comparison of the absolute dating of figurines made of bones and stone indicates that they are approximately the same age: 30-15 thousand years BC. e. Maybe in different places did the cave artist take different paths?
Another of the mysteries of cave painting is the lack of background and frame. Figures of horses, bulls, and mammoths are scattered freely along the rock wall. The drawings seem to hang in the air; not even a symbolic line of ground is drawn under them. On the uneven vaults of caves, animals are placed in the most unexpected positions: upside down or sideways. No in drawings of primitive man and a hint of the landscape background. Only in the 17th century. n. e. in Holland the landscape is designed into a special genre.
The study of Paleolithic painting provides specialists with abundant material for searching for the origins various styles and trends in contemporary art. For example, a prehistoric master, 12 thousand years before the advent of pointillist artists, depicted animals on the wall of the Marsoula cave (France) using tiny colored dots. The number of similar examples can be multiplied, but something else is more important: the images on the walls of caves are a fusion of the reality of existence and its reflection in the brain of Paleolithic man. Thus, Paleolithic painting carries information about the level of thinking of a person of that time, about the problems that he lived with and that worried him. Primitive art, discovered more than 100 years ago, remains a real Eldorado for all kinds of hypotheses on this matter.
Dublyansky V.N., popular science book
