Prehistoric Cave Painting:

Transcription

1 Introductory Social Studies EXPLORE Prehistoric Cave Painting: Cave painting of a bull and horse from the late Aurignacian period, in Lascaux Grotto, near Montignac, France Over thirtythousand years ago in western Europe, during the Paleolithic Period, there lived prehistoric humans known as Cro- Magnons. They began to record important parts of their lives on the walls of deep caves. These paintings, the oldest ever found, are not crude scribblings, but beautiful, detailed, and colorful representations of the animals the Cro-Magnons hunted for food and fur, as well as some images of those animals who hunted the Cro-Magnons. 1 Prehistoric Cave Painting

2 EXPLORE Introductory Social Studies Site Navigation Tips Lascaux lascaux/en/ Chauvet-Pont-d Arc chauvet/en/index.html On the Lascaux website click on the flashlight beam to bring up the site menu. If it s not in English, be sure to click English down in the left-hand corner. Go to the Discovery section of the right-hand menu, and once you re there, start with the time and space section. You can take a virtual tour of Lascaux by starting on the homepage and clicking on Discover. From there you ll see the virtual visit button. Once you re on the Map of the Site page, there are two ways you can examine the individual rooms of the cave: either by clicking on a red dot on the map, or on the linked room name in the text. (Warning: you cannot move from room to room in this tour you need to go back to the Map of the Site page to select a different room.) At the Chauvet-Pont-d Arc website you can go to the virtual tour directly from the homepage by clicking on the Visit the Cave button in the lower right corner. Like at Lascaux, you can visit individual rooms by clicking on the red dots (the red dots are rooms with paintings). After each room, this tour will automatically take you to the next, so it s best that you start at the Brunel Chamber Panel of the Sacred Heart red button near the Present Entrance. Clicking on the button will open a new window in your browser from which you can see the tour. (Some of the rooms have little boxes on the photos that allow you to look closer at the paintings and will open another browser window be sure to check out as much of each room as you can.) You can check out all the images in a room by either clicking on the arrow in the lower righthand corner or by clicking directly on the smaller image at the top. (In order to make sure you see every image, it s a good idea to follow the arrow.) Prehistoric Cave Painting 2

3 Student Activity Page copy and distribute as needed EXPLORE We re going to explore two of the most impressive and famous painted caves, both of them located in France. We ll be walking through the caves, examining and comparing the paintings we find. The first cave is called Lascaux (pronounced La-SCO ). Go to the French Ministry of Culture and Communication s Cave of Lascaux website at Let s start with the time and space section. Reading through the time and space section, answer the following questions: In what mountain range is the cave located? How deep is the cave? meters Look at the timeline of caves on the final page of the time and space section. How many years ago do scientists think the Lascaux cave paintings were created? What age or culture would this make the cave paintings part of? Let s move on to the discovery of the cave. Click on the 1940, the discovery button on the left-hand menu and read the text to answer the following questions: What was the day (month, day, and year) of the discovery of the cave? If your school subscribes to BritannicaSchool, be sure to check out the related articles on the site. Who discovered it, and how old were they? What is the first painting room they found known as today? (Be careful this isn t the first room that is described in the text.) 3 Prehistoric Cave Painting

4 EXPLORE Student Activity Page copy and distribute as needed Now let s look at the second cave, Chauvet-Pont-d Arc ( Sha-VAY-Pone-DARK ). Go to the French Ministry of Culture and Communication s The Cave of Chauvet-Pontd Arc website at ndex.html Go to the section called The Cave Today on the righthand menu, and once you re there, let s start with the section named The Discovery. What was the exact date of the discovery (day, month, year)? Who discovered it? What was the first painting they saw? Magdalenian cave painting of a bison, Altamira, Spain Prehistoric Cave Painting 4

5 Student Activity Page copy and distribute as needed EXPLORE The cave paintings at Chauvet-Pont-d Arc are older than most of those at Lascaux. They belong to an earlier period called the Aurignacian Age that was between 30,000 and 35,000 years ago. Let s go through every room of both caves and keep a record of how many times we see different animals in the different caves. Use the chart below to keep track of the animals you see. Each time you see an image of an animal in a room, make a mark in the proper box under that cave and next to that animal. Some rooms may have hundreds of paintings or etchings of individual animals-mark down in general how many you think there are (10? 50? 100?). Be sure to look in every room of both caves! Animal Chauvet-Pont-d Arc Lascaux Felines (including panthers) Horses Hemione (an extinct horse) Cows Bulls Hyenas Ibex Aurochs (an extinct bovine) Bison Deer (including general cervids) Stags Reindeer Megaceros (an extinct giant deer) Birds Rhinoceros Bears Mammoths Humans Insects 5 Prehistoric Cave Painting

6 EXPLORE Student Activity Page copy and distribute as needed Let s look over the data you ve collected from the paintings. What is the most common animal in both caves? What are some of the other popular animals in Lascaux? What are some of the other popular animals in Chauvet- Pont-d Arc? What animals show up in Lascaux, but hardly appear at all in Chauvet-Pont-d Arc? What animals show up in Chauvet-Pont-d Arc, but hardly appear at all in Lascaux? Look back over the list of animals. Put a C next to the ones you know are carnivores, or meat-eaters. Put an H next to the ones you know are herbivores, or plant-eaters. (In general, humans hunted herbivores, while carnivores might be HUNTING humans.) Which cave seems to have more paintings of carnivores? Which seems to have more paintings of herbivores? Which is the older set of cave paintings, the one with a lot of carnivores or the one with mostly herbivores? What might this tell you about the world of the older artists? Prehistoric Cave Painting 6

7 Student Activity Page copy and distribute as needed EXPLORE Finally, looking back over the two caves, pick one room at one of the sites that was your favorite. What is the name of the room? What kinds of paintings are in the room? Why is this room your favorite? Describe a couple of your favorite individual paintings from this room: What are two interesting facts you learned about this room and its paintings? 1) 2) 7 Prehistoric Cave Painting

8 TEACHER MATERIAL Prehistoric Cave Painting From the Encyclopædia Britannica Paleolithic Period The Upper Paleolithic Period (beginning about 40,000 years ago) was characterized by the emergence of regional stone-tool industries, such as the Perigordian, Aurignacian, Solutrean, and Magdalenian of Europe, as well as other localized industries of the Old World and the oldest known cultures of the New World. Principally associated with the fossil remains of such anatomically modern humans as Cro-Magnons Monumental arts flourished in western Europe, the province of the so-called Franco-Cantabrian school, where limestone caves provided a sheltered surface for paintings, incised designs, and relief carvings. The function or purpose of art in Paleolithic life remains a subject of debate. Some scholars see the human and animal representations as evidence of the use of magical rites to ensure success in hunting or to guarantee fertility. Others have suggested that Paleolithic artists accurate representations of animals coats may be an early attempt to produce a seasonal notation system. Another viewpoint, disregarding utility altogether, sees the art of Paleolithic peoples solely as an outgrowth of a basic human need to creatively record and reproduce aspects of the surrounding world. Franco-Cantabrian school the oldest and most complete of several traditions of Paleolithic (Old Stone Age) art that flourished in southwestern France and the northern Cantabrian Mountains region of Spain between about 40,000 and 10,000 BC. It developed in huge limestone caves, such as those at Altamira and Lascaux, that served as habitation for ancient hunters in central and southern France and northern Spain. consists almost entirely of large numbers of paintings of single, unrelated animals, which seem to have functioned as icons. Some may have played a role in dramatic rituals invoking success in the hunt and in animal fertility. [T]he animals depicted by the Franco-Cantabrian school are often lively, sometimes with an overpowering vitality. Aurignacian culture...cave art was produced almost exclusively in western Europe, where, by the end of the Aurignacian Period, hundreds of paintings, engravings, and reliefs had been executed on the walls, the ceilings, and sometimes the floors of limestone caves. Probably the first paintings are stencilings outlined in color of actual hands held against the cave walls. The stencilings were succeeded by the development of figural painting. A characteristic feature of these early pictures, which persisted throughout the Aurignacian period, is their twisted perspective, which shows, for example, the head of the animal in profile and its horns twisted to a front view. One of the finest examples of Aurignacian art is represented by paintings of animals, such as horses and bulls, on the walls and ceilings of the cave at Lascaux, in southwestern France. Lascaux Grotto French GROTTE DE LASCAUX, located above the Vézère River valley near Montignac, in Dordogne, France. Discovered by four teenage boys in September 1940, the cave was first studied by the French archaeologist Henri-Édouard-Prosper Breuil. It consists of a main cavern (some 66 feet [20 meters] wide and 16 feet [5 meters] high) and several steep galleries, all magnificently decorated with engraved, drawn, and painted figures. In all there are some 600 painted and drawn animals and symbols, along with nearly 1,500 engravings. The paintings were done on a light background in various shades of yellow, red, brown, and black. Among the most remarkable pictures are four huge aurochs (some 16 feet long), their horns portrayed in a twisted perspective ; a curious two-horned animal (misleadingly nicknamed the unicorn ), perhaps intended as a mythical creature; and a rare narrative composition. The narrative scene has been variously interpreted but is probably based on shamanism. Its central figure is a bison that appears to have been speared in the abdomen In front of the bison s horns, and falling away from the animal, is a birdheaded man--the only human figure depicted in the cave Archaeologists have theorized that the cave served over a long period of time as a center for the performance of hunting and magical rites--a theory supported by the depiction of a number of arrows and traps on or near the animals. Based on carbon- 14 dating, as well as the fossil record of the animal species portrayed, the Lascaux paintings have been dated to the late Aurignacian (Perigordian) period (c. 15,000-13,000 BC). Additional Website Science & Nature: Prehistoric Life and the Caveman ic_life/human/species/ Magico-religious in inspiration, the art of the Franco-Cantabrian school Prehistoric Cave Painting 8