Primitive man draws on a rock. How and with what people painted from primitive times to the Middle Ages. Rock reliefs at Tanum
Speleologists around the world are finding cave drawings of ancient people in all corners globe. The rock paintings have been perfectly preserved to this day, although they were drawn many thousands of years ago. There are several types of such art, which are periodically included in the World Heritage List.
As a rule, ancient man painted the walls of caves with the same type of scenes - he depicted hunting, human hands, various battles, the sun and animals. Our ancestors attached special significance to these drawings and invested them with sacred meaning.
These paintings were created using in various ways and materials. Ocher, animal blood and chalk were used for drawing. And hewn pictures were created on stone using a special cutter.
We invite you to take a mini-tour to mysterious world caves with rock paintings created by ancient man BC.
Magura Cave, Bulgaria
Prehistoric pictures were found in the Bulgarian Magura cave, near Sofia, which amazes with its uniqueness and length. Underworld stretches for two kilometers, and the halls of the cave are enormous: its width is 50 m and its height is 20 m.
The discovered rock painting was created using bat guano. The pictures were painted in many layers over several periods: Paleolithic, Neolithic, Chalcolithic and Bronze Age. The drawings depict figures of ancient people and animals.
Here you can also find a painted sun and various tools.
Cueva de las Manos cave, Argentina
In Argentina there is another ancient cave with a large number rock paintings. Translated, it sounds like “Cave of Many Hands,” since it is dominated by the handprints of our ancestors. The rock painting is located in big hall 24 m wide and 10 m long. The approximate date of painting is 13-9 millennium BC.
Numerous hand marks are imprinted on the voluminous limestone canvas. Scientists have put forward their own version of the appearance of such clear prints - ancient people put a special composition in their mouths, and then blew through a tube onto their hand, which they placed against the wall of the cave.
There are also images of people, animals and geometric shapes.
Bhimbetka cliff dwellings, India
Many caves with rock art have been discovered in India. One of them is located in north-central India, in the state of Madhya Pradesh. Locals They gave this name to the cave in honor of the hero of the epic “Mahabharata”. The paintings of the ancient Indians date back to the Mesolithic era.
Here you can see both worn out, dim images and very colorful and interesting drawings. Basically, various battles and ornaments are depicted here.
Serra da Capivara National Park, Brazil
In Brazilian national park Serra da Capivara is a cave of ancient people, the walls of which have preserved drawings that were drawn 50 thousand years ago.
Scientists have discovered about 300 different works of art and architectural monuments here. The cave is dominated by drawings of animals and other representatives of the Paleolithic era.
Laas Gaal cave complex, Somaliland
IN african republic Somaliland archaeologists have discovered the Laas Gaal cave complex, on the walls of which there are pictures from the 8th-9th and 3rd millennium BC. Ancient settlers depicted here a variety of everyday and life scenes: grazing, various rituals and games.
Contemporaries who live here are not particularly interested in this rock art. And in caves, as a rule, they only provide shelter from the rain. A large number of drawings have not yet been studied and archaeologists continue to study them.
Rock art of Tadrart-Akakus, Libya
There is a hall of Oxen and a palace hall of Cats. Unfortunately, in 1998, these masterpieces of painting were almost ruined by mold. Therefore, to avoid this, the cave was closed in 2008.
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 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”. The scientific name of the drawings is 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:
- Figures of large animals (mammoths, elephants, bulls, deer, bison), birds, fish, which were coveted prey, as well as dangerous predators - bears, lions, wolves, crocodiles.
- Scenes of hunting, dancing, sacrifices, war, boating, fishing.
- Images of pregnant women, leaders, shamans in ritual clothes, spirits, deities, etc. mythical creatures, sometimes attributed by sensationalists to aliens.
These paintings gave 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 early petroglyphs date back to the late Paleolithic, Neolithic eras, and later ones to 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 Siberian rivers, Far East known since the 17th century and described by famous travelers: scientists Spafari, 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:
- Magura Cave (Bulgaria). Animals, hunters, ritual dances are depicted.
- 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.
- Bhimbetka (India). People, horses, crocodiles, tigers and lions “mixed” here.
- Serra da Capivara (Brazil). Many caves depict hunting and scenes of rituals. The oldest drawings are at least 25 thousand years old.
- Laas Gaal (Somalia) – cows, dogs, giraffes, people in ceremonial clothes.
- Chauvet Cave (France). Opened in 1994. The age of some of the drawings, including mammoths, lions, and rhinoceroses, is about 32 thousand years.
- Kakadu National Park (Australia) with images made by the ancient Aborigines of the mainland.
- 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:
- White Sea petroglyphs (Karelia). More than 2 thousand drawings - hunting, battles, ritual processions, people on skis.
- 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.
- Petroglyphs of Sikachi-Alyan (Khabarovsk Territory). 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.
On December 18, 1994, the famous French speleologist Jean Marie Chauvet discovered a cave gallery with ancient images of animals. The find 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 a scientific sensation that forced us to reconsider the existing understanding of the art of ancient people: it was previously 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 a national treasure of 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 creative imagination abilities no less than those of Homo sapiens.
Photo: iDip/flickr.com, scitechdaily.com
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. Rock paintings ancient people of 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 shown without the realism inherent in the depicted animals. 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 of view. 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 shapes 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.
Lascaux Cave
The cave received the nickname " Sistine Chapel primitive painting”, it has no equal in quantity, quality and preservation of rock paintings. It was discovered in 1940 by four teenagers near the city of Montignac, France. The paintings and engraved drawings that are located here do not have an exact dating: they appeared around the 18th-15th millennium BC. e. and depict horses, cows, bulls, deer, bears. In total, there are about six hundred drawings of animals and almost one and a half thousand images carved on the walls. The drawings are made on a light background with shades of yellow, red, brown and black. Scientists claim that ancient people did not live in this cave, but used it exclusively for drawing, or the cave was something of a cult place. The Lascaux Cave was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979.
Andrey Matveev worked on the article
Materials used: http://smartnews.ru/articles/14122.html
Discovery of caves art galleries raised a number of questions for archaeologists: what did the primitive artist draw with, how did he draw, where did he place the drawings, what did he draw and, finally, why did he do it? The study of caves allows us to answer them with varying degrees of certainty.Palette primitive man was poor: it has 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 structural analysis of paints from the Lascaux cave showed that not only natural dyes were used, mixtures of which give different shades of primary colors, but also quite complex compounds 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 ones. 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 journey 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 man 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 - frontal). 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 art neither in the Mesolithic nor in the 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 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 directions to 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