Ancient paintings in caves. Cave painting Drawings of primitive people put before
Niramin - Jun 14th, 2016
Ancients rock paintings represent 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 daily 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 monuments The rock art 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, mythical creatures, and masks is connected with this.
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.
Friends, where and how did it all start?
Maybe when ancient man Did you see your footprint in the sand?
Or, when you ran your finger along the ground, you realized that it was a fingerprint?
Or maybe when our ancestors learned to control the “fiery beast” (fire) by running the burnt end of a stick over a stone?
In any case, it is clear that a person has always been curious and even our ancestors, leaving primitive drawings on rocks and stones, wanted to convey their feelings to each other.
Exploring drawings of ancient people, it is obvious that in the process of evolution, their drawings also improved, moving from primitiveness to more complex images of people and animals.
It is known that archaeologists have found in Africa, in the Sibudu cave, rock paintings made by ancient people 49 thousand years ago! The drawings were drawn with ocher mixed with milk. Primitive people used ocher even earlier, about 250 thousand years ago, but the presence of milk in the paint was not found.
This find was strange in that the ancient people who lived 49 thousand years ago did not yet have livestock, which means they obtained milk by hunting animals. In addition to ocher, our ancestors used charcoal or burnt roots, crushed into powder, limestone.
Everyone knows Ancient Egypt paintings most popular. The history of Ancient Egyptian civilization goes back about 40 centuries! This civilization reached great heights in architecture, writing papyri, as well as graphic drawings and other images.
Existence Ancient Egypt began 3000 BC. e. and ended in the 4th–7th centuries. AD.
The Egyptians loved to decorate almost everything with painting: tombs, temples, sarcophagi, various household items and dishes, statues. For paints they used: limestone (white), soot (black), iron ore (yellow and red), copper ore (blue and green).
Painting ancient egypt was meaningful, depicting people, for example, dead, providing them with services in the afterlife. 
They believed in afterlife and believed that life was just an interval to another, more interesting life. Therefore, after death, the deceased was glorified in images.
No less fascinating ancient drawings and frescoes of other civilizations - Ancient Rome and Ancient Greece.
Greco-Roman antiquity began in the 7th century BC and ended in the 6th century AD. The Romans learned from the ancient Greeks how to paint walls on wet plaster.
So, for example, for paints, colored minerals mixed with egg white and animal glue. And after drying, such a fresco was covered melted wax.
But here ancient greeks knew where best way maintaining bright colors. The plaster they used contained lime and dried to form a clear, thin film of calcium. It was this film that made the fresco durable!
Wall frescoes ancient Greece have reached our days, thousands of years later, perfectly preserved in the same bright and rich color as when they were created.
Previously, fresco was the name given to paintings done on wet plaster. But in our time, any wall painting can be called a fresco, regardless of the technique of its execution.
In general, wall paintings or frescoes belong to monumental painting. And this has a direct bearing on me. Alfraine painting, that is, wall painting, is my main specialization, which I studied at a private school in the south of France.
You can see my works in the section >>> <<<
In the Middle Ages in Kievan Rus the walls of the cathedrals were painted with beautiful frescoes. For example, in 2016 I visited the Sofia Kyiv nature reserve in Kyiv. And in the most beautiful cathedral, founded in 1037 by the Grand Duke of Kyiv Yaroslav the Wise, wall frescoes have been preserved on the walls (the total area of the frescoes is 3000 sq. m.)
The main composition in the cathedral is portrait of the family of Yaroslav the Wise on three walls. But only portraits of the prince’s sons and daughters have survived and are well preserved. The huge frescoes, painted in the 11th century, certainly made a strong impression on me.
Also already in Middle Ages (period V – XV centuries) They used not only walls, but also wooden surfaces (for painting) for painting. For such works tempera paints were used. This paint, of course, is considered one of the oldest types of paint and was used to paint pictures until the 15th century.
Until one day Dutch painter Van Eyck did not introduce widespread use oil based paints in Europe
Tempera- These are water-based paints. Coloring powder diluted with water and chicken yolk. The history of this type of paint goes back more than 3000 years.
Sandro Botticelli/Sandro Botticelli. Left Portrait of a young woman 1480-1485, 82 x 54 cm, Frankfurt. Right Annunciation 1489-1490, tempera on wood, 150 x 156 cm, Florence
For example, in ancient Egypt sarcophagi of the pharaohs They painted it with tempera.
But they began to use canvas instead of a wooden board for painting in Western European countries only at the beginning of the 16th century. Florentine and Venetian painters painted on canvas in significant quantities.
In Russia, canvases began to be used as a basis for painting even later, only from the second half of the 17th century. But that's another story... Or rather
So, by showing curiosity and doing a little analysis, you can trace the ways of human self-expression from primitive drawing to the true creations of the Middle Ages!!! Of course, this is not a scientific article, but only the opinion of one curious artist who likes to drip and drip into the labyrinths of the human mind.
Friends, to the articlenot lost among many other articles on the Internet,save it to your bookmarks.This way you can return to reading at any time.
Ask your questions below in the comments, I usually answer all questions quickly
LASCO CAVE
The paintings on the ceiling and walls of the Lascaux cave in France were even better than those in Altamira. This cave was discovered in 1940 by a boy while playing with his dog. The boy was throwing stones to the dog and suddenly heard that one of the stones had fallen somewhere deep. The next day he decided to go down there with a flashlight. He found himself in a cave, on the ceiling and walls of which he saw huge images of animals: bison, bulls, horses, deer and other animals. They were painted with red, yellow, black, and brown paints. As it turned out later, the length of all the passages of this cave was 180 meters. The width of the largest hall, the “hall of the bulls,” was 7.5 m, and the height was more than 7 m. Some drawings reached a length of up to 3 meters. Scientists analyzed the drawings and found that they were drawn 18,000 years ago. Lascaux Cave is considered the oldest cave with paintings known to paleontologists.
Chauvet Cave
In 1912, the Chauvet Cave was discovered in the south of France near the city of Dark, this discovery became a real sensation. Scientists believed that primitive painting must have developed in stages in the ancient world. The images in Chauvet Cave suggest otherwise. Some of the drawings are 33,000 years old, which suggests that our ancestors mastered painting even before migrating to Europe. The image of black rhinoceroses from Chauvet is considered the most ancient image known to scientists. Mostly on the walls of the cave, ancient people depicted animals: panthers, horses, deer, as well as woolly rhinoceroses, tarpans, cave lions and other animals that lived during the Ice Age. The Chauvet Cave has been closed and tourists are not allowed there, as changes in the composition of the air can lead to the destruction of the images.
Even archaeologists are allowed to work in this cave for no more than 1 hour.
Caves of Nerja
In 1959, in the vicinity of the city of Nerja in Andalusia (Spain), a network of amazingly beautiful huge caves was discovered. Some of the passages are open to tourists, and in one of the caves there is a real natural amphitheater; the room has excellent acoustics; concerts are held in this cave. Fur seals and seals are depicted on the walls. Pieces of charcoal were found near the drawings, radiocarbon dating of which determined the age to be between 43,500 and 42,300 years. If paleontologists prove that the paintings in the Nerja caves are significantly older than the cave paintings from Chauvet, this discovery will confirm that Neanderthals had the ability to create no less than Homo sapiens.
Kapova Cave (Shulgan-Tash)
A cave was found on the Belaya River (Bashkiria) in the area of the Shulgan-Tash nature reserve. The longest cave in the Urals. Drawings of people from the Paleolithic era were found in the cave. Horses, mammoths and other animals were depicted on the walls and ceiling of the cave. Ancient people painted in this cave with a natural pigment based on animal fats - ocher. Several drawings were drawn in charcoal. The age of these drawings is about 18,000 years. Human figures are also depicted. Paleontologists believe that ancient people created such images to appease the “gods of the hunt.” In 2012, the cave was closed to tourists as the drawings began to deteriorate. However, a virtual Kapova Cave was created.
Cueva de las Manos cave
In the province of Santa Cruz (Argentina), the ancient cave Cueva de las Manos (“Cave of Many Hands”) was found. It was discovered in 1964 by Professor of Archeology Carlos Gradin. The cave contains many wall paintings and human handprints, the oldest of which date back to the 9th millennium BC. e. About 800 prints are superimposed on each other and form a mosaic of different tsets. Scientists have not yet figured out the meaning of the images of palms and arms. Of the 800 prints, only 36 are right-hand prints. Moreover, a large number of prints belong to teenage boys. Most likely, with the help of such prints, the tribe identified its relatives.
In addition to handprints, on the walls of the cave there are images of people, ostriches, horses and geometric figures with ornaments. There are also entire prehistoric masterpieces depicting the hunting process.
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.
For many years, modern civilization had no idea about any objects of ancient painting, but in 1879, the Spanish amateur archaeologist Marcelino-Sans de Sautuola, together with his 9-year-old daughter, during a walk, accidentally came across the Altamira cave, the vaults of which were decorated many drawings of ancient people - this unprecedented find greatly 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.
Cave 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 designs, dyes of various origins were used: mineral (hematite, clay, manganese oxide), animal, vegetable (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 almost no sunlight penetrates into the caves in which most of the rock paintings are located, torches and primitive lamps were used to create the paintings.
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. There are known images of the ships of the seafarers of ancient Phenicia, noticed by the more primitive communities of the Iberian Peninsula.
Cave painting was widely practiced by primitive hunter-gatherer societies who took refuge in or lived near caves. 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 demonstrates a higher level of cultural development.
For many years, modern civilization had no idea about any objects of ancient painting, but 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 arches of which were decorated with many drawings of ancient people - a find that had no analogues greatly shocked the researcher and prompted him to study it closely.
1. White Shaman's Rock
This 4,000-year-old ancient rock art is located in the lower Peco River in Texas. The giant image (3.5 m) shows the central figure surrounded by other people performing some kind of rituals. It is assumed that the figure of a shaman is depicted in the center, and the picture itself depicts the cult of some forgotten ancient religion.
2. Kakadu Park
Kakadu National Park is one of the most beautiful tourist destinations in Australia. It is especially valued for its rich cultural heritage - the park contains an impressive collection of local Aboriginal art. Some of the rock art at Kakadu (which has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site) is almost 20,000 years old.
3. Chauvet Cave
Another UNESCO World Heritage Site is located in the south of France. More than 1000 different images can be found in the Chauvet Cave, most of them are animals and anthropomorphic figures. These are some of the oldest images known to man: their age dates back to 30,000 - 32,000 years. About 20,000 years ago, the cave was filled with stones and has remained in excellent condition to this day.
4. Cueva de El Castillo
In Spain, the “Castle Cave” or Cueva de El Castillo was recently discovered, on the walls of which the oldest cave paintings in Europe were found, their age is 4,000 years older than all the rock paintings that were previously found in the Old World. Most of the images feature handprints and simple geometric shapes, although there are also images of strange animals. One of the drawings, a simple red disk, was made 40,800 years ago. It is assumed that these paintings were made by Neanderthals.
5. Laas Gaal
Some of the oldest and best-preserved rock paintings on the African continent can be found in Somalia, at the Laas Gaal (Camel Well) cave complex. Despite the fact that their age is “only” 5,000 - 12,000 years, these rock paintings are perfectly preserved. They depict mainly animals and people in ceremonial clothes and various decorations. Unfortunately, this wonderful cultural site cannot receive World Heritage status because it is located in an area constantly at war.
6. Bhimbetka Cliff Dwellings
The cliff dwellings at Bhimbetka represent some of the earliest traces of human life on the Indian subcontinent. In natural rock shelters on the walls there are drawings that are about 30,000 years old. These paintings represent the period of development of civilization from the Mesolithic to the end of prehistoric times. The paintings depict animals and people engaged in daily activities such as hunting, religious ceremonies and, interestingly, dancing.
7. Magura
In Bulgaria, the rock paintings found in the Magura cave are not very old - they are between 4,000 and 8,000 years old. They are interesting because of the material that was used to apply the images - bat guano (droppings). In addition, the cave itself was formed millions of years ago and other archaeological artifacts have been found in it, such as the bones of extinct animals (for example, the cave bear).
8. Cueva de las Manos
The "Cave of Hands" in Argentina is famous for its extensive collection of prints and images of human hands. This rock painting dates back to 9,000 - 13,000 years. The cave itself (more precisely, the cave system) was used by ancient people 1,500 years ago. Also in Cueva de las Manos you can find various geometric shapes and images of hunting.
9. Altamira Cave
The paintings found in the Altamira Cave in Spain are considered masterpieces of ancient culture. The stone painting from the Upper Paleolithic period (14,000 - 20,000 years old) is in exceptional condition. As in Chauvet Cave, a collapse tightly sealed the entrance to this cave about 13,000 years ago, so the images remained in their original form. In fact, these drawings are so well preserved that when they were first discovered in the 19th century, scientists thought they were fakes. It took a long time until technology made it possible to confirm the authenticity of rock art. Since then, the cave has proven so popular with tourists that it had to be closed in the late 1970s because large amounts of carbon dioxide from visitors' breath began to destroy the paintings.
10. Lascaux Cave
It is by far the best known and most significant collection of rock art in the world. Some of the most beautiful 17,000-year-old paintings in the world can be found in this cave system in France. They are very complex, very carefully made and at the same time perfectly preserved. Unfortunately, the cave was closed more than 50 years ago due to the fact that, under the influence of carbon dioxide exhaled by visitors, the unique images began to collapse. In 1983, a reproduction of part of the cave called Lascaux 2 was discovered.
