Global Prehistory 30,000-500 BCE The Origins of Images
Key Points for Global Prehistory Periods and definitions Prehistory (or the prehistoric period) refers to the time before written records, however, human expression existed across the globe long before writing. Writing emerged at different times in different parts of the world. The earliest writing is found in ancient Mesopotamia, c. 3200 B.C.E. Homo sapiens (modern humans are a subspecies) - homo sapiens migrated out of Africa between 120,000 and 50,000 years ago. The stone age is a prehistoric period when stone implements were widely used. The stone age is divided into the Paleolithic (old stone age) and Neolithic (new stone age). After the Stone age, the next periods are known as the bronze age and the iron age.
Key Points for Global Prehistory Historians distinguish the Neolithic period by the transition from people living as hunter-gatherers to the development of farming and the domestication of animals. The "Neolithic revolution" allowed people to create a more settled way of life. This happened at different times in different parts of the world. The first agriculture occurred in southwest Asia in an area historians call the "fertile crescent." Prehistory was a time of major shifts in climate and environment. Modern archaeology uses a stratigraphic process, where archaeologists precisely record each level and the location of all objects.
Key Points for Global Prehistory Art making The earliest peoples were hunter-gatherers (until about 12,000 years ago) who created imagery in many different media fired ceramics, painting, sculpture and who built architecture. The oldest art found to date are rock paintings and sculpture from c. 77,000 years ago.
Key Points for Global Prehistory In Asia, we have found Paleolithic and Neolithic cave paintings that feature animal imagery (in the mountains of Central Asia and Iran). Animal imagery has also been found in rock shelters throughout central India. In prehistoric China, we find ritual objects created in jade, (beginning a 5,000-year tradition of working with the precious medium). Ritual, tomb, and memorializing arts are found across Neolithic Asia, including impressive funerary steles from Saudi Arabia and Yemen.
Key Points for Global Prehistory In Europe, we have found small human figural sculptures (central Europe), cave paintings (France and Spain), and outdoor, monumental stone assemblages (British Isles) that date from the Paleolithic and Neolithic periods. Spotted Horses and Human Hands Paint on limestone Individual horses are over 5' (1.5 m) in length. Horses 25,000 24,000 BCE; hands c 15,000 BCE Pech-Merle Cave, Dordogne, France
Key Points for Global Prehistory In the Pacific region, people migrated from Asia approximately 45,000 years over land bridges. The earliest created objects have been dated to c. 8,000 years ago. The Lapita peoples, who moved eastward from Melanesia to Polynesia beginning about 4,000 years ago, created pottery with incised geometric designs that appear across the region in multiple media today.
The Oldest Art: Ornamentation Humans make art. We do this for many reasons and with whatever technologies are available to us. Extremely old, non-representational ornamentation has been found across Africa. The oldest firmly-dated example is a collection of 82,000 year old Nassarius snail shells found in Morocco that are pierced and covered with red ochre. Wear patterns suggest that they may have been strung beads. Nassarius shell beads found in Israel may be more than 100,000 years old and in the Blombos cave in South Africa, pierced shells and small pieces of ochre (red Haematite) etched with simple geometric patterns have been found in a 75,000-year-old layer of sediment. Blombos Cave, South Africa about 80,000 BC
Apollo 11 Cave Stones c.25,500 BCE
The Oldest Art: Representational The oldest known representational imagery comes from the Aurignacian culture of the Upper Paleolithic period (Paleolithic means old stone age). Archeological discoveries across a broad swath of Europe (especially Southern France, Northern Spain, and Swabia, in Germany) include over two hundred caves with spectacular Aurignacian paintings, drawings and sculpture that are among the earliest undisputed examples of representational image-making. The oldest of these is a 2.4-inch tall female figure carved out of mammoth ivory that was found in six fragments in the Hohle Fels cave near Schelklingen in southern Germany. It dates to 35,000 B.C.E.
Lion-Human Mammoth ivory height 11⅝" (29.6 cm) c. 30,000 26,000 BCE
Woman from Willendorf Limestone height 4⅜" (11 cm) c. 24,000 BCE Woman from Ostrava Petrkovice Hematite height 1¾" (4.6 cm) c. 23,000 BCE Woman from Brassempouy Ivory height 1¼ (3.6 cm) Probably c 30,000 BCE
Camelid Sacrum in the shape of a canine 14,000-7000 B.C.E. Tequixquiac, central Mexico Camelid Sacrem Analysis
The Oldest Art: The Caves The caves at Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc, Lascaux, Pech Merle, and Altamira contain the best known examples of pre-historic painting and drawing. Here are remarkably evocative renderings of animals and some humans that employ a complex mix of naturalism and abstraction. Archeologists that study Paleolithic era humans, believe that the paintings discovered in 1994, in the cave at Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc in the Ardéche valley in France, are more than 30,000 years old. The images found at Lascaux and Altamira are more recent, dating to approximately 15,000 B.C.E. The paintings at Pech Merle date to both 25,000 and 15,000 B.C.E.
Hall of Bulls Paint on limestone length of the largest auroch (bull) 18' (5.50 m) c. 15,000 BCE The Lascoux Cave
Bird-Headed Man with Bison Paint on limestone length approx. 9' (2.75 m) c. 15,000 BCE
Running horned woman. Tassili n Ajjer, Algeria. 6000 4000 B.C.E. Pigment on rock UNESCO Site Overview
Beaker with Ibex Motif Susa, Iran 4200-3500 B.C.E. Painted terra cotta Ibex Beaker Analysis
Anthropomorphic Stele Arabian Peninsula 4000 B.C.E. Sandstone Stele Origins
Jade Cong Liangzhu, China 3300-2200 B.C.E. Carved Jade
Stonehenge c. 2750 1500 BCE Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire England Secrets of Stonehenge
The Ambum Stone c. 1500 BCE Ambum Valley, Papua New Guinea Greywacke
Tlatilco Female Figurine Central Mexico, site of Tlatilco 1200 900 B.C.E. Ceramic Tlatilco Figurine Analysis
Terra Cotta Fragment. Lapita. Solomon Islands, Reef Islands 1000 B.C.E