Probably, if we think about prehistoric art or Paleolithic art, the first thing that will come to mind is the so-called cave painting. But, although it is true that it is one of the most surprising and well-known artistic manifestations of this period, it is not the most abundant, much less the only one.
Join us on this tour of Paleolithic art the first artistic manifestations of humanity.
In recent years, the theory that the Homo Sapiens He was not the first human being to create art. In light of the most recent studies, this honor falls to his closest cousin, Neanderthal Man, who lived during the Middle Paleolithic (200,000 – 35,000 BC).
These first Neanderthal artistic manifestations have been found in three Spanish caves: La Pasiega, in Cantabria, Maltavieso, in Extremadura, and Los Ardales, located in Andalusia.
In all three, artificial pigments were found on the walls, whose scientific dating was around 64,000 BC, that is, at the time when Neanderthals populated Europe.
The controversy was served. Were these pigments really intentional, or were they just the result of a deterioration of the minerals in the cave? Be that as it may, everything seems to indicate that Neanderthals had an evident symbolic capacity, reflected in religious and burial rituals, which seems to give weight to the theory that they also had artistic creativity. On the other hand, the body ornaments that have been found, made with shells and animal bones, corroborate the hypothesis that, indeed, the Neanderthal was capable of artistic expression.
The great explosion of art: the Upper Paleolithic
What does not cast any doubt is the existence of art during the last period of the Paleolithic, known as the Upper Paleolithic (a. 35,000 – 9,000 BC). In this period, modern man, Homo Sapiens, has already spread, from Africa, throughout the globe, so artistic manifestations can be found in many places on the planet. However, Europe is where we have the most Paleolithic artistic remains
In relation to rock art or parietal art, the geographical concretion is much more specific: the regions of present-day France and the Cantabrian coast, with some other manifestations on the Mediterranean coast and the central Plateau. Why is cave art so restricted? What happened to the other European regions, where the Homo Sapiens? Why is rock art concentrated in the aforementioned areas?
A probable explanation is the survival of glaciation in the north of the continent, from which only the Mediterranean coastal strip was free. In these regions, The climate was already beginning to be quite temperate, predicting the new period that would come with the Neolithic However, this reason does not explain why numerous examples of movable art have been preserved in areas far from the temperate belt, such as the Danube, the Don and Lake Baikal.
In fact, movable art is much more abundant than cave art, and we find testimonies throughout Europe: female statues traditionally linked to the cult of fertility, tools with decorations and engravings, body ornaments… Much has been said about the supposed meaning of these objects : Did they have a ritual purpose, or merely an aesthetic one? We will talk about this in another point.
Rock art or parietal art
Rupestre comes from the Latin word rupes, which means “rock.” It was the first name given to the art depicted on the walls of caves, although it is currently also known as parietal art, from “wall”. One thing that we must keep in mind is that the term rock art is not limited only to prehistoric art, since wall decoration survived long after the end of the Paleolithic. On the other hand, and as we have already pointed out in the previous section, we should not think that all the artistic manifestations of this period are cave paintings, since we have already seen how movable art also existed, that is, transportable art.
Dr. María Isabel Rodríguez López has a magnificent essay on the art of the Upper Paleolithic. Following the studies of Professor Ripoll, Dr. Rodríguez exposes the five artistic techniques that human beings of the period followed :
The great manifestations of parietal or rock art are those of Lascaux, in the French Dordogne, and those of Altamira, in Cantabria, Spain The first were discovered in 1940 by some teenagers who were looking for their lost dog, and soon gained enormous popularity due to the astonishing naturalism of their execution.
More than 2,000 representations dating back to 20,000 years were found in the Lascaux caves. The most abundant figures are those of animals, especially horses, mammoths, deer and bison, which constitute the most evident leitmotif of Paleolithic rock art. We find similar representations, although aesthetically very different, in Altamira, Spain, where, in the 19th century, some caves were also discovered by chance, whose Great Room or Central Room houses an unparalleled artistic treasure.
The human representations are later. The first are usually feminine in nature, especially representations of vulvas, an unequivocal symbol of fertility. Hybrid characters are also quite abundant, that is, men with animal attributes, often identified with tribal totems or with shamanic figures performing a ritual.
In any case, the vast majority of Paleolithic cave paintings lack narrative meaning, although with notable exceptions, such as the famous man attacked by a deer in the Lascaux cave. The most common thing, however, is that the representations are juxtaposed and do not relate to each other.
What function did these prehistoric artistic representations have?
Apart from the testimonies of the caves, which are really scarce, the artistic manifestations of the Paleolithic that are most abundant are those of movable art, that is, transportable. Especially famous are the Venussmall statuettes made with various materials that represent female figures with exaggerated sexual attributes, which have been related to a cult of fertility and the Great Goddess.
The real meaning of these representations, however, remains unclear. Not only that of the Venus, but also that of cave paintings (especially the enigmatic signs and abstract shapes that often accompany animals), as well as the decorations on everyday tools. Did they have their origin in a ritual? Were they, therefore, religious in nature ?
In the aforementioned work by Dr. Rodríguez López, some hypotheses considered by scholars of Prehistory are presented, which, by the way, is a relatively recent discipline. GH Luquet proposed the theory of artistic creation as a spontaneous impulse of adornment, that is, merely aesthetic. For his part, in 1906, W. Worringer launched the idea of “cosmic anxiety” as the origin of art; in other words, the fruit of a spiritual need.
In 1903, Salomon Reinach published his work L’art et la magic, where he relates Paleolithic art to magic. According to this theory, The animals depicted on the surfaces of the caves would be nothing more than invocations of what the prehistoric human being wanted: a good hunt Likewise, elements such as vulvas or female figurines with exaggerated sexual organs would have a connection with the group’s desire for fertility and the perpetuation of the tribe.
Unfortunately, the men and women who created Paleolithic art left nothing written to give us a clue about their intentions, as writing would still be a long time in coming. We must, therefore, resign ourselves to the mystery. Perhaps this, instead of a problem, is one of the great attractions of the artistic manifestations of prehistoric human beings.
