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 Brassempouy

Ivory

height 1¼ (3.6 cm)

Probably c 30,000 BCE

Woman from Ostrava Petrkovice

Hematite

height 1¾" (4.6 cm)

c. 23,000 BCE

Woman from Willendorf

Limestone

height 4⅜" (11 cm)

c. 24,000 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