Paleolithic cave painting
Animals of the hunters' world in ochre and charcoal on cave walls — the first images people made
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How to recognise it
- Bison, horses, deer and aurochs in profile
- Rock bulges used as the animal's volume
- Hand prints and stencils
- Red and yellow ochre, black charcoal
- Figures overlap with no ground line
Why it emerged
Ice Age hunters went deep into dark caves, so the images likely served ritual — hunting magic or initiation. Local minerals and campfire charcoal supplied the pigments.
Examples
Chauvet Cavec. 34,000 BCLions and rhinos drawn with depth and motion — nearly twice as old as Lascaux
Lascauxc. 17,000 BCThe Hall of the Bulls with 5-metre aurochs — the world's best-known cave art-Museo%20Arqueol%C3%B3gico%20Nacional.jpg?width=640 "José-Manuel Benito · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons")
Cave of Altamirac. 16,000 BCFirst cave art recognised as Paleolithic (1879): polychrome bison on the ceiling
Cueva de las Manosc. 7300 BCHundreds of hand stencils and guanaco hunts — among South America's oldest paintings
Venus of Willendorfc. 29,500 BCAn 11 cm limestone female figure — the benchmark of Paleolithic 'Venuses'More in this style
- c. 25,500 BC Apollo 11 Cave