An overview of human artifacts produced by prehistoric people during the stone age.

1. Prehistoric Art

3. • First skeleton remains of the common
ancestor of Homo sapiens from about 400,000
years ago found in Africa
• Oldest human remains from Omo Kibish,
Ethiopia from about 195,000 YA
• By 20,000 BC, humans were on every
continent except Antarctica

4. Some of the oldest
human artifacts
includes shells
thought to make a
necklace and incised
ochre with geometric
pattern (Blombos
Cave, South
Africa, 75,000 YA)

5. Blombos Cave, South Africa

6. Many of the oldest artifacts are identifiable
as tools for cutting, chopping, and piercing

7. Oldest known figurative sculpture is the Venus
of Hohle Fels Cave in Germany (35,000 YA)

8. • Early pottery to
hold food and
water
• Pottery fragments
from Xianrendong
Cave, Jiangxi
Province, China
(about 22,000 YA)

9. • Functional items
become decorative
and designed for
use and beauty
• Spear thrower
carved from
reindeer antler (La
Madeleine, France,
14,000 YA)

10. • Cave artists painted
the big mammals
around them
• Bears, bison, and
reindeer in France
(Chauvet, 37,000
YA)

11. • Elephants, boar and
horses in India
(Bhimbetka, 30,000
YA)

13. • Antelope in Algeria
(Tassili
n’Ajjer, 10,000 YA)

14. • Giraffes, tigers,
zebras in Namibia
(6,000 YA)

15. Do we have an obsession with the
animals around us today?

16. Jeff Koons, Puppy, 1997

17. Louis Bourgeois, Maman, 1979

18. Cave artists also painted abstract and geometric patterns
(El Castillo, Spain, 40,000 YA)

19. Was there a code to their visual language? (El
Castillo, Spain, 40,000 YA)

20. • A common theme
across continents:
artists traced their
hands
• Cueva de los
Manos, Argentina
(13,000 - 9,000 YA)

21. It’s not a habit that disappeared.

22. It’s not a habit that disappeared.

23. How did the cave artists work?

24. • They used rocks
and minerals
around them for
different colors
• These colors found
by Chuck Kritzon
near his California
home
http://www.primiti
veways.com/paint_
a_mammoth.html]

25. • They made brushes
from
sticks, bone, rock, f
ur, and hair
• Used incised rocks
to “erase” or make
highlights in stone

26. • They used reeds as
blow guns for the
first kind of spray
painting

27. • Cave artists erected
scaffolding to paint
images that were
difficult to get to
• Some of the
paintings are in
tight spaces over 10
feet high

28. • Prehistoric artists
paid attention to
composition and
responded to their
site
• Drew animals in
twisted perspective
with bodies in
profile and heads
frontal
• (Lascaux, 28,000 -
10,000 YA)

30. • The cave artists
used repetition to
capture movement
• Edward
Muybridge, The
Attitudes of
Animals in
Motion, 1881

31. Horses, Chauvet Cave, France

32. What happened to the prehistoric artists?
• End of ice age + Neolithic revolution around
12,000 YA
• Development of agriculture: goats, sheep,
pigs, cattle
• Domesticated farming
• Developing permanent settlements