The origin of Pre-historic arts

Humankind seems to have originated in Africa in the very remote past. They beings have been walking upright for millions of years, however it was not until 25000 years ago that they invented art.

During the last glacial epoch, when hunter gatherers were still living in caves, the Neanderthal tool-making mentality gave way to the Cro-Magnon urge to make images.

The earliest preserved art objects date to around 30,000 BC, during the Old Stone Age, or Paleolithic period, Paleolithic artworks are of an astonishing variety.

The first art objects were the symbols of animals and people had supernatural significance and magic power.

The most striking works of Paleolithic are the images of animals incised, painted or sculptured on the rock surfaces of caves.

Most early discoveries of prehistoric art came about accidently as missionary, scholars or explorers traveled around, reporting on anything of interest which they encountered.

It seems to have been the Chinese who were the pioneers. The earliest known written reports of rock art are to be found in Han Fei Zi, written about 2,300 years ago by Han Fei.
The origin of Pre-historic arts

Magdalenian cave art

The most impressive feature of the entire Paleolithic is without a doubt the decorated walls of caves.

The vast majority, about 80 percent of upper Paleolithic cave art sites are assigned to the middle and upper Magdalenian.  It was dating from around 17,000 to 12,000 years ago.

Their remnants have been found in caves on or near rivers that empty in to the Atlantic in present day Spain and France.

Some of the long–stay sites and the ‘super sites’ have yielded cave art. However, cave art sites in the Middle Magdalenian frequently appear to have been set part from daily life.

It is through their cave paintings that people of the ice age seem both human and most mysterious. Over 270 sites with Paleolithic wall art have been found within Europe.

A variety of animals were depicted in the art: horse and bovids were most frequent, with the addition of a significant number of representations of ibex. Deers, chamois and humans were also represent, while other animal were extremely rare, felines, bears, rhino, mammoth, a weasel and birds.
Magdalenian cave art

The Early History of Art

The book of Genesis names one of the great grandsons of Cain, as the first who wrought and graved on metal and another as the inventor of musical instrument, - a proof that the arts were cultivated in very early stages of civilization.

Again, within four centuries after the flood, the men had made images of wood, and stone, and metal to worship.

They had not only built them cities but they had tasted of the barbarous civilities of war; they had erected trophies; poets had extolled the exploits of heroes; and sculptors had already fashioned their images to adore.

Constant tradition names Terah, the father of Abraham as a maker of images; and that the worship of them continued in his family for nearly two hundred years notwithstanding the call and conversion of Abraham, is proved by Rachel’s theft of the images of Laban, when she left her father’s house to accompany her husband to the land of Canaan.

But more than a century before the call of Abraham, a colony had been planted at Sicyon, by an Egyptian leader, Aegialeus, who brought with him the knwlldge of sculpture and painting and founded the earliest and purest school of Greek art.

Another civilized colony, from Egypt, soon settled in Greece. Inachus founded the city of Argos, while Abraham was still an idolater in Ur.
The Early History of Art

Sumerian art

The Sumerians settled in eastern Mesopotamia before 4000 BC. Sumerian arts, as contrasted with prehistoric art has realistic looking figures acting out identifiable narratives.

Sumerian art and myth formed a foundation formed which later Ancient Near Eastern art derived.

Around 3400-3200 BC, the Sumerians made inventories of cattle, food, and other items by scratching pictographs into soft clay with a sharp tool, or stylus. Cuneiform consist of a series of simplified picture sings that represented the objects they described and in addition related ideas.

These pictorial songs evolved into a series of wedge-shaped marks that were pressed in clay with a split reed.

The clay plaques hardened into breakable, yet nearly indestructible, tablets.

The Sumerians depicted their gods and goddesses in human form although usually on a slightly larger scale. Among a group of small limestone figure found at the Abu Temple.

Architecture of Sumerian showed greater variation. The size and elaboration of temple construction increased markedly until the ziggurat achieved it classical form in the time of the Third Dynasty of Ur.
Sumerian art

Neolithic Art (8000-2300 BC)

Around 9000 BC, the ice that had covered much of northern Europe for millennia receded. Then it was followed by what is called the Neolithic Revolution because it ushered in the New Stone Age.

Neolithic period saw the birth of monumental sculpture, notably the painted plaster figurines from Ain Ghazal, and of monumental stone architecture in the walls and towers of Jericho.

The sculpture in Ain Ghazal which appear to have been ritually buried, are white plaster built up over a core of reeds and twine. The sculptures used black bitumen to delineate the pupils of the eyes.

In Neolithic paintings, human themes and concerns and action scenes with human dominating animals are central.

Floors and walls of prehistoric Near Eastern houses were sometimes decorate with paintings drawn from a limited repertory of motifs.

During the Neolithic period red walls and floors are found as far south as Jericho and Yiftahel in the Levant; as far north as Hacilar, Anatolia and as far east as Tepe Guran and Ali Kosh, Iran.

Painting on pots was practiced at the end of the Neolithic period. It was believed that Chinese had been used utilizing a brush for decorative painting during Neolithic time. The design painted on the pottery revealed the fact that the slips of red earth color and dark eye were applied by brushes.

Among designs of Chinese painted pottery there are occasionally some animal and anthropomorphic elements which were used either as major motifs or parts of the decorative patterns.
Neolithic Art (8000-2300 BC)

Ancient Chaldean arts

The Chaldeans came originally from northeast Mesopotamia and took control of Babylon in 625 BC.

Geographically, Chaldea occupied a central position among the oldest seats of civilization.

Early Chaldean art lasted from a date reaching back 4000 years BC to 1250 BC, when the Assyrian power attained the ascendancy.

The Assyrian empire was overthrown 606 BC by the second Chaldean or Babylonian empire, and this in turn succumbed to the Persians 525 BC.

The first appearance of the Chaldeans is in paintings that lead to a desire to have relationships with them.

The Chaldean worshipped objects of some dignity e.g., the planet and then abstracting these objects by painting images, thus worshipping the thing, but in a partially ideally, or mediated form.

The painting of the Chaldeans, Babylonians, and Egyptians, dates for the remotest antiquity. The experts know nothing about Chaldean or Babylonian painting; but from the interesting discoveries of Chaldean sculpture, made in the vicinity of the site of Nineveh, it may be concluded that their painting must have attained considerable imminence and far surpassed that of Egypt and other neighboring nations.

The painting in Nineveh has preserved scenes of siege warfare and royal and divine figures. The appearance and clothing of the soldiers and military techniques and weapons come from these reliefs.

Working from the drawings, Chaldean men must have been clothed in embroidered and ornamented belts. Ancient Chaldean arts

The Art Motives of Greek

The Art Motives of Greek
Neither the monarchy nor the priesthood commanded the service of the artist in Greece, as in Assyria and Egypt.

There was no monarch in an oriental sense, and the chosen leaders of the Greeks never, until the late days, arrogated art to themselves.

It was something for all the people.

In religion there was a pantheon of gods established and worshipped from the earliest ages, but these gods were more like epitomes of Greek ideals than spiritual beings.

They were the personified virtues of the Greeks exemplars and perfect living; and in worshipping them the Greek was really worshipping order, conduct, repose, dignity, perfect life.

The gods and heroes as types of moral and physical qualities, were continually represented in an allegorical or legendary manner.

Athene represented noble warfare, Zeus was majestic dignity and power, Aphrodite love, Phoebus song, Nike triumph and all the lesser gods, nymphs and fauns stood for beauties or virtues of nature of of life.

The great bulk of Greek architecture, sculpture and painting was put forth to honor these gods or heroes, and by so doing the artist illustrated the national ideals and honored himself.

In a sense it was a religious motive, but had little of that spiritual significant and belief about it which ruled in Egypt and later on in Italy.

A second and ever present motive in Greek painting was decorations. This appears in the tomb pottery of the earliest ages, and was carried on down to the latest times.

Vase painting, wall painting, tablet and sculpture painting were all done with a decorative motive in view.

Even the easel or panel pictures had some decorative effect about them,. Though perhaps they were primarily intended to convey ideas other than those of form and color.
The Art Motives of Greek

Art Motives and Methods of Babylonian-Assyrian Painting

Art Motives and Methods of Babylonian-Assyrian Painting
Building, craving and painting were practiced among the coastwise nations, but upon no such extensive scale as in either Egypt or Assyria.

The mere fact that they were people of the sea rather than of the land precluded extensive or concentrated development.

Politically Phoenicia was distributed in a similar manner.

Such art as was produced showed the religious and decorative motives and in its spiritless materialistic make-up the commercial motive.

It was at the best a hybrid mongrel art, borrowed from many sources and distributed to many points of the compass.

At one time it had a strong Assyrian cast, at another an Egyptian cast and after Greece arose it accepted a retroactive influence from there.

Future research may disclose that it was also susceptible to influences from Cretan and Hittite art.

Conclusions as to any of this early Mediterranean art cannot as yet be accepted with certainty.
It is impossible to characterize the Phoenician type and even the Cypriote type, though more pronounced, varies so with the different influences that it has no very striking individuality.

Technically both the Phoenician and Cypriote were fair workmen in bronze and stone, and doubtless taught many technical methods to the early Greeks besides making known to them those deities afterward adopted under the names of Aphrodite, Adonis and Heracles and familiarizing them with the art forms of Egypt and Assyria.

As for painting, there was undoubtedly figured decoration upon walls of stone and plaster, but there is not enough left to us from all the small nations like Phoenician, Judea, Cyprus, and the Kingdom of Asia minor, put together to patch up a disjointed history.

The first lands to meet the spoiler, their very ruins have perished.

All that there is of painting comes to us is broken potteries and color traces on statuary and sarcophagi.

The remains of the sculpture and architecture are of course better preserved.

None of this intermediate art holds much rank by virtue of its inherent worth.

It is its influence upon the West – the ideas, subjects, and methods it imparted to the the Greeks – that gives it value in art history.
Art Motives and Methods of Babylonian-Assyrian Painting