From Cave Walls to Hieroglyphs: The Evolution of Early Painting

The origins of painting remain shrouded in mystery, with the earliest significant records emerging from ancient Egypt. However, long before Egyptian civilization, early humans likely used color for ornamentation and decoration. Evidence of this primitive artistry can be found in the scratched outlines of humans and animals on bones and slates. These rudimentary artworks, dating back to the cave-dwellers, are visible on pottery, weapons, and stone implements. Although these artifacts highlight the dawn of human intelligence, they are considered art only from an archaeological perspective, indicating a burgeoning inclination toward representation and decoration rather than accomplished artistry.

These early attempts at painting reveal more about early human desire than skill. They demonstrate an embryonic effort to embellish or depict, despite a rudimentary understanding of how to achieve these goals. The primary purpose of primitive painting was undoubtedly decorative, employing colored forms purely for their aesthetic value. This is evident in the pottery designs and cross-hatchings on stone knives and spearheads, where the intent was to use color and form for visual appeal.

A secondary, perhaps subsequent, aim of early painting was to imitate the shapes and colors of humans, animals, and other subjects. This was likely an effort to convey information about the proportions and characteristics of these entities. For instance, an outline of a cave-bear or a mammoth may have served as a pictorial record, narrating the feats of the cave-dweller to his peers. This primitive form of communication, akin to picture-written history, suggests that early humans used art to record and share their experiences.

This method of conveying ideas through imagery shares fundamental similarities with the later development of hieroglyphic writing and historical painting in Egypt. The evolution from primitive depictions to sophisticated hieroglyphs underscores the progression of human expression. Essentially, the difference between the early artworks of cave-dwellers and the advanced art of Egyptians lies in the degree of development.

In essence, the art of Primitive Man provides a glimpse into the two major branches of painting that exist today: decorative art and representational art. This duality highlights the enduring human desire to beautify our surroundings and to communicate through visual means, a testament to the unbroken thread of creativity that runs through human history.
From Cave Walls to Hieroglyphs: The Evolution of Early Painting

Cro-Magnon artist

Cro-Magnon man lived during a period encompassing what archeologists refer to as the Aurignacian and Magdalenian cultural eras which hit their peaks respectively about 20,000 and 12,000 years ago.

Over a period of 20,000 years, Cro-Magnon artists in Europe worked to produce galleries of art that still astonish modern people. The European paintings are found deep inside caves in what is modern Spain and France.

Cro-Magnon artists used cave walls as their canvases and durable antler and ivory, not wood and skins as palettes.

The most frequently painted subjects were animals, pictured in browns, reds, yellows, and blacks from pigments available to the Stone Age artists. The animals were the game for both Cro-Magnon hunters looked reindeer, bison, cattle deer and horses.

The oldest of the Cro-Magnon caves, Chauvet in France, was painted 33,000 years ago and exhibited as advanced an artistic capacity as any of the later caves.
Cro-Magnon artist

Cro-Magnon paintings

Cro-Magnon was a member of the same species of Homo sapiens as present day man.  Evidence form skeleton remains, tools and weapons show the he was a hunter and fisherman of skill that he lived in caves and huts.

Over the period of 20,000 years, Cro-Magnon artists in Europe worked to produce galleries of art that still astonish modern people. The European paintings are found deep an inside cave is what is modern Spain and France.

The oldest known cave, Grotte de Chauvet is among the most spectacular of all Cro-Magnon painted caves.

It was painted 33,000 years ago and exhibited as advanced an artistic capacity as any of the later caves.

The artists who painted its wall had a sophisticated understanding of perspective and other artistic principles, so much so that the experts first assumed that the paintings were executed less than eighteen thousands years ago, during what was then thought to be the heyday of Cro-Magnon art.

The most frequently painted subjects were animals, pictures in browns, reds, yellows, and blacks for pigments available to the Stone Age artists.

The animals were the games for which Cro-Magnon hunters looked: reindeer, bison, cattle, deer and horses. Many of the animals depicted, such as bison and rhinoceroses, have been extinct in Western Europe for many thousands of years.
Cro-Magnon paintings

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 cave at Lascaux, France

The oldest and best known painted caves are in southern France and the cave at Lascaux is the most famous of them all.

The cave had been sealed off by debris for many millennia. In the 1920s, one of the pine trees that had grown in the area fell down, and under its roots a crack opened in the soil with an opening like a foxhole at the bottom.

In September 1940, a group of youngsters decided to explore the hole and found out what lay beneath it.

More than 17,000 years ago, prehistoric painters covered many of the walls of the cave with images of animals.

The main chamber nicknamed the Hall of the Bulls, is an unusually large space and easily accessible, but many of the paintings at Lascaux and in other caves are almost impossible to reach.

The Hall of the Bulls is 12 meter long, 7 meter wide and 20 meter high. The Halls of the Bulls is named for the four large bulls painted on the room’s walls and ceiling.

The bulls have very long horns. Each painting of a bull is between 3 and 5 meter long.

Even the Hall of the Bulls is far from the cave entrance and its paintings could only have been seen the flickering light of a primitive lamp. More than 100 stone lamps have been found.

Scientists who study Magdalenian art believe that the paintings of bulls in the Lascaux cave are actually of an animal called an auroch.
The cave at Lascaux, France

The history of cave painting

The first ‘paintings’ were probably made in caves approximately 15,000 year ago.

Most of the cave painting that has been preserved seems to be attributed to the later millennia of the Upper Paleolithic.

These pictures of bison, deer, horses, cattle, mammoth and boars are located in the most remote recesses of the caves far from the inhabited, sunlit entrances.

For example, there was the 1991 discovery of the Grotte Cosquer near present-day Marseille, which contain the first decorated walls so far east in southern France.

The cave is now accessible only from the Mediterranean Sea to a few extraordinary skilled deep sea divers.

Archeologists speculate artists created the animals’ images to guarantee a successful hunt. Many are portrayed pierced with arrows, and gouges in the rock indicate cave-dwellers may have flung spears at the painted game.

Paleolithic art was discovered at the beginning of the second third of the 19th century, simultaneously at Geneva and in France.

The works discovered consisted of two harpoons decorated with geometric figures at Veyrier and a reindeer metapodial engraved with two hinds at Le Chaffaud.

To illuminate the surfaces while working, Paleolithic painters used stone lamps filled with marrow or fat, with a wick perhaps of moss.

For drawing, they used chunks of red and yellow ocher. For painting, they ground these same ochers into powders they mixed with water before applying.
The history of cave painting

Indian cave painting in Bhimbetka

The first discovery of prehistoric rock paintings in the world was made in India. It was first discovered as early as 1870 but the chronology was only established after the excavations at Modi in 1959 and Bhimbetka in 1972.

At present some 150 sites of rock art are known in the country. Bhimbetka is the largest clusters of pained rock art shelters in the world. It is situated 45km of Bhopal. These caves are more than 600 in number and spread within a radius of 10 km.

In this complex of sandstone caves and rockshelters geometric microliths of chalcedony are found in preceramic deposit. Pieces or red and yellow ocher occur in the same deposits, these having been used for painting of walls and ceilings.

Mostly the painted caves are of Mesolithic age in which elephant, rhinoceros, bear, wild bear, cow bullock, buck, deer and monkeys have be painted. The paintings are of red and white color while some were green and yellow color also.

Two petroglyphs evacuated in Auditorium Cave, Bhimbetka, were covered by the uppermost part of a substantial Acheulian layer, suggesting that they are the oldest known rock art in the world.
Indian cave painting in Bhimbetka