rock art

rock art, drawing, painting, or similar work on or of stone, usually from the ancient or prehistoric era, though it continued to be practiced in some areas of Africa during the 19th century and possibly later. Rock art includes pictographs (drawings or paintings), petroglyphs (carvings or inscriptions), engravings (incised motifs), petroforms (rocks laid out in patterns), and geoglyphs (ground drawings). The ancient animals, tools, and human activities depicted often help shed light on daily life in the distant past, though the images are frequently symbolic rather than representative. A single site may have art that dates to several different centuries. Rock art may have played a role in prehistoric religion, possibly in connection with ancient myths or the activities of shamans. Important sites are located in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and North and South America.

Tools and techniques

Rock artists used a number of techniques and materials. To draw or paint, they made pigments from finely ground clay, minerals, or charcoal. Artists applied pigments as solids, the way chalk is applied to a blackboard, or blew pigment onto a surface through a pipe. In addition, they bound pigments with water, urine, animal blood, plant juices, or egg yolk and applied the mixture to surfaces by using their fingers or brushes made from animal hair, feathers, or split sticks. Engravings were made with fingers on soft walls or with flint tools on hard surfaces.

Cave painting in Europe

Some of the earliest forms of rock art are cave paintings. The first painted cave acknowledged as being Paleolithic—that is, from the Stone Age—was Altamira in northern Spain. Experts deemed that the work was done by modern humans (Homo sapiens) in multiple stages between about 36,000 and 15,000 years ago. The art discovered there features paintings and engravings, often in combination; for example, the bison figures that predominate were first engraved and then painted. These images were executed in a vivid bichrome of red and black, and some also have violet tones. Other figures include horses, deer, anthropomorphic characters, handprints, and hand stencils. In many cases, the creator of the images exploited the natural contours of the rock surface to add a three-dimensional quality to the work.

France also is home to some of the most famous examples of cave art, including that in Lascaux cave, near Montignac. The art there was done during various periods, as far back as 17,000 years ago. It consists of approximately 600 painted and drawn animals and symbols and nearly 1,500 engravings. The paintings were done on a light background in various shades of red, black, brown, and yellow. In places, scaffolding was clearly used to reach high on walls and ceiling. Among the most remarkable pictures are huge depictions of aurochs; a curious-looking two-horned animal (misleadingly nicknamed the “unicorn”), perhaps intended as a mythical creature; red deer with fantastic antlers; numerous horses; the heads and necks of several stags, which appear to be swimming across a river; a series of six felines; two male bison; and a rare narrative composition, at the bottom of a shaft, that has been variously interpreted as a hunting accident or as a shamanistic scene. The many animals represented in the Hall of Bulls, the cave’s famed gallery, are bulls whose heads are depicted in profile but whose horns are portrayed from the front. This is an example of “twisted perspective,” wherein the painter’s approach is more descriptive than optical.

Rock art in Asia

The cave paintings in Europe were long considered to be the earliest examples of figurative art, but discoveries reported in the 21st century called that assumption into question. Archaeologists were able to date cave paintings in Indonesia to some 40,000 years ago. The works include a trio of cowlike creatures on the island of Borneo and a massive hunting scene on the island of Celebes (Sulawesi). The latter depicts several therianthropes, composite human-animal figures, that appear to be pursuing wild pigs and some kind of dwarf bovid. The site also contains hand stencils, which the artist made by pressing a clean hand against a rock surface and blowing pigment around it through a pipe.

One of the largest collections of rock art in Asia is found in west-central Madhya Pradesh state, India. The Bhimbetka rock shelters and caves feature more than 100 paintings, some of which are over 10,000 years old. The older works, which display great vitality and narrative skill, have been categorized into different prehistoric periods. The oldest, dating to the Late Paleolithic Period (Old Stone Age), consist of large linear representations of rhinoceroses and bears. Paintings from Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age) times are smaller and portray human activities in addition to animals. Drawings from the Chalcolithic Period (early Bronze Age) showcase early humans’ conceptions of agriculture. Finally, decorative paintings dating to early historical times depict religious motifs, including tree gods and magical sky chariots. The rock art of Bhimbetka provides a rare glimpse at a sequence of cultural development from early nomadic hunter-gatherers to settled cultivators and their expressions of spirituality.

Africa

Rock art in Africa is diverse in subject, technique, and age. Archaeologists have found paintings and engravings of humans, animals, and geometric patterns within caves and on exposed rocks. Because art on exposed rocks can wear away over time, many old examples of African rock art may have been lost. The continent is home not only to some of the oldest works of rock art but also to some of the most recent. In some areas the production of rock art flourished up to the 19th century, while in others it may have continued into the 21st century.

The earliest known rock art in the Sahara is about 7,000 to 12,000 years old. The Messak Plateau, in southwestern Libya, is home to thousands of depictions of wild animals engraved on the sides of cliffs. These works include life-size images of elephants, giraffes, crocodiles, buffaloes, ostriches, and hippopotamuses, all of which normally occupy grasslands or savannas. This suggests that the region’s climate, though extremely dry today, was once sufficiently wet to support habitat for such creatures. Similarly, a famous example of rock art consisting of life-size rock carvings of two giraffes at a site known as Dabous, in north-central Niger, suggests a wetter, more hospitable past. Each of the giraffes has a line running from its mouth or nose toward a human figure. Similar motifs have been found elsewhere in the Sahara, but scholars are unsure of their significance.

Between 1969 and 1972 a team of archaeologists working in the Apollo 11 Cave in southern Namibia (named for the 1969 NASA mission that first put people on the Moon) found rock fragments with drawings of animal figures in black, red, and white. The art was dated to some 30,000 years ago. Archaeologists believed that the Apollo 11 paintings were the oldest art in Africa until a discovery was made in South Africa in the early 21st century: in Blombos Cave, near the coast in Western Cape province, archaeologists found pieces of ochre that were engraved with designs more than 75,000 years ago.

These early examples point to humankind’s earliest beginnings in southern Africa, but scholars believe that most of the rock art in the region was made more recently, from 10,000 years ago to the 19th century, and possibly into the 21st. A good portion of the art was created by San people at sites in what are now Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. Subjects are varied, but the eland (a large antelope) is a commonly portrayed animal. There are also paintings of humans and therianthropes. In the section of the Drakensberg range along the border between Lesotho and KwaZulu-Natal province, South Africa, paintings depict humans with bows and quivers resting on their shoulders. Later rock art shows contact with European settlers, attested by numerous depictions of steam trains, ships, wagons, smoking pipes, and guns. In the Swartruggens, a rugged area on the eastern edge of the Cederberg range, northeast of Cape Town, prevalent rock art themes include figures wearing wide-brimmed hats and boots or wearing bell-shaped skirts with grid patterns, a popular European style in the 19th century.

Australia

The first humans arrived in Australia approximately 65,000 years ago, and archaeologists have dated Aboriginal rock art to some 30,000 years ago, but there may be older sites on the continent. Australian Aboriginal rock art encompasses many styles and subjects, including handprints and images of animals, humans, and spirit figures, some of which tell stories about how earth and people were created.

At one of the most famous sites, the Nawarla Gabarnmang rock shelter, on the Arnhem Land plateau in northern Australia, are well over a thousand paintings from various time periods. With parts dating back some 28,000 years, images overlap layer upon layer on the ceiling and on the many natural stone pillars that hold up the shelter’s stone roof. Some of the paintings were made in the so-called X-ray style, which is found primarily in northern Australia. The artist drew a silhouette of a figure and then its interior, often depicting the backbone, ribs, and internal organs. While surrounding sites are dominated by depictions of fish, the art at Nawarla Gabarnmang represents kangaroos and other macropods.

Petroglyphs can also be found in Australia. Thousands of rock engravings occur at sites on the Burrup Peninsula on the northwest coast. Produced from about 30,000 years ago to the mid-19th century, they depict a range of subjects in various styles, including geometric designs, human figures, and animals, some of which later became extinct, including the Tasmanian tiger.

North and South America

Both North America and South America contain rock art in various forms. Native Americans in the western and southwestern parts of what is now the United States left many petroglyphs. The oldest in North America date to between 10,500 and 14,800 years ago and are located near Reno, Nevada, in a desert area that was once covered by Winnemucca Lake. Simple lines, swirls, and shapes that resemble diamonds, trees, and flowers were etched into the sides of boulders. The petroglyphs range in width from about 8 inches (20 cm) to some 3 feet (1 metre).

In eastern Brazil, Serra da Capivara National Park features paintings that may be some 25,000–50,000 years old. If they prove to be that old, the art would challenge the long-held view that humans first migrated into the Americas from the north, via the Bering Strait, about 13,000 years ago. Set within rock shelters of the park’s steep cliffs, the paintings depict humans and animals, often in such complex scenes as hunting, clashing, and engaging in sexual activity. Humans are sometimes shown dancing or moving in procession. The red deer is the most commonly depicted figure; other animals include the armadillo, capybara, tapir, jaguar, and lizard as well as the now extinct giant rhea. The figures are sometimes painted in outline, infilled, or decorated with patterns. Red is the most ubiquitous colour, but yellow and gray were also used. In Santa Cruz province, Argentina, the Cueva de las Manos (“Cave of the Hands”) has overlapping handprints in a variety of hues, constituting some of the finest examples of a common subject in rock art. They date to between 13,000 and 9,500 years ago. Although the cave takes its name from the handprints, it also contains hunting scenes and depictions of such animals as guanacos.