Slavo Art Blog

Most of us think that the subject called art starts with ancient Greeks, Egyptians or Romans. The truth is that the art is almost as old as human being. All we somehow realized that that but not to many from us realized it. We’ll try to go through the time to give you some clues which you can use for your own investigation over thee questions “how old is art, how influences modern art and how important Was, Is and Will be for us”. For human being.

What did early humans do with their time? Evidence discovered since the mid-nineteenth century in Western Europe suggests that they did a lot of drawing on the walls of caves. France and Spain have been the centers of an extraordinary number of cave painting discoveries. What is notable and significant about these cave paintings are the archaic depictions of animal life in pre-historic times, which our pre-human ancestors apparently encountered. While the first discoveries were made in the nineteenth century, the most spectacular discoveries were made in the last half of the twentieth century. The discovery of these cave paintings suggests to modern researchers a sophistication and artistic sensibility of prehistoric humanity, which was once unthinkable among anthropologists. This pre-historic art suggests that our ancestors were not only aware of their environment, but were probably very articulate. Marcellino de Sautuola, at Altamira, Spain, discovered the first significant cave paintings in 1875. The findings were so extraordinary and contrary to popular thought about early and pre-humans that most experts refused to believe they were Paleolithic. Later, around 1900, similar discoveries at Les Eyzies, France, were finally accepted and recognized as one of the most surprising and exciting archaeological discoveries of all time. A gradual succession of similar finds has continued throughout the twentieth century. Arguably the most famous of these was discovered in 1940 at Lascaux, France. The Lascaux cave was discovered by four teenage boys in September 1940, and was first studied by the French archaeologist Henri-Edouard-Prosper Breuil. Some of the most compelling and informative cave paintings have been documented at this site. The layout and dimensions are notable in and of themselves. Consisting of a main cavern measuring approximately 66 feet (20 m) wide and 16 feet (4.9 m) high, there are many very steep galleries. All of the walls are amazingly decorated with engraved, drawn, and painted figures. Archaeologists have found some 600 painted and drawn animals and symbols, along with nearly 1,500 engravings. The cave paintings are thought to date from about 20,000-15,000 B.C. Their vivid pigments have most likely been preserved by a natural process caused by rainwater seeping through the limestone rocks to produce a preservative-acting saturated bicarbonate. The colors appear to have been originally rubbed across the rock walls and ceilings with hard, sharpened lumps of dirt (probably yellow, red, and brown ochre). Outlines were drawn with black sticks of wood charcoal. The discovery of mixing dishes suggests that liquid pigment mixed with fat was also used and smeared on the walls by hand.

Archaeological evidence suggests that humans first arrived in Australia between 65,000 and 60,000 years ago. Northern Australia is the most likely place for people to have travelled from south east Asia across the land bridges then sailed across the ocean gaps to northern Australia. Archaeologists have now discovered early occupation sites at the three most probable entry areas - the Kimberley, Arnhem Land and Cape York Peninsula. In northern Australia there are numerous sandstone rock-shelters. Many of these have been used for camping and their floors are layered with charcoal and ash from camp fires, the remains of food such as shells and animal bones, stone tools and, very often, pieces of ochre. Ochre comes from soft varieties of iron oxide minerals (such as haematite - a fine-grained iron oxide which produces a strong red colour with a purple tint) and from rocks containing ferric oxide. The best way to establish the age of rock art is to date the art directly (such as by dating a sample of the paint or pigment used) or indirectly (for example to obtain a minimum age for the art work by dating something that lies on top of the art - say a mud wasp’s nest or a natural chemical coating - or lies in a layer of material with objects or matter that can be dated) Ochre is the main pigment used in rock art and is plentiful across most of Australia. Pieces of ochre, including some showing signs of wear through use, have been found in almost all of Australia’s ice-age sites. Most have been radiocarbon dated and the dates range from 10 000 to 40 000 years. The oldest dates so far found by direct dating of art were obtained by geologist Alan Watchman for layers of pigment in two rock-shelters on Cape York in north Queensland, one of 25 000 years and one of almost 30000 years. There is, however, indirect evidence going back a lot further, leading some archaeologists to argue that the rock art galleries in northern Australia are some of the oldest in the world by modern humans. This is, of course, a contentious area, with recent claims for dates in southern France and northern Italy going back as far as 35 000 years.

Archaeologist Sue O’Connor at the Australian National University has found a buried fragment of rock painting preserved in the limestone rock-shelter of Carpenter’s Gap in the Kimberley (near Windjana Gorge National Park) in a layer dated to 40 000 years old. The red pigment seems to be the remains of paint on a rock art fragment fallen from the ceiling above. The layer containing the painted fragment yielded ochre, burnt bone, stone artefacts and charcoal with an accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon date of 39,700 1,000 BP (BP means Before the Present, which in this context is 1950, when the radiocarbon dating technique was developed). Another AMS date on charcoal from 20 centimetres below this gave statistically the same date. These dates give a minimum age for the fragment and for the occupation of the shelter. However convincing arguments that this fragment is evidence of pigment application have yet to be presented.

“Jubbah is one of the most curious places in the world, and to my mind one of the most beautiful,” wrote Lady Anne Blunt. The granddaughter of Lord Byron had arrived in January 1879 with her husband, Wilfrid, at the oasis two-thirds of the way across the Nafud desert. En route to the city of Hail to see, and perhaps buy, some of the famous horses of Ibn Rashid, then ruler in Najd, they were among the first travelers from the West to set foot in Jubbah. Archeologists have found evidence of four major periods of settlement at Jubbah stretching back through the Middle Paleolithic period, 80,000 to 25,000 years ago. They also found Neolithic sites and evidence of early trade: finely retouched arrowheads, blades and awls manufactured from stone that had been carried in from sources up to 145 kilometers (90 mi) away. The panoply of rock art around Jubbah’s Jabal Um Sanaman covers some 39 square kilometers (15 sq mi), and it presents a rich, often perplexing gallery, including panels depicting early domesticated dogs and long-horned cattle, and others that suggest a transition from hunter-gatherer to agricultural communities. The abundant images of camels raise the intriguing possibility that the camel was first domesticated in northern Arabia, not southern, as is usually believed. Among the hundreds of thousands of camel figures carved in rocks throughout the Arabian Peninsula, the ones at Jubbah are believed to be the oldest: At approximately 4000 years old, they date back to the beginning of the Bronze Age. Among the most recent markings in the chronology of Jubbah’s early civilizations are 3000-year-old inscriptions in Thamudic, the oldest known script of the Arabian Peninsula. Majeed Khan, the leading authority on the rock art of Arabia and the Middle East, is currently an advisor to the national Antiquities Department; he has spent 27 years studying rock art and inscriptions. The Thamudic script, he says, “evolved independently within the Peninsula from an earlier rock-art system of communication, an embryonic form of writing employing elaborate signs and symbols as ideograms.”