The caves of altamira,Pech-Merle,Lascaux
and other sites in perhistoric Europe are a few humdred to several thousend
feet long.They are often choked,sometime almost impassably, by deposits,such as
stalactites and stalagmites.Far inside these carverns, well removed from the
cave mouths early humans often chose for habitation,painters sometimes made
pictures on the walls. examples of paleolithic painting now have been found at more then 200 site,but
perhistorians still regard painted caves as rare occurrences,because the images
in them, even if they number in the hundreds,were created over a period large painting approximatly 60 feet longof
some 10,000 to 20,000 years.To illuminate the surfaces
while working, the palcolithic painters use stone lamps filled with marrow or
fat, with a wick , perhapes, of moss.Fordrawing, they used chunks of red and
yellow ocher . For painting,they ground these same ocher into powders they mixed with water before
applying.Recent analyses of the pigments used that paleolithic painters eployed
many different munerals,attesting to a technical sophistication surprising at so early a date.Large flat stones served as palettes
. The painters made brushes from reeds, bristles, or twings and may large
paintings approximatly 60 feet long. Sanz da satuola was certain the bison painted
on the celling of the cave on his estate dated back to prehistoric times.Professinoal
aercaeologists, however , doubted the authenticity of these works, and at the
Lisbon Congress on prehistoric Archaeology in 1880. They officially dismissed
the paintings as forgeries. But by the close of the century,othr caves had been
discovered with painted walls partially coveredby mineral Deposits that would
have taken thousends of years to acumulate. This finally persuaded skeptics
that the first paintings Were of an age far more remote then they had ever
dreamed.
Spotted horses and negative hand imprints,wall painting in the cave at pech-Merrle, france,ca 22,000 BCE,11’-2” long
The purpose and meanings of
paleplithic art are unknown. Some researchers think the painted hands near the
Pech Marle horses are“signatures” of communaity members or of individual
painters.
The bisons at Altamira are
13,000 to 14,000 years old , but the painters of paleolithic Spain approached the
problem of representing an animal in essentially the same way as the painter of
the Namibian stone plaque.
Who worked in africa more then 10,000 years
earlier.Every one of the Altamria bison is in profile,Whether alive and
standing or curled up on the ground ( probably dead, althrough this is disputed; one suggestion is that these bisons are giving birth). To maintain the profile
in the latter case the painter had to adopt viewpoint above
the animal,
looking down, rather then the viewa person standing on the ground would have
Modren critics often refer the Altmaria animals as a”group” of bison, but
that is very likely a misnimer.
In the several have used a blowpipe of reeds or
hollow bones to spray pigments on out-of-reach surfaces.Some caves have natural
ledges on the rok walls upon Which the painters could have stood in order to
reach the upper surfaces of the naturally formed cahmbers andcorridors. One Lascaux gallery has hole
in one of the wall that once probably anchored a scaffold made of saplings
lashed together.Despite the difficulty of making the tools and pigments, modern attempts at replicating the techniques of paleolithic painting have
demonstratedthat skilled workers could cover large surfaces with images in less
than a day.
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