The earliest artworks are the cave paintings. They are not the oldest artworks that we have, but they are the oldest that we know about. There is still a lot of ongoing research as to their meaning and specific purpose.

Cave paintings date back to at least 40,000 years ago at several sites in France, Spain and Australia. The most famous site is Lascaux, in France. There have been over a hundred caves containing cave paintings discovered and documented around the world. These paintings show that prehistoric man had a rich imagination and were able to create vivid depictions of their world around them.

From the earliest times to the present, art has been one of the most basic ways that human beings have expressed themselves. Art can be found in every culture and society throughout history. The earliest, surviving examples of art come from prehistoric times.

A cave painting from Lascaux, France, is thought to be about 17,000 years old. It represents a man’s head, outlined in black and red against a background of dots. At about the same time as this painting was made, people in Europe began making necklaces, bracelets and tools out of ivory and flint. In fact, there is some evidence that these people were inventing tools for creating art before they were creating tools for hunting or cooking.

The next period of art history begins around 6000 B.C.E., when humans had developed agriculture and cities in Mesopotamia (now Iraq) and Egypt. These early cities had large populations, so it was easier for artists to find enough people to appreciate their work. Pottery was first made in Mesopotamia at this time—pottery that survives today shows scenes of everyday life on it that are strikingly similar to those we see today on TV sitcoms or cartoons.*

By 3500 B.C.E., humans in Egypt

Prehistoric art is a fascinating field of study. It can take you back to the dawn of human consciousness and expression. This blog not only provides a wealth of information about prehistoric art, but also discusses some of the basic theories behind it. Prehistoric art is very important in that it is one of the earliest forms of human expression. Prehistoric art tells us much about the people who created it and what their culture was like. This blog is an excellent resource for anyone interested in prehistory and prehistoric art.”

To begin, I suggest using the article Writing Wikipedia Article on Your Topic as a starting point. You will have to use Google Scholar to get your references right because peer reviewed articles are going to be your best sources. You will have to use some websites as well, but you need to cite those correctly. The trick here is being able to distinguish between good sources and bad ones.

This can be a challenging assignment, but given enough time and effort, you will succeed. If you would like help with this assignment, please don’t hesitate to contact me!

The definition of prehistoric art is a subject of some debate. Paleolithic art is the oldest, followed by Neolithic art, and then ancient folk art. Many people consider prehistoric art to include all of these, but others make distinctions in age or style.

Much controversy surrounds the dating of prehistoric art, as it relies on fairly recent developments in radiometric dating. The earliest known undisputed example is from the Aurignacian period, about 30,000 years ago. Prehistoric petroglyphs were first discovered in Europe and then later in Asia and Africa. The earliest known European examples were found on cave walls in Spain and date back to approximately 40,000 years ago.

The oldest known human-made image is a red dot found on a pebble from Mali dated to between 10,000–80,000 BCE.

Prehistoric art is a popular topic with the public, and has been for many years. Books on cave art are almost always popular sellers, and the general public is fascinated by the idea that we can look at these ancient images and somehow “read” them to learn about life in prehistoric times.

The interest of the public is not surprising. Most people are not familiar with prehistoric art, and it does seem to be highly evocative of the past. It’s easy to imagine that a picture of a bison or an ibex or a horse was painted by someone who never saw an actual animal from that species before. It’s tempting to think that by looking carefully at these pictures, we can see what they were like, what they did and how they lived.

This interest in prehistoric art has been fed over the years by a steady stream of books and articles on the topic. Many of these are written by scientists who have devoted their lives to studying this art, but others are written by journalists who are simply enthusiastic about the topic. The problem with these popular books is that they tend to present an oversimplified view of prehistoric art, one that’s easy to understand but is misleading in many ways. This website will take a critical look at some of the common misunderstand

Prehistory is a vast subject. It covers the period from the first humans until the start of recorded history. That’s about 3.5 million years and roughly 250,000 generations. For most of that time humans were nomadic hunter-gatherers, often living in small groups. They had little need for anything that today we would regard as art.

Formal cave paintings begin about 40,000 years ago, although rock art may have taken an earlier, less formal form. The oldest known cave paintings are at least 35,400 years old and are located in Indonesia. Rock art was widespread among earlier human species as well, such as Neanderthals and Homo erectus. The same goes for sculpture and portable art such as carved shells and musical instruments.” (Wikipedia)

A number of years ago I was sent on a business trip to Germany. At that time, the Euro had just come out and the exchange rate was good, so I decided to splurge a little. My goal was to visit every museum in Berlin.

The Berlin National Gallery is located in the former East Berlin, and my hotel was in the West. So, every morning I would take a taxi (the public transportation system in both parts of the city was not as well-developed then as it is now) across one part of Berlin, then down Unter den Linden toward the Brandenburg Gate. As we drew closer to the gallery, my taxi driver would invariably turn on the radio and sing along with whatever German pop song sounded loudest at that moment.

I soon found myself singing along too – because every morning there were two songs that were played over and over again: “99 Luftballons” by Nena, and “Der Kommissar” by Falco. The fact that these were two of the most popular songs in Germany at that moment tells us something about German culture – but nothing about why these songs became so popular.

Tunes are usually created for a reason; otherwise they usually fade away fairly quickly. Yet here