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Paleolithic Period 32,000 Years Ago
Paleolithic Period 32,000 Years Ago
Paleolithic Period 32,000 Years Ago
Humans
Humans are rarely depicted in caves. When they are shown, they
are drawn as a cartoon-like silhouette.
Animals
The most abundant animal depictions are those of horses. A quarter
of all the animal images painted in caves in Western Europe are
horses. Images of Bison are also very common.
The animals tend to be painted larger than the other images.
Signs
Signs are abstract symbols that are difficult to interpret because of
their ambiguity. Signs are commonly associated with hunting
equipment and the female form.
FACTORS
• Cro-Magnons
– Cro-magnons were the first species of the Homo
Sapiens Sapiens. They lived in Europe during the
period before the emergence of Indo-Europeans, from
40,000 to 8,000 BCE.
– The Magdalenian civilization of cro-magnons, which
populated Spain and France, were responsible for the
cave paintings found in Lascaux, France dating about
17,000 years ago and Altamira, Spain dating about
12,000 years ago.
• Shamans
– The shaman would retreat into the darkness of the caves,
enter into a trance state and then paint images of their
visions, perhaps with some notion of drawing power out of
the cave walls themselves. Shamanism is a form of
worship based on direct, personal interaction between a
shaman and the spirit world. Typically, this interaction
occurred when the shaman entered a trance, or altered
state of consciousness,
sometimes referred to as
“dreaming.” In this altered
state, the shaman could obtain
supernatural power in the form
of a spirit helper.
MEDIUM
• The tools used to apply the paint could have been made by
attaching straw, leaves, moss, or hair to sticks. They might
have used hollow bones or reeds to spray the color on,
similar to an airbrush technique.
ARTFORM
painting,
drawings,
engravings, and
handprints