Rock art of primitive people: what is hidden behind it? Types and features of the art of primitive society. Rock painting. Ancient petroglyphs What are rock rocks called?

13 October 2014, 13:31

Rock art of Horseshoe Canyon, Utah, USA.

Similar ancient historical monuments are not concentrated somewhere in one place, but scattered throughout the planet. Petroglyphs were not found at the same time, sometimes discoveries various designs separated by significant periods of time.

At times, on the same rocks, scientists find drawings from different millennia. There are similarities between a variety of rock paintings, so it seems as if in ancient times there was a single ancestral culture and universal knowledge associated with it. Thus, many of the figures in the drawings have the same features, although their authors knew nothing about each other - they were separated by an enormous distance and time. However, the similarity in the images is systematic: in particular, the heads of the gods always emit light. Despite the fact that cave paintings have been studied for about 200 years, they still remain a mystery.

It is believed that the first images of mysterious creatures were rock paintings on Mount Hunan, China (picture above). They are about 47,000 years old. These drawings allegedly depict early contacts with unknown beings, possibly visitors from extraterrestrial civilizations.

These drawings were found on the territory National Park called Sera Da Capivara in Brazil. Experts claim that the paintings were created about twenty-nine thousand years ago:

Interesting cave paintings dating back over 10,000 years were recently discovered in the state of Chhattisgarh, India:

This cave painting dates back to approximately 10,000 BC and is located in Val Camonica, Italy. The drawn figures look like two creatures wearing protective suits, and their heads emit light. They hold strange devices in their hands:

The next example is the rock carving of a luminous man, which is located 18 km west of the city of Navoi (Uzbekistan). At the same time, a shining figure sits on a throne, and the figures standing near it wear something similar to protective masks on their faces. The kneeling man in the lower part of the picture does not have such a device - he is at a considerable distance from the luminous figure and, apparently, does not need such protection.

Tassil-Adjer (River Plateau) - the largest monument rock art Sugars. The plateau is located in the southeastern part of Algeria. The oldest petroglyphs of Tassil-Adjer date back to the 7th millennium BC. And the latest - the 7th century AD. Drawings on the plateau were first noticed in 1909:

An image dating to approximately 600 BC, from Tassilin-Adjer. In the picture there is a creature with with different eyes, a strange petal hairstyle and a shapeless figure. More than a hundred similar “gods” were found in caves:

These frescoes, found in the Sahara Desert, depict a humanoid creature in a spacesuit. Frescoes are 5 thousand years old:

Australia is isolated from other continents. However, on the Kimberley Plateau (northwest Australia) there are entire galleries of petroglyphs. And here all the same motifs are present: gods with similar faces and with a halo of rays around their heads. The drawings were first discovered in 1891:

These are images of Vandina, the goddess of the sky, in a halo of shining rays.

Rock art in Puerta del Canyon, Argentina:

Sego Canyon, Utah, USA. The most ancient petroglyphs appeared here more than 8,000 years ago:

"Skala-newspaper" there, in Utah:

"Alien", Arizona, USA:

California, USA:

Alien image. Kalbak-Tash, Altai, Russia:

"Sun Man" from the Karakol Valley, Altai:

Another of the many petroglyphs of the Italian Val Camonica valley in the Southern Alps:

Rock paintings of Gobustan, Azerbaijan. Scientists date the oldest drawings to the Mesolithic era (about 10 thousand years ago:

Ancient rock paintings in Niger:

Onega petroglyphs at Cape Besov Nos, Russia. The most famous of the Onega petroglyphs is Bes, its length is two and a half meters. The image is crossed by a deep crack, dividing it exactly into two halves. A “gap” into another, otherworldly world. Within a kilometer radius of Bes, satellite navigation often fails. The clock also behaves unpredictably: it can run forward, it can stop. Scientists can only guess what this anomaly is connected with. Ancient figure cut Orthodox cross. Most likely, it was hollowed out on top of the demonic image by the monks of the Murom Monastery in the 15th–16th centuries. To neutralize the devil's power:

Petroglyphs of Tamgaly, Kazakhstan. Rock paintings abound in a variety of subjects, and the most common of them depict divine sun-headed creatures:

White Shaman Rock in the Lower Canyon, Texas. According to experts, the age of this seven-meter image is more than four thousand years. The White Shaman is believed to be hiding the secrets of an ancient vanished cult:

Rock paintings of giant people from South Africa:

Mexico. Veracruz, Las Palmas: cave paintings depicting creatures in spacesuits:

Rock paintings in the valley of the Pegtymel River, Chukotka, Russia:

The twin gods fight with battle axes. One of the petroglyphs found in Tanumschede, western Sweden (the drawings are painted red already in the modern period):

Among the petroglyphs on the Litsleby rock massif, a giant (2.3 m tall) image of a god with a spear (possibly Odin) dominates:

Sarmysh-say gorge, Uzbekistan. Numerous ancient rock paintings of people in strange clothes were found in the gorge, some of which can be interpreted as images of “ancient astronauts”:

Rock paintings of the Hopi Indians in Arizona, USA, depicting certain creatures - kachina. The Hopi considered these mysterious kachinas to be their heavenly teachers:

In addition, there are many ancient rock carvings, either solar symbols or some objects resembling aircraft.

Rock paintings of San Antonio Cave, Texas, USA.

This ancient cave painting, discovered in Australia, depicts something very similar to a space alien ship. At the same time, the image may well mean something quite understandable.

Something resembling a rocket taking off. Kalbysh Tash, Altai.

Petroglyph depicting a UFO. Bolivia.

UFO from a cave in Chhattisgarh, India

Petroglyphs of Lake Onega depict cosmic, solar and moon signs: circles and semicircles with outgoing lines-rays, in which a modern person will clearly see both the radar and the spacesuit. Moreover - TV.

Rock art, Arizona, USA

Petroglyphs of Panama

California, USA

Guanche rock paintings, Canary Islands

Ancient images of the mystical symbol of the spiral are found throughout the world. These cave paintings were once created by Indians in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, USA.

Rock art, Nevada, USA

One of the drawings discovered in a cave on the island of Youth, off the coast of Cuba. In it you can find great resemblance with the building solar system, where there is an image of eight planets with their largest satellites.

These petroglyphs are located in Pakistan, in the Indus River Valley:

Once upon a time, a highly developed Indian civilization existed in these places. It was from her that these ancient images carved on stones remained. Take a closer look - don't you think these are mysterious vimanas - flying chariots from ancient Indian myths?

Which drawing is the oldest? Probably it should be drawn on an old, worn-out piece of papyrus, which is now kept in some museum under certain temperature conditions. But time will not be kind to such a drawing even with the most optimal conditions storage - in a few thousand years it will inevitably turn into dust. But destroying rock, even over several tens of thousands of years, is a difficult task even for all-consuming time. Perhaps in those distant times, when man had just begun to live on Earth and huddled in unbuilt with my own hands houses, and in the caves and grottoes created by nature, he found time not only to get food for himself and keep the fire going, but also to create?

Indeed, cave paintings dating back to several tens of thousands of years BC can be found in some caves scattered across different parts of the planet. There, in a dark and cold confined space, paint for a long time retains its properties. Interestingly, the first cave paintings were found in 1879 - relatively recently by historical standards - when archaeologist Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola, walking with his daughter, wandered into the cave and saw numerous drawings decorating its roof. Scientists around the world didn't believe the amazing discovery at first, but studies of other caves around the world confirmed that some of them actually served as shelters for ancient man and contain traces of his presence, including drawings.

To determine their age, archaeologists radiocarbon date the particles of paint that were used to paint the images. After analyzing hundreds of drawings, experts saw that rock art existed ten, twenty, and thirty thousand years ago.

This is interesting: “arranging” the found drawings into chronological order, experts saw how rock art changed over time. Starting with simple two-dimensional images, artists of the distant past improved their skills, first adding more detail to their creations, and then shadows and volume.

But the most interesting thing, of course, is the age of the rock paintings. The use of modern scanners when exploring caves reveals to us even those rock paintings that are already indistinguishable to the human eye. The record of the antiquity of the found image is constantly updated. How deeply were we able to penetrate into the past by exploring the cold stone walls of caves and grottoes? To date, the cave boasts the oldest rock paintings El Castillo, located in Spain. It is believed that the most ancient rock paintings were discovered in this cave. One of them - the depiction of a human palm by spraying paint on a hand leaning against a wall - is of particular interest.

The oldest drawing to date, age ~ 40,800 years. El Castillo Cave, Spain.

Since traditional radiocarbon dating would have given too much scatter in the readings, to more accurately determine the age of the images, scientists used the method of radioactive decay of uranium, measuring the amount of decay products in the stalactites formed over thousands of years on top of the picture. It turned out that the age of the rock paintings is about 40,800 years, which makes them the oldest on Earth among those discovered on this moment. It is quite possible that they were not even painted by homo sapience, but by a Neanderthal.

But El Castillo Cave has a worthy competitor: caves on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. To determine the age of the local drawings, scientists examined the age of the calcium deposits that formed on top of them. It turned out that calcium deposits appeared no less 40,000 years ago, which means that the rock paintings cannot be younger. Unfortunately, it is not possible to more accurately determine the age of the ancient artist’s creations. But we know one thing for sure: in the future, humanity will face even more ancient and amazing discoveries.

Illustration: Image of a bison in a cave in Altamira, Spain. About 20,000 years old

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Traditionally, rock paintings are called petroglyphs, this is the name given to all images on stone from ancient times (Paleolithic) up to the Middle Ages, both primitive cave rock carvings and later ones, for example, on specially installed stones, megaliths or “wild” rocks.

Such monuments are not concentrated somewhere in one place, but are widely scattered across the face of our planet. They were found in Kazakhstan (Tamgaly), in Karelia, in Spain (Altamira cave), in France (Fond-de-Gaume, Montespan caves, etc.), in Siberia, on the Don (Kostenki), in Italy, England, Germany, in Algeria, where gigantic multicolor paintings of the Tassilin-Ajjer mountain plateau in the Sahara, among the desert sands, were recently discovered and created a sensation throughout the world.

Despite the fact that cave paintings have been studied for about 200 years, they still remain a mystery.

Rock paintings of the Hopi Indians in Arizona, USA, depicting certain kachina creatures. The Indians considered them their heavenly teachers.

According to the generally accepted theory of evolution, primitive man remained a primitive hunter-gatherer for many tens of thousands of years. And then he suddenly had a real insight, and he began to draw and carve mysterious symbols and images on the walls of his caves, rocks and mountain crevices.

Famous Onega petroglyphs.

Oswald O. Tobisch, a man of generous and varied talents, spent 30 years studying more than 6,000 cave paintings, trying to reconstruct some logical system that unites them. When you get acquainted with the conclusions of his research and numerous comparative tables, literally takes your breath away. Tobish traces the similarities of a variety of rock paintings, so that it seems as if in ancient times there was a single proto-culture and universal knowledge associated with it.

Spain. Rock art. 11th century BC

Of course, millions and millions of cave paintings did not appear at the same time; very often (but not always) they are separated by many millennia. In other cases, drawings were created on the same rocks over several millennia.

Africa. Rock painting. VIII - IV centuries BC

And yet, it is a striking fact that many rock paintings in the most different parts the lights appeared almost simultaneously. Everywhere, be it Toro Muerto (Peru), where tens of thousands of rock paintings have been found, Val Carmonica (Italy), the vicinity of the Karakoram Highway (Pakistan), the Colorado Plateau (USA), the Paraibo region (Brazil) or southern Japan, - almost identical symbols and figures were found everywhere. Of course, I cannot help but note that each individual place has its own, strictly localized types of images that cannot be found anywhere else, but this in no way clears up the mystery of the striking similarity of the remaining drawings.

Australia. XII - IV century BC

If you consider all these images with all their attributes and symbols, you get the amazing impression that the sound of the same trumpet suddenly rang out across all continents: “Remember: the gods are those who are surrounded by rays!” These “gods” are in most cases depicted as much larger than other little men. Their heads are almost always surrounded or crowned with a halo or halo, as if shining rays are emanating from them. In addition, ordinary people are always depicted at a respectful distance from the "gods"; they kneel before them, prostrate themselves on the ground, or raise their hands to them.

Italy. Rock painting. XIII - VIII centuries BC

Oswald Tobisch, a specialist in rock paintings who has traveled all over the world, with his tireless efforts has come even closer to solving this ancient mystery: “Perhaps this striking similarity in the images of deities is explained by “internationalism”, incredible by our standards today, and the humanity of that era, quite perhaps still remained in the powerful force field of the “primordial revelation” of the one and all-powerful Creator?

Dogu's space suit. The world's oldest depiction of a spacesuit.
Death Valley, USA.
Peru. Rock painting. XII - IV century BC

Rock paintings of the Hopi Indians in Arizona, USA

Australia

Rock paintings near Lake Onega. Incomprehensible images that some philosophers interpret as flying machines.

Australia
Petroglyphs from the vicinity of the village of Karakol, Ongudai district
Hunting scenes, where anthropomorphic creatures (people or spirits?) with bows, spears and sticks hunt animals, and dogs (or wolves?) help them, appear 5-6 thousand years ago - that’s when this petroglyph was created.
on a rock in Japan 7 thousand years ago
Algerian Sahara, Tassili massif (tinted rock paintings). The era of round heads. Reach 8 meters. Stone Age drawings

Similar examples The creativity of ancient peoples can be found all over the world. In Altai - rock portraits humanoid creatures in spacesuits created 4 - 5 thousand years ago. In Central America - starting " spaceships" They are depicted on some Mayan tombs dating back about 1,300 years. In Japan, bronze figurines from the 4th century BC are found dressed in helmets and overalls. In the mountains of Tibet are “flying saucers” drawn 3000 years ago. Entire galleries of monsters with antennas on their heads, tentacles instead of arms and mysterious weapons are “exhibited” for us, our descendants, to see in caves, on plateaus and in the mountains in Peru, the Sahara, Zimbabwe, Australia, France, Italy.
Huge figures and small people next to them.

The history textbook says that primitive man wanted to somehow express himself and realize his primitive creativity with what was at hand. This is how rock paintings appeared on rocks in deep caves.

But just how primitive were our ancestors? And was everything really as simple a few thousand years ago as we imagine? The drawings from primitive art collected in this article may make you think about something.

The cave was discovered on December 18, 1994 in the south of France, in the Ardèche department, on the steep bank of the canyon of the river of the same name, a tributary of the Rhone, near the town of Pont d'Arc by three speleologists Jean-Marie Chauvet, Elette Brunel Deschamps and Christian Hillaire.

They all already had great experience exploration of caves, including those containing traces of prehistoric man. The half-buried entrance to the then unnamed cave was already known to them, but the cave had not yet been explored. When Elette, squeezing through the narrow opening, saw a large cavity going into the distance, she realized that she needed to return to the car for the stairs. It was already evening, they even doubted whether they should postpone further examination, but nevertheless they returned behind the stairs and went down into the wide passage.

The researchers stumbled upon a cave gallery, where a flashlight beam snatched an ocher spot on the wall from the darkness. It turned out to be a “portrait” of a mammoth. No other cave in the south-east of France, rich in “paintings,” can compare with the newly discovered one, named after Chauvet, either in size, or in the preservation and skill of the drawings, and the age of some of them reaches 30-33 thousand years.

Speleologist Jean-Marie Chauvet, after whom the cave got its name.

The discovery of the Chauvet Cave on December 18, 1994 became a sensation, which not only delayed the emergence primitive drawings 5 thousand years ago, and also overturned the concept of the evolution of Paleolithic art that had developed by that time, based, in particular, on the classification of the French scientist Henri Leroy-Gourhan. According to his theory (as well as the opinion of most other experts), the development of art went from primitive forms to more complex ones, and then the earliest drawings from Chauvet should generally belong to the pre-figurative stage (dots, spots, stripes, winding lines, other scribbles) . However, researchers of Chauvet's paintings found themselves face to face with the fact that the oldest images are almost the most perfect in their execution from the Paleolithic ones known to us (Paleolithic is at least: it is not known what Picasso, who admired the Altamiran bulls, would have said if he had had a chance to see the lions and Chauvet bears!). Apparently, art is not very friendly with evolutionary theory: avoiding any stadiality, it somehow inexplicably arises immediately, out of nothing, in highly artistic forms.

Here is what the largest expert in the field of Paleolithic art Z. A. Abramova writes about this: " Paleolithic art appears like a bright flash of flame in the depths of centuries. Having developed unusually quickly from the first timid steps to polychrome frescoes, this art just as abruptly disappeared. It does not find a direct continuation in subsequent eras... It remains a mystery how the Paleolithic masters achieved such high perfection and what were the paths along which echoes of the art of the Ice Age penetrated into Picasso’s brilliant work" (quoted from: Sher Ya. When and how did it arise art?).

(source - Donsmaps.com)

The drawing of black rhinoceroses from Chauvet is considered to be the oldest in the world (32,410 ± 720 years ago; there is information on the Internet about a certain “new” dating, giving Chauvet’s painting from 33 to 38 thousand years old, but without credible references).

At the moment, this is the oldest example of human creativity, the beginning of art, unencumbered by history. Typically, Paleolithic art is dominated by drawings of animals that people hunted - horses, cows, deer, and so on. The walls of Chauvet are covered with images of predators - cave lions, panthers, owls and hyenas. There are drawings depicting rhinoceros, tarpans and a number of other animals of the Ice Age.

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In addition, no other cave contains so many images of a woolly rhinoceros, an animal whose “dimensions” and strength are not inferior to a mammoth. In size and strength, the woolly rhinoceros was almost equal to the mammoth, its weight reached 3 tons, body length - 3.5 m, the size of the front horn - 130 cm. The rhinoceros became extinct at the end of the Pleistocene, earlier than the mammoth and the cave bear. Unlike mammoths, rhinoceroses were not herd animals. Probably because this powerful animal, although it was a herbivore, had the same vicious disposition as their modern relatives. This is evidenced by scenes of fierce “rock” fights between rhinoceroses from Chauvet.

The cave is located in the south of France, on the steep bank of the canyon of the Ardège River, a tributary of the Rhone, in a very picturesque place, in the vicinity of the Pont d’Arc (“Arch Bridge”). This natural bridge is formed in the rock by a huge ravine up to 60 meters high.

The cave itself is "mothballed". Entrance to it is open exclusively to a limited circle of scientists. And even those are allowed to enter it only twice a year, in spring and autumn, and work there only for a couple of weeks, a few hours a day. Unlike Altamira and Lascaux, Chauvet has not yet been “cloned,” so ordinary people like you and me can only admire the reproductions, which we will certainly do, but a little later.

“In the fifteen years or more that have passed since the discovery, there have been many more people who have been to the summit of Everest than have seen these drawings,” writes Adam Smith in his review of documentary Werner Herzog on Chauvet. Haven't tested it, but sounds good.

So, the famous German film director somehow miraculously managed to get permission to film. Film "Cave" forgotten dreams"was filmed in 3D and shown at the Berlin Film Festival in 2011, which, presumably, attracted the attention of the general public to Chauvet. It is not good for us to lag behind the public.

Researchers agree that the caves containing such large numbers of drawings were clearly not intended for housing and did not represent prehistoric art galleries, but were sanctuaries, places for rituals, in particular, the initiation of young men entering the adult life(this is evidenced, for example, by preserved children’s footprints).

In the four “halls” of Chauvet, along with connecting passages with a total length of about 500 meters, more than three hundred perfectly preserved drawings depicting various animals, including large-scale multi-figure compositions, were discovered.

Elette Brunel Deschamps and Christian Hillaire - participants in the discovery of the Chauvet Cave.

The paintings also answered the question: did tigers or lions live in prehistoric Europe? It turned out to be the second. Ancient drawings of cave lions always show them without a mane, which suggests that, unlike their African or Indian relatives, they either did not have one, or it was not as impressive. Often these images show the characteristic tuft on the tail of lions. The coloring of the fur, apparently, was one color.

Paleolithic art mostly features drawings of animals from the “menu” of primitive people - bulls, horses, deer (although this is not entirely accurate: it is known, for example, that for the inhabitants of Lascaux the main “forage” animal was the reindeer, while on It is found in single copies on the walls of the cave). In general, one way or another, commercial ungulates predominate. Chauvet is unique in this sense because of the abundance of images of predators - cave lions and bears, as well as rhinoceroses. It makes sense to dwell on the latter in more detail. Such a number of rhinoceroses as in Chauvet has never been found in any other cave.

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It is noteworthy that the first “artists” to leave their mark on the walls of some Paleolithic caves, including Chauvet, were... bears: in some places the engravings and paintings were applied directly on top of the traces of powerful claws, the so-called griffads.

In the late Pleistocene, at least two species of bears could coexist: brown bears survived safely to this day, and their relatives, cave bears (large and small) died out, unable to adapt to the damp gloom of caves. The big cave bear wasn't just big - it was huge. Its weight reached 800-900 kg, the diameter of the skulls found is about half a meter. A person most likely could not emerge victorious from a fight with such an animal in the depths of a cave, but some zoological experts are inclined to assume that, despite its terrifying size, this animal was slow, non-aggressive and did not pose a real danger.

An image of a cave bear made with red ocher in one of the first halls.

The oldest Russian paleozoologist, Professor N.K. Vereshchagin believes that “among Stone Age hunters, cave bears were a kind of meat cattle that did not require care for grazing and feeding.” The appearance of a cave bear is conveyed in Chauvet more clearly than anywhere else. Looks like he was playing special role in the life of primitive communities: the beast was depicted on rocks and pebbles, its figures were sculpted from clay, teeth were used as pendants, the skin probably served as a bed, the skull was preserved for ritual purposes. Thus, in Chauvet a similar skull was discovered resting on a rocky base, which most likely indicates the existence of a bear cult.

The woolly rhinoceros became extinct a little earlier than the mammoth (according to various sources from 15-20 to 10 thousand years ago), and, at least in the drawings of the Magdalenian period (15-10 thousand years BC), it is almost not meets. In Chauvet, we generally see a two-horned rhinoceros with larger horns, without any traces of fur. This may be the Merka rhinoceros, which lived in southern Europe, but is much rarer than its woolly relative. The length of its front horn could be up to 1.30 m. In short, it was a monster.

There are practically no images of people. Only chimera-like figures are found - for example, a man with the head of a bison. No traces of human habitation were found in the Chauvet Cave, but in some places the footprints of the cave's primitive visitors were preserved on the floor. According to researchers, the cave was a place for magical rituals.

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Previously, researchers believed that in the formation primitive painting Several stages can be distinguished. At first the drawings were very primitive. The skill came later, with experience. More than one thousand years had to pass for the drawings on the walls of the caves to reach their perfection.

Chauvet's discovery shattered this theory. French archaeologist Jean Clotte, having carefully examined Chauvet, stated that our ancestors probably learned to draw even before moving to Europe. And they arrived here about 35,000 years ago. The most ancient images from the Chauvet cave are very perfect works of painting, in which you can see perspective, chiaroscuro, and different angles etc.

Interestingly, the artists of the Chauvet Cave used methods that were not applicable anywhere else. Before applying the design, the walls were scraped and leveled. Ancient artists first scratched the outlines of the animal and used paint to give them the necessary volume. “The people who painted this were great artists,” confirms French rock art specialist Jean Clotte.

A detailed study of the cave will take several decades. However, it is already clear that its total length is more than 500 m at one level, the ceiling height is from 15 to 30 m. There are four consecutive “halls” and numerous side branches. In the first two rooms, the images are made in red ocher. The third contains engravings and black figures. There are many bones of ancient animals in the cave, and in one of the halls there are traces of the cultural layer. About 300 images were found. The painting is perfectly preserved.

(source - Flickr.com)

There is an assumption that such images with multiple contours layered on top of each other are a kind of primitive animation. When a torch was quickly moved along the drawing in a cave immersed in darkness, the rhinoceros “came to life”, and one can imagine the effect this had on the cave “spectators” - “The Arrival of a Train” by the Lumiere brothers is resting.

There are other considerations in this regard. For example, that in this way a group of animals is depicted in perspective. Nevertheless, the same Herzog in his film adheres to “our” version, and he can be trusted in matters of “moving pictures”.

Chauvet Cave is currently closed to public access, since any noticeable change in air humidity may cause damage wall painting. Only a few archaeologists can gain access, for only a few hours and subject to restrictions. The cave was cut off from outside world since the Ice Age due to the fall of a rock in front of its entrance.

The drawings of the Chauvet cave amaze with their knowledge of the laws of perspective (overlapping drawings of mammoths) and the ability to put shadows - until now it was believed that this technique was discovered several thousand years later. And an eternity before Seurat had the idea, primitive artists discovered pointillism: the image of one animal, it seems, a bison, consists entirely of red dots.

But the most surprising thing is that, as already mentioned, artists give preference to rhinoceroses, lions, cave bears and mammoths. Typically, the models for rock art were the animals that were hunted. “From the entire bestiary of that era, artists choose the most predatory, most dangerous animals,” says archaeologist Margaret Conkey of the University of Berkeley in California. By depicting animals that were clearly not on the menu of Paleolithic cuisine, but symbolized danger, strength, and power, artists, according to Klott, “understood their essence.”

Archaeologists paid attention to exactly how the images were included in the wall space. In one of the rooms, a cave bear is depicted in red ocher without the lower part of its body, so that it appears, says Klott, “as if it were coming out of the wall.” In the same room, archaeologists also discovered images of two stone goats. The horns of one of them are natural crevices in the wall, which the artist widened.

Image of a horse in a niche (source - Donsmaps.com)

Rock art clearly played significant role in spiritual life prehistoric people. This can be confirmed by two large triangles (symbols of femininity and fertility?) and an image of a creature with human legs, but with the head and body of a bison. Probably, Stone Age people hoped in this way to appropriate at least partially the power of animals. The cave bear, apparently, occupied special position. 55 bear skulls, one of which lies on a fallen boulder, as if on an altar, suggest the cult of this beast. Which also explains the choice of Chauvet Cave by the artists - dozens of potholes in the floor indicate that this was the hibernation site of giant bears.

Ancient people came again and again to look at the rock paintings. The 10-meter-long “horse panel” shows traces of soot left by torches that were mounted in the wall after it was covered with painting. These marks, according to Conkey, are on top of a layer of mineralized sediments covering the images. If painting is the first step on the path to spirituality, then the ability to appreciate it is undoubtedly the second.

At least 6 books and dozens have been published about Chauvet Cave scientific articles, in addition to sensational materials in the general press, four large albums of beautiful color illustrations with accompanying text were published and translated into major European languages. The documentary film “Cave of Forgotten Dreams 3D” will be released in Russian theaters on December 15. The director of the film is German Werner Herzog.

Picture "Cave of Forgotten Dreams" appreciated at the 61st Berlin Film Festival. More than a million people went to see the film. This is the highest-grossing documentary film in 2011.

According to new data, the age of the coal used to paint the pictures on the wall of the Chauvet cave is 36,000 years old, and not 31,000, as previously thought.

Refined radiocarbon dating methods show that the settlement modern man(Homo sapiens) Central and Western Europe began 3 thousand years earlier than thought, and happened faster. The time of cohabitation between sapiens and Neanderthals in most parts of Europe was reduced from about 10 to 6 thousand years or less. The final disappearance of European Neanderthals may also have occurred several millennia earlier.

Renowned British archaeologist Paul Mellars has published a review of recent advances in the development of radiocarbon dating that have led to significant changes our ideas about the chronology of events that took place more than 25 thousand years ago.

The accuracy of radiocarbon dating in last years increased sharply due to two circumstances. Firstly, methods have emerged for high-quality purification of organic substances, primarily collagen isolated from ancient bones, from all foreign impurities. When we're talking about For very ancient samples, even an insignificant admixture of foreign carbon can lead to serious distortions. For example, if a 40,000-year-old sample contained only 1% modern carbon, this would reduce the “radiocarbon age” by as much as 7,000 years. As it turned out, most ancient archaeological finds contain such impurities, so their age was systematically underestimated.

The second source of errors, which was finally eliminated, is due to the fact that the content of the radioactive isotope 14C in the atmosphere (and, consequently, in organic matter formed in different eras) is not constant. The bones of people and animals that lived during periods of high levels of 14C in the atmosphere initially contained more of this isotope than expected, and therefore their age was again underestimated. In recent years, a number of extremely precise measurements have been made that have made it possible to reconstruct the fluctuations of 14C in the atmosphere over the past 50 millennia. For this, unique marine sediments were used in some areas of the World Ocean, where sediment accumulated very quickly, Greenland ice, cave stalagmites, Coral reefs etc. In all these cases, it was possible for each layer to compare the radiocarbon dates with others obtained on the basis of the oxygen isotope ratio 18O/16O or uranium and thorium.

As a result, correction scales and tables were developed that dramatically increased the accuracy of radiocarbon dating of samples older than 25 thousand years. What did the updated dates tell us?

It was previously believed that modern humans (Homo sapiens) appeared in southeastern Europe approximately 45,000 years ago. From here they gradually settled in a western and northwestern direction. The peopling of Central and Western Europe continued, according to “uncorrected” radiocarbon dates, for approximately 7 thousand years (43-36 thousand years ago); the average rate of advancement is 300 meters per year. Refined dating shows that settlement occurred faster and began earlier (46-41 thousand years ago; advancement speed up to 400 meters per year). At about the same speed, agricultural culture later spread in Europe (10-6 thousand years ago), also coming from the Middle East. It is curious that both waves of settlement followed two parallel paths: the first along the Mediterranean coast from Israel to Spain, the second along the Danube Valley, from the Balkans to Southern Germany and further to Western France.

In addition, it turned out that the period of cohabitation modern people and Neanderthals in most areas of Europe was significantly shorter than thought (not 10,000 years, but only about 6,000), and in some areas, for example in western France, even less - only 1-2 thousand years. According to updated dating , some of the brightest examples of cave painting turned out to be much older than thought; the beginning of the Aurignac era, marked by the appearance of various complex products made of bone and horn, also moved into the depths of time (41,000 thousand years ago according to new ideas).

Paul Mellars believes that previously published datings of the latest Neanderthal sites (in Spain and Croatia; both sites, according to “unspecified” radiocarbon dating, are 31-28 thousand years old) also need to be revised. In reality, these finds are most likely several thousand years older.

All this shows that the indigenous Neanderthal population of Europe fell to the onslaught of the Middle Eastern newcomers much faster than thought. The superiority of the sapiens - technological or social - was too great, and neither physical strength Neanderthals, neither their endurance nor their adaptability to cold climates could save the doomed race.

Chauvet's painting is amazing in many ways. Take, for example, camera angles. It was common for cave artists to depict animals in profile. Of course, here too this is typical for most of the drawings, but there are breakthroughs, as in the above fragment, where the buffalo’s face is shown in three-quarters. In the following picture you can also see a rare image from the front:

Maybe this is an illusion, but a distinct feeling of composition is created - the lions are sniffing in anticipation of prey, but have not yet seen the bison, and it has clearly tensed and frozen, feverishly wondering where to run. True, judging by the dull look, he doesn’t think well.

Remarkable running bison:

(source - Donsmaps.com)

Moreover, the “face” of each horse is purely individual:

(source - istmira.com)

The following panel with horses is probably the most famous and widely circulated of Chauvet’s images:

(source - popular-archaeology.com)

In the recently released science fiction film “Prometheus,” the cave, which promises the discovery of an extraterrestrial civilization that once visited our planet, is copied completely from Chauvet, including this wonderful group, which includes people who are completely inappropriate here.

Still from the film “Prometheus” (dir. R. Scott, 2012)

You and I know that there are no people on the walls of Chauvet. What is not there is not. There are bulls.

(source - Donsmaps.com)

During the Pliocene and especially in the Pleistocene, ancient hunters exerted significant pressure on nature. The idea that the extinction of the mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, cave bear, and cave lion is associated with warming and the end of the Ice Age was first questioned by the Ukrainian paleontologist I.G. Pidoplichko, who expressed what seemed at the time a seditious hypothesis that man was to blame for the extinction of the mammoth. Later discoveries confirmed the validity of these assumptions. The development of radiocarbon analysis methods showed that the last mammoths ( Elephas primigenius) lived at the very end of the Ice Age, and in some places lived until the beginning of the Holocene. At the Predmost site of Paleolithic man (Czechoslovakia), the remains of a thousand mammoths were found. There are known massive finds of mammoth bones (more than 2 thousand individuals) at the Volchya Griva site near Novosibirsk, dating back 12 thousand years. The last mammoths in Siberia lived only 8-9 thousand years ago. The destruction of the mammoth as a species is undoubtedly the result of the activities of ancient hunters.

An important character in Chauvet's paintings was the big-horned deer.

The art of Upper Paleolithic animalists serves, along with paleontological and archaeozoological finds, as an important source of information about what animals our ancestors hunted. Until recently, the Late Paleolithic drawings from the caves of Lascaux in France (17 thousand years old) and Altamira in Spain (15 thousand years old) were considered the oldest and most complete, but later the Chauvet caves were discovered, which gives us a new range of images of the mammal fauna of that time. Along with relatively rare drawings of a mammoth (among them an image of a baby mammoth, strikingly reminiscent of the baby mammoth Dima discovered in the permafrost of the Magadan region) or an alpine ibex ( Capra ibex) there are many images of two-horned rhinoceroses, cave bears ( Ursus spelaeus), cave lions ( Panthera spelaea), Tarpanov ( Equus gmelini).

The images of rhinoceroses in Chauvet Cave raise many questions. This is undoubtedly not a woolly rhinoceros - the drawings depict a two-horned rhinoceros with larger horns, without traces of hair, with a pronounced skin fold, characteristic of the living species of the one-horned Indian rhinoceros ( Rhinocerus indicus). Perhaps this is Merck's rhinoceros ( Dicerorhinus kirchbergensis), who lived in southern Europe until the end of the Late Pleistocene? However, if from the woolly rhinoceros, which was the object of hunting in the Paleolithic and disappeared by the beginning of the Neolithic, quite numerous remains of skin with hair, horny growths on the skull have been preserved (in Lvov there is even the only stuffed animal of this species in the world), then from the Merck rhinoceros we have only bone remains, and the keratin “horns” were not preserved. Thus, the discovery in Chauvet Cave poses the question: what type of rhinoceros was known to its inhabitants? Why are the rhinoceroses from Chauvet Cave depicted in herds? It is very likely that Paleolithic hunters were also to blame for the disappearance of the Merck rhinoceros.

Paleolithic art does not know the concepts of good and evil. Both the peacefully grazing rhinoceros and the lions ambushed are parts of a single nature, from which the artist himself does not separate himself. Of course, you can’t get into the head of a Cro-Magnon man and you can’t talk “for life” when you meet, but I am close and, at least, understandable to the idea that art at the dawn of humanity is not in any way opposed to nature, man is in harmony with the world around him. Every thing, every stone or tree, not to mention animals, is viewed by him as carrying meaning, as if the whole world were a huge living museum. At the same time, there is no reflection yet, and questions of existence are not raised. This is such a pre-cultural, heavenly state. We, of course, will not be able to feel it fully (as well as return to heaven), but suddenly we will be able to at least touch it, communicating through tens of thousands of years with the authors of these amazing creations

We don’t see them vacationing alone. Always hunting, and always with almost a whole pride.

In general, the admiration of primitive man for the huge, strong and fast animals around him, be it a big-horned deer, a bison or a bear, is understandable. It’s even somehow absurd to put yourself next to them. He didn't bet. There is something to learn from us, who fill our virtual “caves” with immeasurable quantities of our own or family photographs. Yes, something, but narcissism was not characteristic of the first people. But the same bear was depicted with the greatest care and trepidation:

The gallery ends with the strangest drawing in Chauvet, definitely of cult purpose. It is located in the farthest corner of the grotto and is made on a rocky ledge, which has (for good reason, presumably) a phallic shape

In literature, this character is usually referred to as a “sorcerer” or taurocephalus. In addition to the bull's head, we see another one, a lion's, female legs and a deliberately enlarged size, let’s say, the womb, which forms the center of the entire composition. Compared to their colleagues in the Paleolithic workshop, the craftsmen who painted this sanctuary look like pretty avant-garde artists. We know individual images of the so-called. “Venus”, male sorcerers in the form of animals and even scenes hinting at the intercourse of an ungulate with a woman, but in order to mix all of the above so thickly... It is assumed (see, for example, http://www.ancient-wisdom.co.uk/ francech auvet.htm) that the image of the female body was the earliest, and the heads of the lion and bull were painted later. It is interesting that there is no overlap of later drawings with previous ones. Obviously, maintaining the integrity of the composition was part of the artist’s plans.

, and also look again at And

The discovery of an ancient rock painting in a Gibraltar cave, which scientists believe was made by Neanderthals about 39,000 years ago, has become a sensation in the world. scientific world. If the discovery turns out to be true, then history will have to be rewritten, because it turns out that Neanderthals were not at all primitively stupid savages, as is commonly believed today. In our review of ten unique rock paintings that were found at different times and created a real sensation in the world of science.

1. White Shaman's Rock

This 4,000-year-old ancient rock art is located in the lower Peco River in Texas. The giant image (3.5 m) shows the central figure surrounded by other people performing some kind of rituals. It is assumed that the figure of a shaman is depicted in the center, and the picture itself depicts the cult of some forgotten ancient religion.

2. Kakadu Park

National Park Cockatoo is one of the most beautiful places for tourists in Australia. It is especially valued for its rich cultural heritage - the park contains an impressive collection of local Aboriginal art. Some of the rock paintings at Kakadu (which were included in the fund world heritage UNESCO) is almost 20,000 years old.

3. Chauvet Cave

Another UNESCO World Heritage Site is located in the south of France. More than 1000 different images can be found in the Chauvet Cave, most of them are animals and anthropomorphic figures. These are some of the oldest images known to man: their age dates back to 30,000 - 32,000 years. About 20,000 years ago, the cave was filled with stones and has remained in excellent condition to this day.

4. Cueva de El Castillo

In Spain, the “Castle Cave” or Cueva de El Castillo was recently discovered, on the walls of which the oldest cave paintings in Europe were found, their age is 4,000 years older than all the rock paintings that were previously found in the Old World. Most of the images feature handprints and simple geometric shapes, although there are also images of strange animals. One of the drawings, a simple red disk, was made 40,800 years ago. It is assumed that these paintings were made by Neanderthals.

5. Laas Gaal

Some of the oldest and best-preserved rock paintings on the African continent can be found in Somalia, at the Laas Gaal (Camel Well) cave complex. Despite the fact that their age is “only” 5,000 – 12,000 years, these rock paintings are perfectly preserved. They depict mainly animals and people in ceremonial clothing and various decorations. Unfortunately this one is wonderful cultural site cannot receive World Heritage status because it is located in an area constantly at war.

6. Bhimbetka Cliff Dwellings

The cliff dwellings at Bhimbetka represent some of the earliest traces of human life on the Indian subcontinent. In natural rock shelters on the walls there are drawings that are about 30,000 years old. These paintings represent the period of development of civilization from the Mesolithic to the end of prehistoric times. The drawings depict animals and people doing daily activities such as hunting, religious ceremonies and, interestingly, dancing.

7. Magura

In Bulgaria, the rock paintings found in the Magura cave are not very old - they are between 4,000 and 8,000 years old. They are interesting because of the material that was used to apply the images - guano (droppings) bat. In addition, the cave itself was formed millions of years ago and other archaeological artifacts have been found in it, such as the bones of extinct animals (for example, the cave bear).

8. Cueva de las Manos

The "Cave of Hands" in Argentina is famous for its extensive collection of prints and images of human hands. This rock painting dates back to 9,000 - 13,000 years. The cave itself (more precisely, the cave system) was used by ancient people 1,500 years ago. Also in Cueva de las Manos you can find various geometric shapes and images of hunting.

9. Altamira Cave

The paintings found in the Altamira Cave in Spain are considered masterpieces of ancient culture. Stone painting of the era Upper Paleolithic(14,000 – 20,000 years old) is in exceptional condition. As in Chauvet Cave, a landslide sealed the entrance to this cave about 13,000 years ago, so the images remained intact. In fact, these drawings are so well preserved that when they were first discovered in the 19th century, scientists thought they were fakes. It took a long time until technology made it possible to confirm the authenticity of rock art. Since then, the cave has proved so popular among tourists that it had to be closed in the late 1970s because a large number of Carbon dioxide from the breath of visitors began to lead to the destruction of the painting.

10. Lascaux Cave

It is by far the best known and most significant collection of rock art in the world. Some of the most beautiful 17,000-year-old paintings in the world can be found in this cave system in France. They are very complex, very carefully made and at the same time perfectly preserved. Unfortunately, the cave was closed more than 50 years ago due to the fact that, under the influence of carbon dioxide exhaled by visitors, the unique images began to collapse. In 1983, a reproduction of part of the cave called Lascaux 2 was discovered.

Of great interest are also. They will be of interest not only to professional historians and art critics, but also to anyone interested in history.