The oldest paintings we know are deep inside caves. In southern France, the walls of Chauvet Cave carry horses, lions, rhinoceroses and mammoths painted about 36,000 years ago, according to radiocarbon tests of the charcoal. The paintings of Lascaux, also in France, are younger, about 17,000 years old. In northern Spain, the cave of Altamira is famous for its painted bison.
The painters used what the earth gave them: red, yellow and brown ochre (iron oxides), black from charcoal or manganese oxide, mixed with water or fat. They painted with fingers, pads of moss or fur, and brushes of hair, and they blew paint through hollow bones or reeds to make hand stencils. They worked by the light of torches and stone lamps that burned animal fat.
Key idea
Why it works
Looking closely: The Hall of the Bulls. Huge aurochs, horses and deer cross the pale, uneven rock in every direction. Nothing is lined up on a floor; animals overlap and float, some upside down to each other. The black outlines are bold and sure, drawn in long sweeps, while other animals are filled with red or brown. The painters knew these animals well: the hump of a back, the sweep of a horn, the slim legs of a deer. The cave was found in 1940 by four teenagers. Visitors' breath and lights damaged it, so it was closed in 1963; people now visit full-size copies nearby.
Worked example: Why the inside of a cave?
- People did not live deep in caves; they lived near entrances or in the open.
- So the paintings were not everyday decoration of a home.
- Scholars have proposed ritual, hunting magic, storytelling and the work of shamans. No one knows for sure.
Answer: They were probably made for special purposes, perhaps ritual; the exact purpose is still debated.
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