Caveman art. How much do we know of it? Where is it found?

When I was just starting to search for the info about rock art and it sprang out on every continent, it made me go to the local supermarket for a bottle of rosé. Because you need something sweet and soothing to go with this:

The images are of the Palaeolithic Lascaux cave in the south-west of France.

It shows mostly horses, bulls, aurochs, bisons, and ibex pigmented on the cave walls and ceiling, and is our ancestors’ attempt to picture the world as they saw it 17000 years ago.

The cave was found in 1940 by four school boys when walking with their dog in the Lascaux hills, studied and open to the public for 15 years before shutting down to protect the art from algae.

Not the Mona Lisa in the Louvre or Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel quite yet! Rosé came in handy.

For those interested in visiting, there is a replica of some of the halls reconstructed 200 metres away from the original site. Also, take a look at another cave 490 km south-east of Lascaux and another 13000-15000 years back in time:

Hundreds of animal profiles, no human images, horses seem to be just that little bit fitter. Maybe because it was in the dead of the Last Glacial Period (115,000 – 11,700 years ago)? Who knows.

The cave in Chauvet, France, was discovered in 1994, locked down in a while to save it from funghi and mold, and replicated in the Pont-d’Arc Cavern a few miles away.

If you actually want to see prehistoric bisons pigmented on prehistoric walls in Europe, that might be the Cave of Niaux. The youngest of the three, it displays 12000-15000-year-old rock art:

Five thousand years before these painting were made, the entire valley – that’s seen from the entrance – was covered by a glacier, which, moving, carved the U-shaped valley in the mountains. Then the Ice Age ended.

That’s when mammoths disappeared, and we entered the interglacial period we are currently in – the time, or the greenhouse period, between ice ages of the planet.

The thing is, we are likely to never experience an Ice Age again. The amount of heat-trapping gases we are producing might prevent the next glacial cycle, which is otherwise due in some 50000 years’ time, from starting.

If you look at the Earth’s 5-million-year-long history in temperature charts, however, there’s a falling trend with intensifying fluctuations. Which means while we’re causing global warming, the planet is actually freezing itself.

More rosé right here, to celebrate this beautiful life and the Latest Ice Age – when four-kilometre-thick (maximum) ice sheets covered the ground, and the remnants of which we still see in Greenland, Antarctica, and some mountainous regions. Because we are likely to never experience an Ice Age again, and no more mammoths. Ever!

Asia. Let’s take a peek. Many-thousand-year-old rock art. What would you expect to see in the wilderness of endless steppes and low forest-covered Altai Mountains of south-western Siberia?

I’d suppose it to be bears, deer, lynxes, and bisons. And it goes:

6000-8000-year-old animals of the Neolithic (that is the last part of Stone Age, which preceded bronze and iron ages), followed by male and female figures of Eneolithic – Bronze Era of 3000-1000 BC, followed by hunting scenes of the Turkic Era (X – VIII centuries BC) and chariots, carts, deer hunting of the Scythian Epoch (early Iron Age, VIII-III centuries BC).

Under the [insert your epithet here] Siberian sky.

Kalbak Tash, a park of about five thousand ancient petroglyphs – carvings on rocks – was opened to public in 1912. But you can also see similar art scattered around on rocks along the Chuysk tract, a historic route from Siberia to Asia, picturesque 968 km from Novosibirsk to the border with Mongolia. Some people call it the most beautiful road in Siberia, some – in all Russia.

Also, did you know that much of the Kalbak tash art was made at the same time as the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt (2550 to 2490 BC) or the Ziggurat of Ur in Mesopotamia (Southern Iraq, 21st century BC)?

It is thought that Siberian steppes were also home to early Bronze Age cultures that made the rock carvings on the Ukok Plateau, some 320 km south from Kalbak Tash, around 10000 years ago, after the glaciers of the last Ice Age retreated.

Just look at this:

It’s a part of the UNESCO World Heritage for a reason, also because that’s where you can see the endangered snow leopard. So take care and sip on that wine as the Ukok Plateau region may be considered the closest analogy to the ancient mammoth steppes, and we’ll never see mammoths again!

As for the other finds in the area, a few tattooed mummies of the period 2600 BC – AD 402 have been found well-preserved by the permafrost in tombs across the plateau.

One of them, a young woman with tattoos on her arms in a sarcophagus, was discovered in 1993 during the scientific excavation and named the Altai Princess as she obviously was someone honourable being buried together with six harnessed horses dressed in a fur coat herself, about 5000 years ago.

Being on the border of four countries – Russia, China, Mongolia, and Kazakhstan – and having countless prehistoric tombs all around the place, the Ukok Plateau was announced a zone without people. That’s where the ancestors of Altai inhabitants and Scythian rulers were buried thousands of years ago.

It is also named the Northern gate to Shambhala. What’s Shambhala? In Sanskrit it means ‘a place of peace/tranquility/happiness’ and is a mythical Buddhist land either in Central Asia north or west of Tibet, or in valleys of southern Siberia where people enjoy harmony, good health, and well-being.

Don’t try to reach the Ukok plateau as it’s at the height of 2,200-2,500 m above sea level impassable for common means of transport. If you feel like, study the petroglyphs of Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Mongolia, Tajikistan, China, Korea, Pakistan, or the Philippines.

And here is about the oldest rock art in the world so far:

A big tropical island of Sulawesi. Among the warm seas. Indonesia. Asia.

Sulawesi cave art dates back 40000 years, and shows amongst the rest a ‘pig-deer’, or babirusa, a species never to be seen again, and a number of hand stencils which are plenty more of in South America but these are the oldest in the world!

Can you imagine 40000 years ago some adult of about 20 years of age painted the shape of his skinny arm on the rock for us to see. We can’t really visit the caves but they can still keep us wondering.

Not impressed? Look at the Australian aboriginal art then:

A creative feast of the olds. Fish, turtles, possums, wallabies, hunting scenes, creation ancestors, and hand stencils.

The UNESCO protected area of the Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory of Australia is 200 by 100 km wide, and that’s where Kakadu aboriginal people have continuously lived for about 40000 years. It’s not that you moved to another city!

Those guys have carved their culture on rock and pigmented naked women and men with peculiar headdresses to show it’s their own place and their vision of the modern world.

There are about 500 traditional Kakadu land owners still living on their native territory and, since the 1970s, leasing the land to the National Park.

If you search “did aboriginal people hunt kangaroos”, you’ll find headlines say:

“Kangaroos win when Aborigines hunt with fire”,

and you wonder how, and it turns out the Mantu aboriginal community still sets small fires to low-growing bushes to expose burrows of sand monitor lizards in order to hunt them as they’ve done for about 2000 years, and kangaroos feed on the young shoots of the plants and actually increase in number. No kidding.

“Aboriginal people held a kangaroo feast around campfire 20000 years ago”.

Sensational! And what did you do last weekend? Me, I looked up some pictures:

Aborigines used to believe in the Rainbow Serpent, and that the snake created animals, plants, mountains, people, and ultimately everything around us during its “Dreaming”. And when a rainbow appears, it’s the Serpent travelling from one waterhole to another. Because water is life! [sipping on the wine]

Guess what continent this is on:

A canyon. Obviously some river must have carved it in the rock. No rich vegetation. North America? South America.

That’s La Cueva de las Manos, or The Cave of Hands, in the Canyon of the Pinturas river in Patagonia, Argentina, in the south of South America.

Hand stencils in the cave are about 7000 to 9000 years old, and the dwellers used bone-made pipes for spraying paints to create the silhouettes of their left hands. As paints they used mineral pigments of iron oxides, kaolin, natrojarosite, and manganese oxide. How good is your chemistry?

Guanacos (a sort of llama) were the main source of food, naturally. Because it’s South America.

If you thought Argentina is always hot, consider that it boarders with Antarctica in the south. Winter (June-August) temperatures in the Patagonia region are -2 to 6 degrees Celcius, March to May it’s up to 10 degrees, while the hottest is summer (December-February) with temperatures of up to 22 degrees Celcius. Correct me if it gets any hotter.

According to photos, Patagonia can be quite harsh:

And picturesque! As well as many other prehistoric locations in Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, Venezuela, and Chile. How much do you know of the Nazca Lines?

Famous geoglyphs of Peru engraved on the rocky surfaces of the Nazca plateau – also called Inca Roads – are only about 2000 years old but appreciated mostly for their giant size.

At the time they built the Parthenon in Athens (447 – 438 BC) or the Colosseum in Rome (AD 72 – 80), Nazca people of South America created these giant shapes of birds, spiders, monkeys, cats, about 70 in total. The biggest of up to 370 metres long. I guess they were just having fun!

The shapes are created by removing the top layer of rock which reveals the sand below. Why so big? Probably, for us to fly over and ask questions.

It’s also believed that some of the shapes represent the constellations in the night sky but many researchers disagree. Quite a romantic version though!

What’s in North America? Prehistoric Paleo (ancient) Indians came to the continent from Asia over the land bridge, travelled across the plains in tribes of 20 to 50 people, hunted mammoths, mastodons (another hairy elephant), and bisons, ate seeds, fruit, and roots, went extinct about 9000 years ago, and left almost no evidence of their existence.

Anasazi people, Fremont and Ute tribes of Indians inhabited the area from about 6000 BC. They also lived a nomadic lifestyle, but left distinctive rock art heritage seen in Sego Canyon, USA:

Sego Canyon in Utah houses rock art of up to 8000 years old. Notice artists mostly pictured people and some sort of human beings with peculiar headwear.

Wondering what Indians were hunting, riding, and posting on socials in the Common Era, before Europeans arrived? Attention, Newspaper Rock:

Deer, buffalo and antelope. Bows and arrows. Mounted riders.

What’s the timing you ask? Bows and arrows were used by the native Americans from as late as 500 AD while horses were introduced in the area by the Spanish conquistadors in the XVI century only. How? A few horses escaped, and a couple months later Indians were cruising round the prairies on horseback.

The rock carvings here were created during the so-called Medieval times in the Old World (476 – 1492). Hence when they were building Gothic cathedrals in Europe (XII-XV centuries), extensively trading with Asia along the Silk Road, survived the Black Death – the plague pandemic that reduced the world’s population from around 475 million to 350-375 million in the XIV century – Native Americans of Utah were carving petroglyphs on rock in the desert.

Where is that rosé, immediately! Can’t remember the last time cave art made me this happy. Actually, never. It’s the first time!

And here is Namibia, southern Africa:

Rock art in Namibia dates back 2000 to 6000 years, some examples being as old as 25000. Engravings are thought to be made by the elders in order to teach children about the local wildlife: rhinos, elephants, giraffes, antelope, ostriches.

Bushman (or San) hunters-gatherers – who made the art – entered the area about 8000 years ago, probably migrating from the south. Indigenous to South Africa and Botswana as well, descended from Early Stone Age ancestors, Bushmen may be the oldest genotype of people in the world. They have genetic traces that no one else has. We are related to them, but they are not so closely related to us.

Why are there pictures of the Himba tribe then? Probably because they have great hairdos!

San people traditionally hunted different types of antelope using spears and arrows, women would gather roots and fruit.

Dutch settlers, who arrived at the Cape in 1652, named them Bushmen, or ‘the people of the bushes’, and made San move further north. There are about 100,000 San people dwelling their native land up to this day. Bushman cave paintings in the Drakensberg mountains in South Africa are the biggest group of rock paintings on the continent south of the Sahara.

Where is the rock art in the Sahara from? 7000-year-old art. Where are all the ostriches and bulls, hey!

Where are all the giraffes and humans with alien-like heads?

During the ‘African humid period’ that started 14500 years ago – at the end of the Last Glacial Age in North America and Europe – and ended about 5500 years ago, rivers and lakes got filled with water and desert retreated. People settled the Sahara and Arabian deserts.

What happened? Where did the desert go?

Scientists assume there was a slight tilt in Earth’s axis of rotation which caused a monsoon to the south of Sahara shift to the north. More rains, more vegetation, people followed.

They were hunters-gatherers who made the rock paintings, and left for the Nile Valley and Mesopotamia (present-day parts of Iraq, Kuwait, Syria, Turkey and Iran), or maybe moved south when monsoons shifted back, and the land dried out.

Humans followed rains.

It’s believed that periods of humidity in the area are repeated every 20000 years. Made me remember about my rosé though! A couple thousand years, and we might see rhinos in the Sahara again, cheers to that!