Global Prehistory

"There have been two capital events in the course of human history: the making of tools (with which work was born); the making of art objects (with which play began)...the birth of art has its connections with the prior existence."
            -Georges Bataille (1955) speaking of the Lascaux Caves

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Need to Know Dates

Key Ideas

Paleolithic Art:          40,000-8,000 BCE in the Near East
"Old Stone Age"         40,000-4,000 BCE in Europe
(Venus of Willendorf, Feline-headed statue, Lascaux Caves, Catal Hoyuk)

• Hunter-Gatherers, Nomadic

Neolithic Art:           8,000- 3,000 BCE in the Near East
"New Stone Age"     4,000- 2,000 BCE in Europe
(Stonehenge)

• Cultivated, raised livestock, organized settlements

• 75,000 BCE: Stick of ochre (a pigment of the earth, brown/yellow) are engraved in Blombos Cave, South Africa, 61,000 years before the Lascaux caves!
• Earliest works are cave paintings and portable sculptures
  
• Conjectures are made about the meaning of prehistoric works
• Monuments like Stonehenge show that people were able to build structures made of the post and lintel system.
• The need to create is one of the strongest human impulses.
• Focus on materials indigenous to the environment/geography
• Since context is largely unknown, focus on original location and content

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Characteristics of 
Paintings

• Animal figures dominate- usually with a dark outline
• Humans represented as stick figures, negative handprints
• Lascaux Caves, 15,000- 13,000 BCE, France
• Altimira Caves, Spain

Characteristics of 
Architecture

• Shelters out of large animal bones
• Post and lintel systems (most basic type of architecture)
• Stonehenge, possibly

Characteristics of 
Sculpture

• All in-the-round sculpture is portable
• Some human representations have emphasis on certain body parts
• Carvings on cave walls utilize natural formations in the rock 

VIDEO:  The Ghosts of Stonehenge

Additional Resources

• On Prehistoric art. Make sure you read additional information on Catal Hoyuk, Jericho, and Stonehenge!
• Visit the Bradshaw Foundation's website for more in-depth information on the Lascaux Caves.
• Smithsonian Article: "Showing Their Age: Dating Fossils and Artifacts that Mark the Great Human Migration"
• Stonehenge timeline (with pictures) of phases of the building of the monument by English Heritage
• How Art Made the World - 6:10 Nude Woman (Venus of Willendorf)

Vocabulary

1. Paleolithic
2. Neolithic
3. schematic
4. shaman
5. abstraction
6. hunter-gatherer
7. ritual
8. cosmos
9. ceramics
10. monolithic
13. anthropomorphic
14. motifs

Artwork List

1. Apollo 11 stones
2. Great Hall of the Bulls
3. Camelid sacrum in the shape of a canine
4. Running horned woman
5. Beaker with ibex motifs
6. Anthropomorphic stele
7. Jade cong
8. Stonehenge
9. The Ambum Stone
10. Tlatilco female figurine
11. Terra cotta fragment
12. Venus of Willendorf

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Notecard Images

Sample Free Response Question

This is the Running Horned Woman of Algeria. 
Where was this painting found? 
What can be understood about this painting? 
Describe the images and interpret its possible meaning?

Acknowledgements:  Information contributed by Silvia Wiedman
Links and information provided by Valerie M. Park  © 2013  www.mchsapah.com
Special thanks to the AP Summer Institute in Rome collaboration with Margaret Sharkoffmadrid