Paleolithic art could be in a stage prior to the Upper Paleolithic, the oldest artistic manifestations that are preserved are those made by man about 35,000 years ago and that are clearly linked to the hunter-gatherer way of life . Art traveled with humans in their diaspora across the planet and therefore the many remains found in Western Europe cannot be considered the original core of human artistic ability. At some earlier point in the history of Homo sapiens, undoubtedly, there must have been a primitive and ancestral art, although it has not yet been discovered.
EvidencesofPaleolithicart
Caves with Paleolithic paintings and engravings are spread all over the world, from the southwest of France and the north of the Iberian Peninsula, where they are very abundant, to South Africa, Australia and Brazil, to name a few examples. In Western Europe alone, some 300 caves with cave paintings have been found, including the Chauvet and Lascaux caves in France and the Altamira cave in Spain.
The great cave art sanctuaries, however, are not the only artistic expressions that emerged during the Upper Palaeolithic. As important and even older than this parietal art -that is, the one immortalized on the ceilings and walls of the caves- is the movable or mobile art, of which numerous decorated objects are part, among them the famous statuettes known as Venus , which were made with bone, ivory, stone and other materials.
Beyond its undeniable aesthetic quality, the most intriguing and debated aspect of Palaeolithic art and also of prehistoric art in general continues to be the meaning contained in the primitive creations made by man -in most cases, horses, deer, bison and mammoths, that is, the basis of their subsistence at the end of the Pleistocene-, Of all the theories, the one that seems to have more credence is the one that points to the magical and religious character of these paintings and engravings:it is believed that they would have had the function of "influencing" the abundance of animals that were hunted or the success of the raids.
Artorigin
Together with the figurative representations of animals, in which in a few cases human models appear, abstract compositions have also been found -points, lines, stripes and other more complex signs-, to which a symbolic nature is once again attributed. The spirituality of Paleolithic art, in this sense, seems supported by the fact that the walls with paintings have appeared in deep and remote parts of the caves -that is, they were not used as housing-.
Recent finds
In Europe, mobile art is widely documented in almost all the cultural complexes of the Upper Palaeolithic, but the phenomenon of cave paintings appears concentrated almost exclusively within the geographical and chronological scope of the Magdalenian -more specifically, in the Franco-Cantabrian region. and between 15,000 and 10,000 BC. C.-. Recently, however, a surprising discovery was made that has made us reconsider the testimonial role traditionally given to other regions in terms of rock art:in the Grotta de Fumane, in Italy, paintings of animals and beings have been found. almost 32,000 years old - long before the famous cave paintings of France and northern Spain - In southern Europe, cave art almost completely disappeared coinciding with the end of the ice ages. Climate change and new environmental conditions caused profound social and economic transformations and, little by little, the extinction of the great herds of bison, reindeer and mammoths, or their march towards colder latitudes, caused the representations of hunts of character “ magic" lost their reason for being. The first and most transcendental stage of art development thus came to an end.
Bushman art
This painting found in South Africa was created by a group of Paleolithic hunters just two centuries ago. In the south of the African continent, Homo sapiens has been performing their hunting activities for more than 20,000 years.