Prehistory (pt. 6)

As prehistoric humans continued to build temporary shelters, they moved progressively to more permanent settlements.  The onset of permanent settlements marks the Neolithic Period, which scholars will say comes after the Ice Age (Great Flood replacement).  The three things that mark the Neolithic Period the most are: (1) permanent, year-round settlements, (2) the maintenance of herds of domesticated animals, and (3) an organized system of agriculture.  In lieu of risking dangerous and sometimes fruitless hunts, prehistoric man realized how to herd animals, raise them, and keep them (Adam tended animals in the Garden; but that was different—that was not for food).  And as herds of animals don't usually get along very well inside a small cave, the settlements moved out to the open.

Megaliths were constructed during this period.  Megaliths were large monuments created from huge stone slabs.  They were most common in Western Europe as early as 4,000B.C.

The most famous megalith is Stonehenge in England.  Stonehenge's purpose has been widely debated, especially since the recent discovery there just last year (2010).  The site was probably used for religious rituals; then in 2008 historians found evidence that it was probably actually a burial site; and there are those who stick by the theory that it was built in alignment with the stars to tell time or predict seasons.  Whatever it was used for, scholars are still baffled (and I along with them) by how prehistoric man, without any but primitive tools, could have transported these massive stone blocks—some 17 feet tall and over 50 tons—across distances of up to 260 miles.  And how did they raise the blocks into position?  Stonehenge uses post and lintel construction—huge beams support crossbeams, or lintel.

Prehistory (pt. 5)

Next is a very interesting piece of sculpture.  This is a figure made from Limestone, four and three-eighths inches tall, and was discovered in Willendorf, Austria in 1908.  It later earned the name Venus, after the Roman goddess of Love.  Why would they do this?  Historians were sending a message that this figure was associated with religious belief; that it represented an ideal of womanhood; and that it was one of a long line of images of "classical" feminine beauty.  In a short time, hundreds of other, similar sculptures from the Upper Paleolithic Period were also called Venus.  This is the Venus of Willendorf.

First of all, the sculpture is small and portable.  Prehistoric people were nomadic, and had no business fashioning grandiose, lifelike sculptures that were too heavy or bulky.  The Venus is small.

The next thing I notice is that she has no clearly defined head.  This is because—according to the views of ancient, "ideal" womanhood—the head of a woman was unimportant.  Survival of the species depended upon a woman with wide hips and other physical features conducive to fertility and child-bearing.  So the Venus is…corpulent, shall we say?  Perhaps this is all that prehistoric man cared about (I voice the opinions of scholars and historians—I, personally, doubt it).  Again, this figurine is hypothesized to have been made either as a model to which woman should seek to attain.

There is another interesting theory that basically runs along the same lines but explains it better.  An experiment was conducted by Professor Ramachandran of UCSD in which baby seagulls were collectively presented a series of colored tongue depressors.  A mother seagull's beak features a red coloration.

The baby gulls peck at their mother's beak, which acts as their source of food during their growth and development.  A tongue depressor was painted yellow, to mimic a mother gull's beak, and when it was presented to the gull chicks, the chicks did not react.  A second tongue depressor with a red stripe painted on it was presented to the chicks, and a reaction followed.  This showed that the chicks respond to the red coloration of the mother's beak, not necessarily to the mother's beak or the mother at all.  The red line, to the chicks, was the source of food.  A third tongue depressor with three red lines was presented, and the chicks responded more wildly than before.  This Herring Gull Theory illustrates how, as we tend to focus on the parts of objects that matter the most, artists tend to exaggerate feminine features of beauty.  When we get to Greek art, you'll see how artists tried to craft the perfect human form even if it meant stressing some features to impossible degrees.

            Likewise, the Venus of Willendorf over-accentuates the feminine features to (hypothetically) gain the most ardent reaction.  So you see that, from the start, women are objectified in art.  L

Prehistory (pt. 4)

…How do historians date these works?

There are two main methods to determining the age of the cave art.  The first is to use the surrounding earth layer to arrive at a date (chemically test how old the dirt is).  The second is to use a process called radiocarbon dating, and it examines organic (once-living) objects found near the artifact.  In principle, I'm told it works this way: basically all living organisms contain a certain amount of Carbon 14.  After an organism dies, the Carbon 14 loses its radioactivity at a known rate.  By finding how much radioactivity is left in the charcoal, or carbonized bones, etc., one can arrive at an estimate of how old it might be.  As I mentioned earlier, these paintings survived throughout history because of their safe, protected location in the backs of caves, away from the harmful effects of wind and rain.

Prehistory (pt. 3)

Two of the more famous cave painting sites are at Alta Mira, Spain, and Lascaux, France, to give you an idea of where on a map we're looking at.  The pictographs in Alta Mira are supposed by scientists to be from about 12,500B.C.  In Lascaux there is a famous pictograph of a horse, now called the Chinese Horse because other, almost identical drawings horses appear in Chinese art thousands of years later, during 969 to 1126A.D.  The cave paintings at Lascaux were discovered in 1940.

Many times these paintings overlap each other in layers, probably due to lack of more wall space.  This section of cave wall might show the work of not one but several generations of prehistoric artists.

Cave artists also utilized the shape and rough texture of the cave walls to help make their creations look more lifelike.  They sometimes painted in strategic locations so that the bumps on the surface of the wall passed for the animals' muscles.  To further show animals in a more three-dimensional way, artists made relief sculptures carved into stone, bone, ivory, etc.  A relief is a three-dimensional image whose flat background surface is carved away to a certain depth, setting off the figure.  Here are a couple of clay bison reliefs found at Le Tuc d'Audoubert in Ariège, France.

Prehistory (pt. 2)

The art is almost exclusively of animals, including bison, deer, horses, wooly rhinos, and other species.  Humans are rarely seen in cave paintings.  The scenes involving humans are often depictions of hunting strategies.

The animals are very well-drawn, showing skilled design and observation of proportion, while the humans look like stick figures.  This may be because the art was for instructional purposes.  Before a youth's first hunt, perhaps he was educated in, first and foremost, what the animal looked like, and then maybe how many of that animal could be found in a herd, and so on.  Prehistoric painting may have been a matter of necessity for survival, to teach others how to hunt for themselves and for the group.  A step further from education, and these works could have been religious or superstitious in nature—perhaps these people believed drawing a lifelike picture of an animal captured the animal's spirit (an idea still found in some indigenous cultures around the world).  Perhaps this was some magic ritual purported to bring good luck on the hunt before leaving the cave.  It is not a stretch to imagine some of these cultures could have worshipped these animals (animal idolatry is prevalently described in the Old Testament).  The artwork could have been sacred, since it was separated from the other living areas in the caves.  Plus, mankind at this time hadn't nearly the amount of leisure time and luxury that we have today, so it is unlikely that people would make art purely for aesthetic ends.  These paintings were somehow a part of their survival, of their way of life.

Prehistory (pt. 1)

            Art begins in prehistory, which is merely the history of humankind before recorded history.  This is the time of the hypothesized cavemen.  One of the reasons historians have theorized about cavemen is the presence of so much ancient art within caves like Lascaux, France and Alta Mira, Spain (just to name a couple).  It is clear that caves were prevalently used as shelters during this time, although the existence of actual "cavemen" (the only half-developed ape-like Homo sapiens which evolutionists frequently fantasize about) is quite a stretch, to put it mildly, as is most, if not all, of the doctrines of the Theory of Evolution.  But you all know this already.

Prehistory is divided into two epochs: Paleolithic and Neolithic.  The first of these two is further divided into three phases: Lower, Middle, and Upper Paleolithic (upper being the most recent, and lower being the oldest—it is so named based on the depth from which archaeologists have unearthed the findings).  Paleolithic and Neolithic history is often sometimes nicknamed the Stone Age due to the frequent usage of stone for tools, weapons, shelters, etc., and lithos in fact means "stone."  Scientists estimate the Paleolithic period around 30,000 to 10,000B.C.  Obviously there is not too much known about this period of history, but we can gain clues from artifacts and pictographs that have remained preserved.  In my opinion, this would have to be post-Flood, as it is unlikely this art could have remained so well preserved during such an apocalyptic, worldwide catastrophe.

Pictographs are paintings on rocks; and petroglyphs are carvings.  Again, this is believed to be before any written language had developed, so no words or symbols of any sort of language can be found on these cave walls—only images.  I believe language had to have existed then, according to the Bible, since Genesis describes Adam conversing with God first and then Eve, and Cain and Abel speaking to each other; but this does not necessarily mean that written language existed.  So, shall we say that it is not beyond possibility that the first written or inscribed intelligible symbols were images?  I think that would be pretty cool.

While petroglyphs were carved onto the surface of the cave wall using sharpened tools, pictographs were made with paint.  The paint was made from minerals suspended in water, and it was applied to rock surfaces by either brush or blow tubes.  We know this because oftentimes the artists' tools were found left at the site.  These drawings and drawing tools are generally located in the furthest ends of the caves, where the effects of weather could not destroy them.  It also says a lot about how these people may have valued this art; it was not just carelessly placed at an entranceway, but rather deep inside the earth, hidden like buried treasure.