1. -200,000 years ago, Homo sapiens appeared.
-120, ,000 years ago, Homo sapiens sapiens (our sub-species) appeared.
-people migrated heavily around the globe from 100,000 to 35,000 years ago.
Scientists think Homo sapiens moved from Africa to Europe, Australia and Asia and finally the Americas
200,000 yrs ago—the homo sapiens looked like us, modern, more or less
About 50,000 yrs ago—homo sapiens acted like us, modern
Human are capable of abstract reasoning,
language,
introspection, and
problem solving.
This mental capability, combined with
an erect body carriage that frees the hands for manipulating objects,
has allowed humans to make far greater use of tools than any other living species on Earth
Other higher-level thought processes of humans, such as self-awareness, rationality and sapience,are considered to be defining features of what constitutes a "person"

2. The Stone Age-
Prehistory is the period of time before people began creating a written record.
This period is characterized by the stone tools and objects people made, hence the name “stone age”.
Stone Age is divided into 2 eras: Paleo (“old”) lithic (“stone”) and Neo (“new”) lithic.
Paleolithic is further divided into
Lower
Middle
Upper
-based on the layers of objects found in excavation, so lower is oldest, etc.
Transition from Paleolithic to Neolithic depended on the rate of glacial retreat across the globe—so the timing varies.

3. As far back as 2,000,000 years, people made stone tools.
c. 100,000 years ago, well-developed Homo sapiens, Neanderthals, made a wide variety of stone tools and may have buried their dead with funerary offerings.
c. 40,000 years ago, fully-developed Homo sapiens, called Cro-Magnon after the French location where their bones were 1st found, replaced Neanderthals.
Cro-Magnons were clearly social and exhibited rituals and organizations that led them to create images—1st image making and the beginning of our study.
Cro-magnons: made more sophisticated bone and antler tools. Upper paleo period—characterized by image making—as opposed to just the tools they made. Upper paleo from approx. 40,000 – 8,000 BCE.
Elaborate social structures, indicated by the abundant images in caves and carvings in various materials they made. Even decorated the lamps they used when painting in the caves, suggesting decoration and beauty for its own sake—not functional.
Cro-magnons were Nomadic or semi-nomadic people—built huts from mammoth bones and animal skins.
Scientists consider the point that people create images to be the start of modern humans—defines us

4. -Settlements in Prehistoric Europe
Title: Prehistoric Europe—area where our discussion of prehistoric art is focused.
-Settlements in Prehistoric Europe

5. Cave painting- begins approx 30,000 BCE—associated with Upper Paleolithic period
Ceiling, Altamira Cave, Spain,
c. 12,500 BCE (Upper Paleolithic)
With no written record, we will never really know the meaning behind prehistoric art; including cave paintings. But it is agreed that the caves had special meaning to the people who created them because evidence shows that people returned to them over the course of many generations, sometimes 1000’s of yrs.
Paintings are found deep in dimly lit and hard to get to parts of the caves—suggests maybe the significance was in the act of painting, not the actual images. Maybe the site of rituals, based on foot prints and debris found around the paintings; like musical instruments (could also mean the acoustics of the cave were important).
website
Hillaire Chamber
Altamira cave painting: 1st cave painting found in late 1800s.
Chauvet Cave; earliest known painting
Title: Wall Painting with Horses, Rhinoceroses, and Aurochs
Date: c. 30,000–28,000 BCE
Source/Museum: Chauvet Cave, Vallon-Pont-d’Arc, Ardèche Gorge, France
WEBSITE
Chauvet Cave painting; France, c. 30,000 BCE; earliest known cave painting

6. Lascaux Cave; France, c. 15,000 BCE.
How they were made: artists used natural outcroppings in the rocks to create believable volume.
Pigments like charcoal and ocher (earth pigment) were ground, chewed and sprayed (w/ mouth) onto walls using hands or leather stencils
Drawn lines created using animal hair or moss brushes, or blocks of ocher.
Lascaux Cave; France, c. 15,000 BCE.
One of best known cave painting sites.
Has 600 paintings and 1500 engravings.
Lascaux was a tourist attraction until humidity and gases from the visitors started to harm the images; now reproduced off-site and the cave is closed to the public.
Artists painted from the light of animal fat lamps (burned animal fat for the flame)

7. Woman from Willendorf; Limestone; height 4⅜" c. 24,000 BCE
Figurative Sculpture: c. 30,000 BCE we also begin to find small figurines of people carved from bone, ivory, stone and clay in Europe and Asia—”sculpture in the round,” as opposed to “relief sculpture” found in caves
Usually women
Woman from Willendorf; Limestone; height 4⅜" c. 24,000 BCE
Another characteristic of Upper Paleo Period.
Title: Woman from Willendorf: originally called Venus, but we don’t know if she was associated with spirituality or religion, as “venus” suggests. Maybe health and fertility? Found in Austria.
Title: Woman from Ostrava Petrkovice, found in Czech Republic; very different idea of female form; half the size of willendorf. Very athletic and trim looking. Possibly unfinished because of carving marks.
Woman from Ostrava Petrkovice; Hematite, height 1¾“; c. 23,000 BCE

8. Bird-headed Man with Bison; c
Bird-headed Man with Bison; c. 15,000 BCE; Lascaux cave, France; 9 ft long.
Narrative?
Couple examples of unconventional Upper Paleo art; possible narrative demonstrated in painting
Shows a man, who might have been a hunter (in the bird mask) on the ground and the bison over him—maybe killed him? The bison has a spear through his back legs, and has been disemboweled; it will soon die. There’s a spear throwing tool (atlatl) by the man (not the bird baton), suggesting he threw the spear, which killed the bison).
Different from other cave paintings that more or less depict animals in herds or doing normal activities like dust-wallowing during mating season.
Title: Bird-Headed Man with Bison
Medium: Paint on limestone
Size: approx. 9' long
Date: c. 15,000 BCE
Source/Museum: Shaft scene in Lascaux Cave

9. Dating ancient work:
-relative dating; relies on the chronological relationship among objects in a single excavation or several sites
-radiometric dating; measures the degree to which radioactive materials have disintegrated over time—most accurate method of absolute dating
imagination in lion-human--Much larger than most figures of the same time.
Is it a man with a mask or an all-together made up image?
Shows complex imaginative thinking.
Absolute dating tries to find an exact calendar year or span of years to attribute to an object
Radiometric dating is used on organic materials; plant or animal; which can include some pigments used to paint cave paintings—has drawbacks for dating works of art, though, because it measures when the living thing died—which might not be when people turned it into art
Science is constantly experimenting with new types of radiometric dating and other techniques like measuring the irradiation of the crystal structure of a material that has been through a fire; like pottery (measures the luminescence produced when it is heated)—increasingly precise dates, though usually controversial
Title: Lion-Human found in Germany
Medium: Mammoth ivory
Size: 11⅝"
Date: c. 30,000–26,000 BCE
Lion-Human; c. 30,000 BCE;
mammoth ivory, 11 5/8” tall.

10. Architecture usually means the “enclosure of space with at least some aesthetic intent”
Example of mammoth bone huts built by Upper Paleo people for shelter.
Some argue this shelter is improvisational and therefore not architecture, but it did take planning and creativity to organize the building materials they had.
Title: Reconstruction drawing of mammoth-bone houses
Date: c. 16,000–10,000 BCE

11. From Paleolithic to Neolithic:
-by approx. 10,000 BCE, the ice age had ended in most areas, resulting in a climate like our own
-glacial retreat happened slowly, so change from Paleo to Neo eras was gradual
-scientists look for 3 factors to determine the onset of Neolithic culture: organized agriculture domesticated animal herds permanent settlements
-new tools, like bows and arrows, polished stone tools, and dug-out boats, improved the quality of life for Neolithic people
-agriculture meant there was adequate food production which allowed some members of the group to focus on other activities, like religion or politics, resulting in more complicated social structures
Bows and arrows were easier to carry and more accurate over a long distances.
Rising waters from melting glaciers, meant new dug out boats could lead to rich fishing areas.
Large numbers of people became farmers, lived in villages and made more than enough food to support themselves.
Settlements led to advances in architecture and by the end of the Neo period, villages were large, participated in trade with distant areas and had elaborate buildings.
Neo ends with introduction of metalworking techniques; instituting the Bronze age, c BCE in Europe

12. Neolithic Architecture:
-built buildings for storage, animal shelter and homes
-used wood and plant materials for dwellings, clustered in villages
-tombs and ritual centers were outside the village settlements
House interior, Skara Brae settlement; Orkney Islands, Scotland, c BCE
House interior, Skara Brae, Orkney Islands, Scotland
Well preserved Neolithic settlement in Scotland from c BCE—used stone for building b/c it was readily available in the area. Most wood settlements typical of neo era would not have survived.
Corbeled contrustion, where layers of stone are placed on top of one another, each layer projecting slightly forward of the last.
Include stone beds, food storage areas and incised decorations on stone surface.

13. Elements of Architecture: Post-and-Lintel and Corbel Construction

14. Megalithic Architecture: refers to huge stones used to create ceremonial structures and tombs in Neolithic period.
Tomb interior with corbeling and engraved stones c BCE Ireland
Must have had major religious beliefs or political figures to demand the creation of such technically challenging and physically difficult to produce structures (many stones had to be moved several miles to get them to the sites).
First real public architecture that must have fostered community pride and been a symbol of different settlements/groups.
VIDEO
Title: Tomb interior with corbeling and engraved stones
Date: c. 3000–2500 BCE
Source/Museum: New Grange, Ireland
Title: Stonehenge
Date: c. 2750–1500 BCE
Source/Museum: Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire England
Stonehenge
Stonehenge; c BCE
England

16. Stonehenge, on summer solstice
Some structures, like Stonehenge, do not have apparent purposes and we will probably never know exactly what it was built for.
Could be religious, or an observatory, possibly ceremonial.
On summer Solstice, June 21, the sun rises directly above a 16 ft high “heel stone” outside the main circle.

17. Figures of a man and a woman; ceramic, 4½" h.
Neolithic sculpture and ceramics: period saw technical advancement in ceramic work, especially the introduction of ceramic vessels (c BCE) and life-like ceramic figures.
Figures of a man and a woman; ceramic, 4½" h.
c BCE
Romania
Simple cylindrical forms combined to make realistic poses. Much more elaborate and open in structure than previous figurative sculpture.
Title: Figure of a man and woman
Medium: Ceramic
Size: height 4½" (11.5 cm)
Date: c BCE
Source/Museum: Cernavoda, Romania; National Historical Museum, Bucharest

18. Ceramic vessels from Denmark; c. 3000-2000 BCE.
People knew how to combine clay with other materials and fire them into ceramic from about 32,000 BCE on, but it is not known why they didn’t use that information to make ceramic vessels until much later; maybe because they were fragile and baskets or wood containers were more durable.
Early ceramic pots usually have loops for hanging and show incised decoration, maybe to imitate woven basket patterns from the containers that preceded them.
Title: Vessels
Medium: Ceramic
Size: heights range 5¾" to 12¼" (14.5 to 31 cm)
Date: c. 3000–2000 BCE
Source/Museum: Denmark. National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen
Ceramic vessels from Denmark; c BCE.

19. Neolithic cave painting: more simplified, graphic artistic style
Rock-shelter painting, c BCE, Spain
No longer painting in deep caves—more accessible shallow rock shelters and the images become more simplified and abstract. People continued to visit these sites for thousands of years, as shown by engravings made from even the Roman era—2000 years later.
Title: People and Animals
Date: c. 4000–2000 BCE
Source/Museum: Detail of rock-shelter painting, Cogul, Lérida, Spain
Neolithic cave painting: more simplified, graphic artistic style
-often line drawing, with no addition of color
-found in more shallow rock shelters, as opposed to the deep caverns of Paleolithic cave painting

20. The Bronze Age: c. 2300 BCE metalworking is introduced in Europe from the Near East.
-c BCE to 800 BCE = Bronze Age (alloy of copper and tin)
-c BCE; Iron Age begins
-introduction of metal changed societies in fundamental ways; created strong elite groups within society and increased trade with foreign cultures.
Horse and Sun Chariot; Bronze, c BCE, 231/4” long, Denmark
Chariot; elaborate designs and valuable bronze material indicates it was important. Iron introduced around 1000 BCE for more practical purposes, but Bronze continues to be a luxury material.
Hierarchy of metals created based on a metals’ resistance to corrosion: 1 = gold, 2 = silver, 3 = bronze, 4 = iron
Title: Horse and Sun Chariot
Medium: Bronze
Size: length 23¼" (59.2 cm)
Date: c. 1800–1600 BCE
Source/Museum: Trundholm, Denmark . National Museum, Copenhagen

21. Openwork Box Lid; c. 100 BCE; Bronze; 3” dia., Ireland
Prehistory in Europe ends with the Celts. Most of the Celts works are lost, but we have some written records about their culture that the people who came after them recorded.
Box above shows characteristic Celtic style of integrating pattern with form; the pattern of the lid is actually part of the physical structure.
Title: Openwork box lid
Medium: Bronze
Size: diameter 3" (7.5 cm)
Date: La Tène period, c. 1st century BCE
Source/Museum: Cornalaragh County Monaghan, Ireland / National Museum of Ireland, Dublin
Openwork Box Lid; c. 100 BCE; Bronze; 3” dia., Ireland

22. Break it down now (review)