1 CHAPTER PREHISTORIC ART Two horses are positioned back to back on the wall of a cham- ber within the Pech-Merle Cave, located in France’s Dordogne region; one of the horses is shown in the detail at left (FIG. 1–1). The head of the horse follows the natural shape of the rock. Black dots surround areas of both horses and cover their bodies. At a later date, a large fish (58 inches long and almost impossible to see) was painted in red on top of them. Yet the painters left more than images of animals, fish, and geometric shapes; they left their own handprints in various places around the animals. These images, and many others hidden in chambers at the ends of long, narrow passages within the cave, connect us to an almost unimaginably ancient world of 25,000 BCE. Prehistory includes all of human existence before the emergence of writing, though long before that defining moment people were carving objects, painting images, and creating shelters and other structures. Thirty thousand years ago our ancestors were not making “works of art” and there were no “artists” as we understand the term today. They were flaking, chipping, and polishing flints into spear points, knives, and scrapers, not into sculptures, however pleasing these artifacts are to the eye and to the touch. Wallpaintings, too, must have seemed vitally important to their makers in terms of everyday survival. For art historians, archaeologists, and anthropologists, prehistoric art provides a significant clue—along with fossils, pollen, and artifacts—to understanding early human life and culture. Although specialists continue to discover more about when and how these works were created, they may never be able to tell us why they were made. In fact, there may be no single meaning or use for any one image on a cave wall; cave art probably meant different things to the different people who saw it, depending on their age, experience, and specific needs and desires. The sculpture, paintings, and structures that sur- vive are only a tiny fraction of what must have been created over a very long time span. The conclusions and interpreta- tions drawn from them are only hypotheses, making prehistoric art one of the most speculative, but exciting, areas of art history. 1 LEARN ABOUT IT 1.1 Examine the origins of art in the prehistoric past. 1.2 Discover the location and motifs of Paleolithic cave art and assess the range of scholarly interpretations for them. 1.3 Investigate the early use of architecture in domestic and sacred contexts, including megalithic monuments such as Stonehenge. 1.4 Explore the use and meaning of human figurines in the Paleolithic and Neolithic periods. 1.5 Trace the emergence of pottery making and metalworking and examine the earliest works made of fired clay and gold sheets. HEAR MORE Listen to an audio file of your chapter www.myartslab.com 1–1 • SPOTTED HORSES AND HUMAN HANDS Pech-Merle Cave, Dordogne, France. Horses 25,000–24,000 BCE; hands c. 15,000 BCE. Paint on limestone, individual horses over 5 (1.5 m) in length. Stokstad_ch01(2).qxd:0205744222 16/12/2009 14:19 Page xlii