Arts 2014, 3, 245-278; doi:10.3390/arts3020245 arts ISSN 2076-0752 www.mdpi.com/journal/arts Review Pleistocene Paleoart of Europe Robert G. Bednarik International Federation of Rock Art Organizations (IFRAO), P.O. Box 216, Caulfield South, VIC 3162, Australia; E-Mail: robertbednarik@hotmail.com; Tel.: +61-3-95230549; Fax: +61-3-95230549 Received: 22 March 2014; in revised form: 16 May 2014/ Accepted: 16 May 2014 / Published: 5 June 2014 Abstract: As in Australia, Pleistocene rock art is relatively abundant in Europe, but it has so far received much more attention than the combined Ice Age paleoart of the rest of the world. Since archaeology initially rejected its authenticity for several decades, the cave art of France and Spain and the portable paleoart from various regions of Europe have been the subjects of thousands of studies. It is shown, however, that much of the published information is unreliable and subjective, and that fundamental trends in the evidence have been misunderstood. In particular, the data implies that the paleoart of the Early Upper Paleolithic, the work of robust humans such as Neanderthals, is considerably more sophisticated and developed that that of more recent times. Thus, the European paleoart demonstrates that the teleological model of cultural “evolution” is false, which is to be expected because evolution is purely dysteleological. This is confirmed by the extensive record of pre-Upper Paleolithic European paleoart, which is comprehensively reviewed in this paper. Keywords: rock art; portable paleoart; Pleistocene; bead; pictogram; petroglyph; Europe 1. Introduction This is the final paper in a series listing the known Pleistocene paleoart of the world, beginning with Africa, the presumed cradle of hominids several million years ago (Bednarik 2013) [40]. That first paper of the series began with the observation how strange it is that, although this form of evidence is significantly more common elsewhere, it is Europe that most people first think of when the subject of paleoart is raised. This is perhaps because the number of publications about European paleoart is so great that they exceed the number of actual instances of it, whereas the topic of Ice Age paleoart in the OPEN ACCESS