Good morning. I want to thank anybody
that happens to be out there in this
audience for listening.
This recording is new to me and you see
my introduction lecture. But I'm going to
kind of say this here, because we're
talking about prehistoric art. And I
actually really love prehistoric art,
because we know so little about it that
we can totally use our imaginations to
think about who were these people that
we're making this prehistoric art.
Prehistoric art is divided into
Paleolithic and Neolithic for our
purposes. There's a period in the middle called
mesolithic and we'll get to that a
little bit, but Paleolithic means old
paleo lithic stone. So old stone age is
where we start. So homo sapiens is humans
two-legged sentient man and we have our
first evidence of two-legged sentient
man around 200,000 years ago, maybe a
little longer, and then homo sapiens
sapiens which would be sort of the next
evolution or generation of man a hundred
thousand years ago. Now this is an art
history course so those of you who are
anthropologists who know a lot about
this can probably fill in many more of
these gaps than I can. I honestly don't
know a lot about prehistoric man other
than the dates for the artwork we found
and then I use my imagination to fill in
the rest, but here's an interesting thing.
The study of prehistory or prehistoric
art began only two to three hundred
years ago it began around the age of
enlightenment and the beginning of
science and at the time when science was
cataloging. Science was empirical,
science was making names for things and
making up what they were by making names
for things. So we are going to look for
our study in this art history survey
course and you'll probably hear me say
this so many times that Western art
history is a tiny tiny portion of all
the art that's ever made all over the globe
and there's prehistoric art in China and there's
prehistoric art in united states and
Americas, South America probably
Antarctica probably places we haven't
even found it yet. But we, because this is
a survey course, we're going to look at
one example of many many for one little
tiny place which is Europe. So we're
going to include places La Mouthe, Hohlenstein-Stradel, Willendorf, Ostrava Petrkovive where we found
these little sculptures and you can find
those on this map. And you also will find
over the course of this class that I
love maps. I think maps are very very
important, because I think we need to
know where we are.
So, again, there's three periods in the
Stone Age the Paleolithic and then we
look at lower, middle, and upper
paleolithic, meso is middle, the Middle
Stone Age, Neolithic is new Stone Age and
really the Neolithic will be marked by
the beginning of agriculture. So this is
a little bit larger view of a map and
you can see the world map up in the
corner so you can see this little tiny
box. So just to give you a sense of
perspective of what we're looking at
here. So as I said Europeans began
discovering different objects in caves
or in fields, and actually they had
discovered them long before they started
to classify them, but that was a time
when there was a lot of trade and
commerce to other cultures, there was
quite a bit of traffic for example
between Europe and the United States,
people were going to Africa, they were
going to the South Seas for all
different sorts of reasons to Australia. And so scholars looked at the artifacts
and the items that people brought back
from all these different places and they
said huh,
these look like those. These objects that
we're finding in these fields look
exactly like these sculptures being
brought back from Africa that must mean
that hundreds of thousands of years ago
the same kind of people were here in
Europe. And again you have to remember
that the beginning of science was
absolutely empirical. They only went by
observation and we had the first
dictionaries being written and we had
the whole idea Linnaeus making his whole
cataloging system of plants. They wanted
to catalog everything and it was a euro
center universe. Europeans were the center
of knowledge and the center of
universe. So they wanted to control their
environment. They did this by cataloging
and naming. So in the advent of science
we have people like Charles Darwin
between 1831 and 1836 the beginning of the
17th century and Darwin had put forth
his evolutionary theory of the origin of
species and he wrote this book The
Descent of Man. So this was another basis
that art historians used for deciding
that these artifacts were primitive man
and that man would have evolved to the
state was today and they also use this
to support their ideas that Aboriginal
cultures were primitive which brings out
a whole other philosophical question
that's a little bit outside the scope of
this class, but I find very interesting
when we look at artwork. Because how do
we decide what sophisticated and what
isn't.
So we can look at different theories
like Charles Darwin's theory we can take
a boat and we can go to Australia and
watch the Aborigines. We can look at
visual art, we can look archaeological
evidence, and then we extrapolate meaning.
And so really archaeologists and art
historians become storytellers. So
imagine that there are many animals to
one person when you walk out your front
door. Mean you're a hunter-gatherer
society, so you're living by hunting.
Difficult whether. You have to have 12
babies to have one survived. Maybe
hostile clans, I wonder about that. It's
it's hard to know. We really have to
guess what their life was like. We do
know the Paleolithic people were nomadic.
That they would live in one area for a
little while and then they were go
move to the next place and think about
this says you know small bands of about
50 to 20 people, but think about that. If
your whole group that you're living with
is only 15 to 20 people there's
probably a couple of babies,
maybe two or three children, there's
going to be maybe one or two old people,
and then the again they died a lot
younger. So probably the hunters and the
childbearing people were anywhere
between the ages of 14 and 20 something.
By the time you're 30 or 40, you're old.
We're really going to look at two
different kinds of art and it's mostly
going to be animals. There's one image I
think in the painting of a person on the
cave walls at Lasquo and then the
little sculptures that we see again
they're all sculptures of women. I don't
think we have any sculptures of a man. There is
one that's a lion human, could be a man
or a woman I suppose. Our little figures
that can be carried around and remember
these people are nomadic so they're not
going to make some big sculpture that's
gotta that they can take with them and
then we'll look at paintings on cave
walls. So the first lecture that I'm
giving you here is more about
think portable objects. Utilitarian
objects like things that you would hunt
with or lamps and then little figures. So
for this course we are concentrating on
the Upper Paleolithic period which began
between 42 thousand and 37 thousand years ago. So
remember that first slide that I showed
you humans have been around for 100,000
years. Think about this time for a minute.
Before you even go to your next slide
just try to sit quietly and think about
time. Think about the fact that the birth
of Christ was 2,000 years ago.
We're in the year 2016 right now so is
2016 years ago the Christ was born and
by then they were highly advanced human
civilizations. The ancient Egyptians
started around 3000 BCE so 3000 before
the birth of Christ, but that's only 3000.
This period we're looking at 42,000 to
37,000 so multiply this 2000 years since
the birth of Christ by 15 and then take
that 42,000 and quadruple it for 200,000
years ago
double it for a hundred thousand years
ago and think about how many generations
of humans that is. And then think about
the fact that computers have only been
around since the mid nineties for
general public use and now they are go
to way we communicate. You might be
taking this lecture on your phone for
example. Which I hope if you are that at
some point you will put it on a computer
screen so you can see these things
bigger, because I think it's really hard
to look at artwork on the phone. But then
again I don't think of looking at things
that way and perhaps the human brain is
evolving. Perhaps the digital age is
evolving us and
so if you think about Darwin, if you
think about the evolution of humans and
the way they're making this art it
begins to be a lot to think about. And the
art of this time is really quite highly
developed and you'll see this in a
minute, but this lasted until the end of
the ice age until 9000 to 8000 BCE.
So around 9000 or 8000 there's
going to be this major shift. We think
about global warming today. It's not the
first time we've had it anyway,
was this art? When we think of the visual
arts in your introduction lecture that I
gave you.
We talked about sculpture, we talk about
painting, we talk about architecture, and
we talked about artifacts. So is this art
that these people making if it's made
for utilitarian purpose.
These are questions that are historians
write about and philosophize about. Our
earliest architecture here we have this
reconstruction drawing of a mammoth bone
house. This was actually from the Ukraine
and yes I know it wasn't on that map I
showed you, but anyway this thing was in
the Ukraine. That's because that's where
the mammoths were. This is from 16,000 to
10,000 BCE. So 18,000 years ago. So
Paleolithic people lived
sometimes they lived in the mouths of
caves they actually didn't live inside
the caves. They are kind of damp and nasty
places. They would live at the mouth and
the caves were probably used more for
ritual purposes
actually. They also lived in huts or
tents which we can't tell you anything
about what those huts or tents were like,
because they would have been made of
materials that have degraded and no longer
with us. Nomadic cultures of course use
movable architecture and the needs of
nomadic people were different.
This mammoth bone house was probably
something a little bit more permanent
and again I probably said this before in
the introduction lecture, but think about
the level of technology and
sophistication that it took for humans
to think about piling all these mammoth
bones together, make them stay up there,
they're heavy, they're big, and they probably
would have put clay
and grass and sod and things in between
them to keep the rain out or maybe they
put skins over it. So they are anywhere
from 7 by 10 feet to 24 by 33 feet and
they could have colored the floors with
ochre, they would have probably used
furs, they were, over it, or skins. And
they found actually 15 little hearths,
like little fireplaces in the biggest
one in the Ukraine. This is an Ibex
Headed spear thrower from Le Mas d'Azil
and it's dated from 16,000 to 9,000 BCE.
So think about that for a minute.
We have a 7,000 year margin for error in
this spear thrower. You'll find and
especially if you go on to take Art
History Survey II that the timeframes
get shorter and shorter is kinda like
looking through the wrong end of the
telescope. And when we look at
prehistoric and Paleolithic art we look
at these periods of years we just oh
you know somewhere within that 6,000
years. That's like three times the time
between the birth of Christ and now.
That's like the our country the United
States well what the Rev American
Revolution was 1776, the
18 19 2000 like 300 years old. So it
really puts things in perspective and
I'm a person that always takes the long
art historical view. So this is an action
at a distance weapon. It's used to kill
large animals or dangerous things from a
safe distance. So it's an example of a
utilitarian object. And here's the thing.
Think about the person that made the
first spear thrower. You're in your clan
of 15 to 20 people and somebody is a
human with an inventive brain and they
they're throwing a spear throwing their
spirit they think huh I wonder if
there's a way to make the spear go farther
and they figure this out. And this
is what humans have done technological
advancement this says so much more about
humanity than just the object itself.
What kind of an effect will that have
happened to their community? Do you think
that everybody else in the community
might have wanted a spear thrower after
the first guy made one? Anyway the shaft
of it is decorated with all kinds of
little patterns so we know that they
probably used some sort of hunting magic.
It's called sympathetic magic where they
believe that if you make an image of
something on your weapon
it'll draw that to you. Plus it's got
little hooks and see the little holes at
the bottom of it those are made to
injure the animal more. So again humans
are already figuring out to how to hurt
something else
the maximum way. The animal at the top is
an ibex. So again could just be a
decoration but most people think that
Paleolithic people practice shamanism as
their religion.
Most scholars believe that all human
cultures had some kind of a spiritual
life, whatever it might be. Whether it's
shamanism whether it's just something to
bring food on the table that there has
always been this innate sense within the
human spirit that there is something out
there to reach for. And I deeply believe
that that's why humans make art. So this
ibex could have been a personal
emblem or it could have been a magic
emblem. And one thing that's interesting
about it is it tells us a little bit
about hunting. Because you notice there's
two birds perched on top of its
droppings, droppings at the end of it and
there's two birds on top of that is
depicted an opposed of alarm. And the
point of this if you're a hunter, and
some of you out there might be hunters,
you know that sometimes you
and look at the birds and you they will
go and look for seeds and the dropping.
Like if you're looking for a deer and
the deer defecates in the woods then
there will be seeds of whatever it's
eaten or grass or whatever and then the
birds go and they eat that seeds and so
if you're a hunter and you're watching
you can tell by the patterns of bird's
flight where your game is. So they found
quite a few things in caves and I can't
possibly show you them all. This is a
lamp and it's got an ibex on it also.
Again the ibex shows up a lot
that's why a lot of people think there
was a deep meaning for the Paleolithic
people of Central Europe, because they
find lots of ibex in the artwork.
It was very often used and this is
interesting because if you notice the
horns of the ibex are going around the
outline of the lamp. And so what that
means the, no ibex really looks like
that. So a human has taken an ibex we can
recognize the animal as ibex we know
what it is just from a few simple lines
so that means that artist was talented
enough to do that plus he had enough
imagination to make it abstract. So he
makes it go to the shape of the lamp and
the lamp of course is in this shape
because it's a functional thing. So they
would have put animal fat inside that
they would have been a wick probably you
know made out of any kind of burning
material that you would make a wick out
of. And you can see it would hold it in
your hand it's like six inches big. I'm
doing my best to put these in
chronological order by the way these
objects were dated. It's a little hard,
because for one thing the dating is all
within anywhere from five to nine
thousand years and these objects are
found very far apart. So knowing that
these people were nomadic, we don't
really know how far they traveled we
don't know for example did they walk all
the way from Spain to France or did they
just stay within their own
country. They could have been very far
ranging. You think about how long it
takes to walk somewhere. Think about the
Romanesque times we had pilgrimages.
The pilgrims in the 10th century used to
take walks from Central Europe and
they would walk out to Compostela in
Spain, get on a boat then go to Rome for
their pilgrimage and they'd be gone for
periods of three or four years. So humans
have always been travelers, but we don't
know whether the same bands of people
made all of the sculptures that i'm
going to show you. They could have made
by very been made by very different
bands with different customs. So it's
tough to generalize. I like rather just
to take a longer view and look at each
individual object and think about the
people that made them and what might
those particular people have been
thinking. They just all different kinds
of things. Anything that you could carve.
So for direct carving this sculpture in
the round and for direct carving the
biggest thing that you need is whatever
you're going to carve that object with
has to be a harder material than the
material that you're carving, if that
makes sense. So if you're carving
something out of stone you have to have
a tool that's harder than the stone
you're carving. This is made from mammoth
ivory, it's about 11 inches high. So this
tells us that either there were mammoths
in Hohlen-Stadel, Germany at the time
this was made or that these people
traded and got mammoth bones and made
sculptures out of them or that they
traveled to wear mammoths lived and took
back mammoth bones. So we can learn all
these different things about the people
by looking at the materials they're
using, but we don't really know which
might be true.
Thousands of these have been found and
it's a very high level of technical
skill. We know we can tell it's a lion
and a human. And again so is this a
picture of a human wearing a lion mask,
could it indicate that they were having
dances. You think of for instance in
African dances you have all these
different animal heads and shamans wear
to bring the appreciate animals that way.
Is it a mythical creature with the head
of a lion and the body of human? What
kinds of lions were there in their
country at that time? Were they a threat?
Did they keep lions? Was it a like you
think of in the ancient Near East you'll
see a certain circle the King on a lion
hunt that lion hunting has been a
pastime of kings for thousands of years,
is it possible that this is to
appreciate a lion hunt or some other
reason? So it's interesting that this
early
there is a non realistic portrayal.
Unless they really were lion-headed
humans at that time, I suppose. Although
no physiological skeletal evidence has been
found to support that theory.
This is a non utilitarian object. As
opposed to our ibex headed spear thrower,
which is a utilitarian object. And many
scholars think that this represents an
object that has to do with
shamanism. Shamanistic culture is often
animistic. That is to say that it's very
centered in animal magic. So again back
to this concept that generally
representations of animals as humans are
spiritual. Which engages this interesting
question, what is art and why do we make
it? And isn't it fascinating that 30,000
years ago humans were making it? This is
one of the oldest human figures known.
Lots of ideas we can get from this? Was it a
matriarchal society? Is that why we have
women? Were women in charge? Were they
fertility figures? Were they portraits of
actual women? Were they erotic? Were they
dolls? That last is unlikely. Thousands of
thousands of these different kinds of
figures have been found across Europe.
Now in the 19th century they all got the
name Venus figures, but you can. In Stocdad
has
a wonderful description of the reasons
why these verbiage has changed, but it
has to do with the Aristotelian
worldview. And Venus is the Roman goddess
of love. So Venus figures were seen as
fertility figures and it was assumed
that the Roman goddess of love and
fertility were one in the same. After
historical ideas began to change and
expand, they changed the names of the
Venus figures. They all became woman
or just figure. So if you look her up in
some books
she'll be written as the Venus of Lesqugue,
but you also might find her as the
woman of Lespugue. Depending on what
book you're looking in and when it was
published. This figure is made out of
hematite. This little tiny figure is two
inches in height. So just be a little
tiny woman you could keep in your pocket.
This one is probably the best-known
quote-unquote fertility figure. She used
to be named the Venus from Willendorf,
now her name is woman from Willendorf.
She's about four inches high and she's
very graphically carved. You can clearly
see all of her parts and its the
way it's carved absolutely exaggerate the
flesh of the female form. And we do know
that the braids, the seven braids, is
often a magic number and also that
braiding the hair was known as a very
sign of status and a ritual reason as
well. Now this slide here is sort of a
compilation of a lot of different
theories about this figurine and one
thing I wanted to say is, you know, this
last sentence it says there's a
suggestion the statue is a woman whose
importance as indicated in her obesity.
And there are actually cultures in
Africa in which they keep a fertility or
mother figure. It's a great honor to
become this woman and once she has
chosen she lives in a tent and offerings
of food are brought to her and that's
pretty much what she does is she offers
blessings to all those cool come and see
her and bring her offerings of food. And
her largeness and is a sign of
fertility for the tribe. So as you peruse
through these slides you can see many
different theories about this woman. We
do know she was painted and one takeaway
from this is the triangle does become as
I've stated here the universal symbol
for women. We can never know for certain
how this image was used and it is the
beginning of a long tradition in the
depiction of women and art. We're going
to see many many more figures before
this semester is over. It's possibly the
beginning of the cult of the mother
goddess or earth goddess image and we do
have later supports for these cults,
although we do not know whether this
image represents them. This little woman
from Brassempouy is an example of
abstraction. It's an absolute reduction
of shapes to just basic common forms. We
call this a memory image in other words
just by seeing the indication of the
eyes and the nose here the human brain
supplies her with a face. It doesn't need
to be actually depicted here. Do you
think they might have painted faces on
these or do you think that they were as
they were?
Isn't it interesting that even twenty
two thousand years ago humans used
abstraction. I'm going to end this
lecture with this relief sculpture of a
pregnant woman and deer. Which is
interesting on several levels. For one
thing we have a depiction of a woman and
it's a two-dimensional raised. Rather
than a three-dimensional object, it's on
a piece of reindeer antler. It's
only two inches big. So again it
little pocket object and it's a little
later 14,000 to 10,000 BCE. But I like
ending this lecture about sculpture here
because your next lecture I'm going to
talk about painting. So here we can see
the beginning of this abstract imagery
and the way that humans were recording
onto flat surfaces. And we have more
painting then we do relief sculpture.
Although we also have carving in cave
walls as well. So this is a nice place to
end this first look at prehistoric art.
