Cave art
Humans begin making images of the world
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Chauvet in France, Sulawesi in Indonesia and El Castillo in Spain show that figurative art arose independently, or very early, across enormous distances. The art is not naive: the painters used the cave's relief to give animals volume, and created motion by drawing multiple sets of legs. Together with jewellery, burials and bone flutes it is regarded as the clearest evidence of symbolic thought — the capacity to let one thing stand for another, which underpins language, religion and mathematics alike.
For children
Deep inside dark caves people drew horses, lions and rhinos on the walls with charcoal and red earth. They also left handprints. The pictures are over 30,000 years old — and they are still beautiful.
Connects to
Part of Terra Saga — the story of Earth on a timeline. terrasaga.org