CAVE PAINTINGS.Cave painting

involves the application of colour pigments on the walls, floors or ceilings of prehistoric rock shelters and caves.

Cave paintings are monochrome, made with only one colour (usually black) or polychrome consisting of two or more colours.

Chauvet Cave, France

Altamira, Cantabria, Spain.1

The development of cave art coincided with the displacement of Neanderthal man by Homo Sapiens Sapiens, starting around 40,000 BC.

At least two hundred painted caves have been found throughout the Pyrenees regions of southern France and northern Spain. 

Lascaux, France.

Cosquer Cave, France.2

The paintings primarily depict animals but also include occasional human forms, a variety of non-representational symbols, human handprints, and engravings. 

Pech Merle, France.

Cueva del Castillo, Cantabria, Spain.

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ENGRAVINGS.Engraved drawing is

made by cutting lines in the rock surface with a flint or stone tool.

Piedra Siega Verde, Salamanca, Spain. Mazouco, Portugal4

ALTAMIRA

The cave is approximately 1000 meters long. Around 13,000 years ago a rockfall sealed the cave's entrance, preserving its contents until its discovery in 1879.

Bison, horses, deer, hands, and mysterious signs were painted or engraved over the 9,000 years during which the cave of Altamira was inhabited (22,000- 13,000 years ago). These representations extend for a length of more than 270 metres throughout the cave although the best known are the famous polychrome paintings.

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They used the natural contours of the cave walls to give their subjects a three-dimensional effect.

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LASCAUX.The cave contains nearly

2,000 figures, which can be grouped into three main categories: animals, human figures, and abstract signs. The paintings contain no images of the surrounding landscape or the vegetation of the time.

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Most of the major images have been painted using red, yellow, and black colours from mineral pigments,

including iron oxide (ochre) and haematite for red colour,  goethite for yellow colour, as well as manganese-containing pigments. Charcoal may also have been used for black colour. The colour may have been applied using animal fat.

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PALEOLITHIC AND NEOLITHIC PAINTINGS THROUGH PHOTOGRAPHS

Lascaux, France. Barranco de la Valltorta, Castellón, Spain.

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Recolector de miel, Ripol Perelló, Spain.

Humans depicted not only animals, human figure is now present in the wall paintings.

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Altamira, Cantabria, Spain.

Humans depicted scenes of the daily life.

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Even, human figures performing rituals.

Cogul, Lérida, Spain. A group of dancers.

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