Why do paleolithic female figurines vastly outnumber those representing males?

The history of human beings on this planet is, geo-logically speaking, very short. The history of their coming together in groups for their common good is even shorter, covering a span of perhaps 25,000 to 50,000 years on a planet that scientists estimate to be between 4 and 5 billion years old. We call these groups, as they become more and more sophisticated, civilizations. A civiliz ation is a social, economic, and political entity distinguished by

the ability to express itself through images and written lan- guage. Civilizations develop when the environment of a region can support a large and productive population. It is no accident that the first civilizations arose in fertile river valleys, where agriculture could take hold: the Tigris and the Euphrates in Mesopotamia, the Nile in Egypt, the Indus on the Indian subcontinent, and the Yellow in China. Civilizations require technologies capable of supporting the

The Ancient World and the Classical Past P r e h i s t o r y t o 2 0 0 c e

Nebamun Hunting Birds, from the tomb of Nebamun, Thebes, Egypt (detail). ca. 1400 bce (see Fig 3.2 in Chapter 3).

P A R T O N E

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principal economy. In the ancient world, agriculture was supported by the technologies related to irrigation.

With the rise of agriculture, and with irrigation, human nature began to assert itself over and against nature as a whole. People increasingly thought of themselves as mas- ters of their own destiny. At the same time, different and dispersed populations began to come into contact with one another as trade developed from the need for raw materi- als not native to a particular region. Organizing this level of trade and production also required an administrative elite to form and establish cultural priorities. The existence of such an elite is another characteristic of civilization. Finally, as the history of cultures around the world makes abundantly clear, one of the major ways in which socie- ties have acquired the goods they want and simultaneously organized themselves is by means of war.

If a civilization is a system of organization, a culture is the set of common values—religious, social, and/or politi- cal—that govern that system. Out of such cultures arise sci- entific and artistic achievements by which we characterize different cultures. Before the invention of writing sometime around the fourth millennium bce, these cultures created myths and legends that explained their origins and relation to the world. As we do today, ancient peoples experienced the great uncontrollable, and sometimes violent, forces of nature—floods, droughts, earthquakes, and hurricanes. Pre- historic cultures understood these forces as the work of the invisible gods, who could not be approached directly but only through the mediating agency of shamans and priests, or kings and heroes. As cultures became increasingly self- assertive, in the islands between mainland Greece and Asia Minor, in Egypt, in China, on the Indian subcontinent, and on the Greek mainland, these gods seemed increasingly knowable. The gods could still intervene in human affairs, but now they did so in ways that were recognizable. It was suddenly possible to believe that if people could come to understand themselves, they might also understand the gods. The study of the natural world might well shed light on the unknown, on the truth of things.

It is to this moment—it was a long “moment,” extending for centuries—that the beginnings of scientific inquiry can be traced. humanism, the study of the human mind and its moral and ethical dimensions, was born. In China, the for- malities of social interaction—moderation, personal integ- rity, self-control, loyalty, altruism, and justice—were codified in the writings of Confucius. In Mesopotamia and Greece, the presentation of a human character working things out (or not) in the face of adversity was the subject of epic and dra- matic literature. In Greece, it was also the subject of philos- ophy—literally, “love of wisdom”—the practice of reasoning that followed from the Greek philosopher Socrates’ famous dictum, “Know thyself.” Visual artists strove to discover the perfections of human form and thought. By the time of the rise of the Roman Empire, at the end of the first millen- nium bce, these traditions were carried on in more prac- tical ways, as the Romans attempted to engineer a society embodying the values they had inherited from the Greeks.

PART ONE TIMELINE

30,000 bce Art created in the Chauvet Cave

10,000–8000 bce Emergence of agricultural civilizations in Mesopotamia, India, Egypt, China

1792–1750 bce Hammurabi’s Law Code

1500–322 bce Vedic period in India; origins of Hinduism

3200–2000 bce Development of pictographic writing systems in Mesopotamia, India, Egypt, China

2500 bce Pyramids in Egypt

1200 bce Mesopotamia: Epic of Gilgamesh

1200 bce Earliest use of Phoenician phonetic alphabet

1300 bce Emergence of Olmec culture in Mesoamerica

800–600 bce Etruria: Origins of Roman culture

563–483 bce Lifetime of Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha) in India

551–479 bce Lifetime of Confucius in Zhou dynasty China

469–399 bce Lifetime of Socrates, Greek philosopher

461–429 bce Pericles, Socrates, Sophocles Parthenon on Athens’s Acropolis

1000 bce King David reigns in Israel

800 bce Acropolis (citadel) and agora (market) Homeric epics: Iliad and Odyssey

27 bce Octavian becomes Emperor Augustus

20 bce Augustus of Primaporta

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3

THINKING AHEAD

1.1 Discuss the ways in which cave art and small sculptural figurines in the Paleolithic era have been interpreted.

1.2 Explain how the art and architecture of the Neolithic era reflect changing cultural concerns.

1.3 Understand the function of myth in prehistoric culture.

1.4 Describe the role of sacred sites in prehistoric culture.

On a cold December afternoon in 1994, Jean-Marie Chauvet and two friends were exploring the caves in the steep cliffs along the Ardèche River gorge in southern France. After descending into a series of nar- row passages, they entered a large chamber. There, beams from their headlamps lit up a group of drawings that would astonish the three explorers—and the world (Fig. 1.1).

Since the late nineteenth century, we have known that prehistoric peoples, peoples who lived before the time of writing and so of recorded history, drew on the walls of caves. Twenty-seven such caves had already been discov- ered in the cliffs along the 17 miles of the Ardèche gorge (Map 1.1). But the cave found by Chauvet and his friends transformed our thinking about prehistoric peoples. Where previously discovered cave paintings had appeared to mod- ern eyes as childlike, this cave contained drawings compa- rable to those a contemporary artist might have done. We can only speculate that other comparable artworks were pro- duced in prehistoric times but have not survived, perhaps because they were made of wood or other perishable materi- als. It is even possible that art may have been made earlier than 30,000 years ago, perhaps as people began to inhabit the Near East, between 90,000 and 100,000 years ago.

At first, during the Paleolithic era, or “Old Stone Age,” from the Greek palaios, “old,” and lithos, “stone,” the cultures

of the world sustained themselves on game and wild plants. The cultures themselves were small, scattered, and nomadic, though evidence suggests some interaction among the vari- ous groups. We begin this book, then, with the cultures of prehistoric times, evidence of which survives in wall paint- ings in caves and in small sculptures dating back more than 25,000 years.

Fig. 1.1 Wall painting with horses, Chauvet Cave, Vallon-Pont-d’Arc, Ardèche gorge, France. ca. 30,000 bce. Paint on limestone, height approx. 6'. Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication. Direction Régionale des Affaires Culturelles de Rhône-Alpes. Service Régional de l’Archéologie. In the center of this wall are four horses, each behind the other in a startlingly realistic depiction. Below them, two rhinoceroses fight.

The Rise of Culture From Forest to Farm

100 miles

100 km

4 miles

4 km

Bayol

Niaux Réseau Clastres

Fontanet

Chauvet

Vacheresse

Ebbou Le Colombier

Tête-du-Lion Les deux-Ouvertures

Chabot Le FiguierOulen

Le Portel

Gargas

Altamira Les Trois Freres`

Jovelle

Gabillou

Rouf€gnac Lascaux

La Mouthe Pech Merle Cougnac

La Baume-Latrone

Cosquer

Ardeche `

Ardeche `

Marseilles

Lyons

Toulouse

Major Paleolithic caves in France and Spain

Cahors

Bordeaux Isle

FRANCE

SPAIN

ARDECHE REGION

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ARDECHE REGION`

ATLANTIC

OCEAN R

hô ne

Garonne

Dordogne Lot

Map 1.1 Major Paleolithic caves in France and Spain.

1

Listen to the chapter audio on MyArtsLab

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4 PART ONE The Ancient World and the Classical Past

THE BEGINNINGS OF CULTURE IN THE PALEOLITHIC ERA

In what ways has the role of art in Paleolithic culture been discussed?

A culture encompasses the values and behaviors shared by a group of people, developed over time, and passed down from one generation to the next. Culture manifests itself in the laws, customs, ritual behavior, and artistic produc- tion common to the group. The cave paintings at Chauvet suggest that, as early as 30,000 years ago, the Ardèche gorge was a center of culture, a focal point of group living in which the values of a community find expression. There were oth- ers like it. In northern Spain, the first decorated cave was dis covered in 1879 at Altamira. In the Dordogne region of southern France to the west of the Ardèche, schoolchil- dren discovered the famous Lascaux Cave in 1940 when their dog disappeared down a hole. And in 1991, along the French Mediterranean coast, a diver discovered the entrance to the beautifully decorated Cosquer Cave below the waterline near Marseille.

Agency and Ritual: Cave Art Ever since cave paintings were first discovered, scholars have marveled at the skill of the people who produced them, but we have been equally fascinated by their very existence. Why were these paintings made? Most scholars believe that they possessed some sort of agency—that is, they were created to exert some power or authority over the world of those who came into contact with them. Until

recently, it was generally accepted that such works were associated with the hunt. Perhaps the hunter, seeking game in times of scarcity, hoped to conjure it up by depicting it on cave walls. Or perhaps such drawings were magic charms meant to ensure a successful hunt. But at Chauvet, fully 60 percent of the animals painted on its walls were never, or rarely, hunted—such animals as lions, rhinoceroses, bears, panthers, and woolly mammoths. One drawing depicts two rhinoceroses fighting horn-to-horn beneath four horses that appear to be looking on (see Fig. 1.1).

What role, then, did these drawings play in the daily lives of the people who created them? The caves may have served as some sort of ritual space. A ritual is a rite or ceremony habitually practiced by a group, often in religious or quasi- religious contexts. The caves, for instance, might be understood as gateways to the underworld and death, as symbols of the womb and birth, or as pathways to the world of dreams experienced in the dark of night, and rites connected with such passage might have been con- ducted in them. The general arrangement of the animals in the paintings by species or gender, often in distinct chambers of the caves, suggests to some that the paint- ings may have served as lunar calendars for predict- ing the seasonal migration of the animals. Whatever the case, surviving human footprints indicate that these caves were ritual gathering places and in some way were intended to serve the common good.

At Chauvet, the use of color suggests that the paint- ings served some sacred or symbolic function. For instance, almost all of the paintings near the entrance to the cave are painted with natural red pigments derived from ores rich in iron oxide. Deeper in the cave, in areas more difficult to

Fig. 1.2 Wall painting with bird-headed man, bison, and rhinoceros, Lascaux Cave, Dordogne, France. ca. 15,000– 13,000 bce. Paint on limestone, length approx. 9'. In 1963, Lascaux was closed to the public so that conservators could fight a fungus attacking the paintings. Most likely, the fungus was caused by carbon dioxide exhaled by visitors. An exact replica called Lascaux II was built and can be visited.

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CHAPTER 1 The Rise of Culture 5

reach, the vast majority of the animals are painted in black pigments derived from ores rich in manganese dioxide. This shift in color appears to be intentional, but we can only guess at its meaning.

The skillfully drawn images at Chauvet raise even more important questions. The artists seem to have understood and practiced a kind of illusionism—that is, they were able to convey a sense of three-dimensional space on a two- dimensional surface. In the painting reproduced at the beginning of this chapter, several horses appear to stand one behind the other (see Fig. 1.1). The head of the top horse overlaps a black line, as if peering over a branch or the back of another animal. In no other cave yet discovered do drawings show the use of shading, or modeling, so that the horses’ heads seem to have volume and dimension. And yet these cave paintings, rendered over 30,000 years ago, predate other cave paintings by at least 10,000 years, and in some cases by as much as 20,000 years.