Prehistoric Art

My Favorites!

So starting off strong, we got one of the OLDEST cave paintings done by human hands, from Lubang Jeriji Saléh, a cave in Indonesia. This guy was painted roughly 40,000 years ago, but there are hand stencils in there that date to rougly 52,000 years ago!

This one is from Tassili N'Ajjer in Algeria. This one is from rougly 1000 BC, as noted by the appearance of camels! Wow!

Both of these are from Lascaux cave, one of the most famous sites for prehistoric art. I'm actually planning on getting the bull tattooed on me. Anyway, these are from around 17,000 years ago. They're not the oldest, but they're so incredibly impressive. I mean, LOOK AT THEM!!! This is one of my favorite sites tp be honest.

This bison is from Altamira Cave, and is around the same age as the Lascaux paintings. The paintings from this cave vary widely in age, but this one is from the Magdalenian period spanning from 16,590 and 14,000 years ago. There are paintings in here from around 36,000 years ago as well. This guy is one of the younger paintings in this cave. Very cool!

These rhinos are from Chauvet Cave. The dating of Chauvet has been a bit controversial, since the paintings fall into two different time periods, and habitation of the cave was not continuous. These are from the younger set of paintings, probably from 31,000 to 28,000 years ago. The oldest paintings in this cave are from 36,500 years ago.

This little lady is the Venus of Hohle Fels! She's made of mammoth ivory and was made around 40,000 to 42,000 years ago during the early Aurignacian period. She is the oldest undisputed depiction of a human. There's also a bone flute associated with this site, which is pretty cool. Anyway, I love Venus figurines, and she is the oldest of them all! We don't necessarily know why Venus figurines were made, my favorite theory is that they were portable art depicting female relatives or ancestors, kept as a reminder of them. I also like the idea of them being self-portraits.

MY BELOVED!

Okay so this is one of my all time favorite artifacts, the Venus of Willendorf. She's probably one of, if not the most famous Venus figurine. She's around 30,000 years old, and is associated with the Gravettian period of technology. Now, she's what got me into prehistoric art, especially paleolithic art. This page was inspired by my love for her. I keep a tiny jpeg of her on my desktop, and I recently crocheted a replica of her (not pictured, I need to get that on here). She is so cool, and if I ever get to visit Austria, you KNOW I'm gonna visit the museum that houses her. Kind of going back to what I was saying about the Venus of Hohle Fels and why they were made, I think the idea of these figurines depicting real people is beautiful, even if they're not exact images of them. They still represent real people, immortalized in figurines. I also made a zine about this particular figurine, which you can find on my writings page. Anyway, I love her your honor. Blorbo from my paleolithic site.