In archaeology, cave paintings are a type of parietal art (which category also

includes petroglyphs, or engravings), found on the wall or ceilings of caves. The term
usually implies prehistoric origin. These paintings were often created by Homo sapiens,
but also Denisovans and Neanderthals; other species in the same Homo genus.
Discussion around prehistoric art is important in understanding the history of Homo
sapiens and how human beings have come to have unique abstract thoughts. Some
point to these prehistoric paintings as possible examples of creativity, spirituality, and
sentimental thinking in prehistoric humans.
The oldest known are more than 40,000 years old (art of the Upper Paleolithic) and
found in the caves in the district of Maros (Sulawesi, Indonesia). The oldest are often
constructed from hand stencils and simple geometric shapes.[5][b] More recently, in 2021,
cave art of a pig found in Sulawesi, Indonesia, and dated to over 45,500 years ago, has
been reported.[7][8]
A 2018 study claimed an age of 64,000 years for the oldest examples of non-figurative
cave art in the Iberian Peninsula. Represented by three red non-figurative symbols
found in the caves of Maltravieso, Ardales and La Pasiega, Spain, these predate the
appearance of modern humans in Europe by at least 20,000 years and thus must have
been made by Neanderthals rather than modern humans.[9]
In November 2018, scientists reported the discovery of the then-oldest known figurative
art painting, over 40,000 (perhaps as old as 52,000) years old, of an unknown animal, in
the cave of Lubang Jeriji Saléh on the Indonesian island of Borneo.[10][11] In December
2019, cave paintings portraying pig hunting within the Maros-Pangkep karst region
in Sulawesi were discovered to be even older, with an estimated age of at least 51,200
years. This finding was recognized as "the oldest known depiction of storytelling and the
earliest instance of figurative art in human history."[12][13] On July 3, 2024, the
journal Nature published research findings indicating that the cave paintings which
depict anthropomorphic figures interacting with a pig and measure 36 by 15 inches (91
by 38 cm) in Leang Karampuang are approximately 51,200 years old, establishing them
as the oldest known figurative art paintings in the world.[14][15]
Dating

One of the oldest known figurative paintings, a

depiction of an unknown bovine, was discovered in the Lubang Jeriji Saléh cave and
dated to be more than 40,000 (perhaps as old as 52,000) years old.[10][11]
Nearly 350 caves have now been discovered in France and Spain that contain art
from prehistoric times. Initially, the age of the paintings had been a contentious issue,
since methods like radiocarbon dating can produce misleading results if contaminated
by other samples,[16] and caves and rocky overhangs (where parietal art is found) are
typically littered with debris from many time periods. But subsequent technology has
made it possible to date the paintings by sampling the pigment itself, torch marks on the
walls,[17] or the formation of carbonate deposits on top of the paintings.[18] The subject
matter can also indicate chronology: for instance, the reindeer depicted in the Spanish
cave of Cueva de las Monedas places the drawings in the last Ice Age.
The oldest known cave painting is a red hand stencil in Maltravieso cave, Cáceres,
Spain. It has been dated using the uranium-thorium method[18] to older than 64,000
years and was made by a Neanderthal.[9] The oldest date given to an animal cave
painting is now a depiction of several human figures hunting pigs in the caves in the
Maros-Pangkep karst of South Sulawesi, Indonesia, dated to be over 43,900 years old.
[13]
Before this, the oldest known figurative cave paintings were that of a bull dated to
40,000 years, at Lubang Jeriji Saléh cave, East Kalimantan, Indonesian Borneo,[19] and
a depiction of a pig with a minimum age of 35,400 years at Timpuseng cave in
Sulawesi.[5]

Inside of the Cave of El Castillo in Puente

Viesgo, Cantabria (Spain). Dating back to 40,000BC, El Castillo hosts the earliest
figurative cave painting in Europe known to date.
The earliest known European figurative cave paintings are those of the Cave of El
Castillo in Spain, which a 2012 study using uranium-thorium dated back to at least
40,000 BC.[20][21] Prior to this announcement, it was believed that the oldest figurative
cave paintings were those of the Chauvet Cave in France, dating to earlier than 30,000
BC in the Upper Paleolithic according to radiocarbon dating.[22] Some researchers
believe the drawings are too advanced for this era and question this age.[23] More than
80 radiocarbon dates had been obtained by 2011, with samples taken from torch marks
and from the paintings themselves, as well as from animal bones and charcoal found on
the cave floor. The radiocarbon dates from these samples show that there were two
periods of creation in Chauvet: 35,000 years ago and 30,000 years ago.[24] One of the
surprises was that many of the paintings were modified repeatedly over thousands of
years, possibly explaining the confusion about finer paintings that seemed to date
earlier than cruder ones.[citation needed]

An artistic depiction of a group of rhinoceros was

completed in the Chauvet Cave 30,000 to 32,000 years ago.
In 2009, cavers discovered drawings in Coliboaia Cave in Romania, stylistically
comparable to those at Chauvet.[25] An initial dating puts the age of an image in the
same range as Chauvet: about 32,000 years old.[26]
In Australia, cave paintings have been found on the Arnhem Land plateau
showing megafauna which are thought to have been extinct for over 40,000 years,
making this site another candidate for oldest known painting; however, the proposed
age is dependent on the estimate of the extinction of the species seemingly depicted.
[27]
Another Australian site, Nawarla Gabarnmang, has charcoal drawings that have
been radiocarbon-dated to 28,000 years, making it the oldest site in Australia and
among the oldest in the world for which reliable date evidence has been obtained. [28]
Other examples may date as late as the Early Bronze Age, but the well-
known Magdalenian style seen at Lascaux in France (c. 15,000 BC) and Altamira in
Spain died out about 10,000 BC, coinciding with the advent of the Neolithic period.
Some caves probably continued to be painted over a period of several thousands of
years.[29]
The next phase of surviving European prehistoric painting, the rock art of the Iberian
Mediterranean Basin, was very different, concentrating on large assemblies of smaller
and much less detailed figures, with at least as many humans as animals. This was
created roughly between 10,000 and 5,500 years ago, and painted in rock shelters
under cliffs or shallow caves, in contrast to the recesses of deep caves used in the
earlier (and much colder) period. Although individual figures are less naturalistic, they
are grouped in coherent grouped compositions to a much greater degree. Over a long
period of time, the cave art has become less naturalistic and has graduated from
beautiful, naturalistic animal drawings to simple ones, and then to abstract shapes.
Subjects, themes, and patterns in cave painting
 Prehistoric cave painting of animals at Albarracín,
Teruel, Spain (rock art of the Iberian Mediterranean Basin)
Cave artists used a variety of techniques such as finger tracing, modeling in clay,
engravings, bas-relief sculpture, hand stencils, and paintings done in two or three
colors. Scholars classify cave art as "Signs" or abstract marks. [30] The most common
subjects in cave paintings are large wild animals, such as bison, horses, aurochs,
and deer, and tracings of human hands as well as abstract patterns, called finger
flutings. The species found most often were suitable for hunting by humans, but were
not necessarily the actual typical prey found in associated deposits of bones; for
example, the painters of Lascaux have mainly left reindeer bones, but this species does
not appear at all in the cave paintings, where equine species are the most common.
Drawings of humans were rare and are usually schematic as opposed to the more
detailed and naturalistic images of animal subjects. Kieran D. O'Hara, geologist,
suggests in his book Cave Art and Climate Change that climate controlled the themes
depicted.[31] Pigments used include red and yellow ochre, hematite, manganese
oxide and charcoal. Sometimes the silhouette of the animal was incised in the rock first,
and in some caves all or many of the images are only engraved in this fashion,[citation
needed]
taking them somewhat out of a strict definition of "cave painting".
Similarly, large animals are also the most common subjects in the many small carved
and engraved bone or ivory (less often stone) pieces dating from the same periods. But
these include the group of Venus figurines, which with a few incomplete exceptions
have no real equivalent in Paleolithic cave paintings.[32] One counterexample is a
feminine figure in the Chauvet Cave, as described in an interview with Dominique
Baffier in Cave of Forgotten Dreams.[33] Hand stencils, formed by placing a hand against
the wall and covering the surrounding area in pigment result in the characteristic image
of a roughly round area of solid pigment with the negative shape of the hand in the
centre, these may then be decorated with dots, dashes, and patterns. Often, these are
found in the same caves as other paintings, or may be the only form of painting in a
location. Some walls contain many hand stencils. Similar hands are also painted in the
usual fashion. A number of hands show a finger wholly or partly missing, for which a
number of explanations have been given. Hand images are found in similar forms in
Europe, Eastern Asia, Australia, and South America.[34] One site in Baja
California features handprints as a prominent motif in its rock art. Archaeological study
of this site revealed that, based on the size of the handprints, they most likely belonged
to the women of the community. In addition to this, they were likely used during initiation
rituals in Chinigchinich religious practices, which were commonly practiced in
the Luiseño territory where this site is located.[35]
Theories and interpretations

Rock paintings from the Cave of Beasts (Gilf

Kebir, Libyan Desert) Estimated 7000 BP
In the early 20th century, following the work of Walter Baldwin Spencer and Francis
James Gillen, scholars such as Salomon Reinach, Henri Breuil and Count
Bégouën [fr] interpreted the paintings as 'utilitarian' hunting magic to increase the
abundance of prey.[36] Jacob Bronowski states, "I think that the power that we see
expressed here for the first time is the power of anticipation: the forward-looking
imagination. In these paintings the hunter was made familiar with dangers which he
knew he had to face but to which he had not yet come."[37]
Another theory, developed by David Lewis-Williams and broadly based on ethnographic
studies of contemporary hunter-gatherer societies, is that the paintings were made by
paleolithic shamans.[38] The shaman would retreat into the darkness of the caves, enter
into a trance state, then paint images of their visions, perhaps with some notion of
drawing out power from the cave walls themselves.
R. Dale Guthrie, who has studied both highly artistic and lower quality art and figurines,
identifies a wide range of skill and age among the artists. He hypothesizes that the main
themes in the paintings and other artifacts (powerful beasts, risky hunting scenes and
the representation of nude women) are the work of adolescent males, who constituted a
large portion of cave painters, based on surrounding hand print analysis.[39][verification
needed]
However, in analyzing hand prints and stencils in French and Spanish caves,
Dean Snow of Pennsylvania State University has proposed that a proportion of them,
including those around the spotted horses in Pech Merle, were of female hands.[40]
Analysis in 2022, led by Bennett Bacon, an amateur archaeologist, along with a team of
professional archeologists and psychologists at the University of Durham, including Paul
Pettitt and Robert William Kentridge,[41] suggested that lines and dots (and a commonly
seen, if curious, "Y" symbol, which was proposed to mean "to give birth") on upper
palaeolithic cave paintings correlated with the mating cycle of animals in a lunar
calendar, potentially making them the earliest known evidence of a proto-writing system
and explaining one object of many cave paintings.[42]