preview

How The Cave Art Made The World

Decent Essays

Kellianne Sirianni
Cave Paintings

Prehistoric cave paintings are the world’s first-known works of art. Hundreds of painted caves have been found throughout France and Spain. Though these paintings primarily involve pictures of animals they may also include humans, symbols, handprints, and engravings ("How Art Made The World”). Scholars have made a lot of effort trying to figure that out what had given these tribes the motivation to start producing these cave paintings. Although we still haven’t found a definitive answer as to why, people have come up with many good hypotheses. It has been suggested that the drawings of animals may have related to their hunt since hunting was crucial to their survival ("How Art Made The World”). Some images seem to have been clawed or gouged with spears. This could be to depict the exertion of power over animals. A pregnant-looking horse painting such as the one in the Lascaux cave could have been drawn to help influence and increase the fertility of herds of horses out in the wild ("Lascaux Cave"). Another thought is that beliefs and practices of these tribes could be tied to the cave art. Cave images could have been used to depict rituals as well as represent the experiences during them ("How Art Made The …show more content…

There are so many examples of cave art over the thousands of years that they were created. I do not think one single answer could be the reason for making art to span across that whole time period. Maybe at certain time periods they were for hunting, another time for ritual and another time for historical record. Maybe it was a combination of these ideas. And maybe they were just bored or did it for entertainment. Even today artists draw for a multitude of different reasons so I do not think we will ever truly understand the reasoning behind cave

Get Access