The Penguin History of the World

Its concentration in space and time must be grounds for suspicion that there is more to be discovered. Caves in Africa abound with prehistoric paintings and carvings dated as far back as 27,000 years ago, and were being added to well into the reign of England’s Queen Victoria; in Australia there was cave-painting at least 20,000 years ago. Palaeolithic art is not, therefore, confined to Europe, but what has been discovered outside Europe has, so far, been studied much more intermittently. We do not yet know enough about the dating of cave paintings in other parts of the world, nor about the uniqueness of the conditions which led to the preservation in Europe of objects which may have had parallels elsewhere. Nor do we know what may have disappeared; there is a vast field of possibilities of what may have been produced in gesture, sound or perishable materials which cannot be explored. None the less, the art of western Europe in the Upper Palaeolithic, all qualifications made, has a colossal and solid impressiveness which is unique.

Recent finds confirm that forms of art were spread in different parts of Europe earlier than what has so far been believed. A remarkable figure of a large-breasted woman (almost certainly a fertility symbol) found in south-eastern Germany in 2008, dates to almost 40,000 years ago. Other finds in south-western France and northern Spain consist of small figures of stone, bone or, occasionally, clay, decorated objects (often tools and weapons) and the painted walls and roofs of caves. In these caves (and in the decoration of objects) there is an overwhelming preponderance of animal themes. The meaning of these designs, above all in the elaborate sequences of the cave-paintings, has intrigued scholars. Obviously, many of the beasts so carefully observed were central to a hunting economy. At least in the French caves, too, it now seems highly probable that a conscious order exists in the sequences in which they are shown. But to go further in the argument is still very hard. Clearly, art in Upper Palaeolithic times has to carry much of a burden later carried by writing, but what its messages mean is still obscure. It seems likely that the paintings were connected with religious or magical practice: African rock painting has been convincingly shown to be linked to magic and shamanism, and the selection of such remote and difficult corners of caves as those in which the European paintings have been traced is by itself strongly suggestive that some special rite was carried out when they were painted or gazed upon. (Artificial light, of course, was needed in these dark corners.) The origins of religion have been hinted at in Neanderthal burials and appear even more strongly in those of the Upper Palaeolithic peoples which are often elaborate; here, in their art, is something where inferences are even harder to resist. Perhaps it provides the first surviving relics of organized religion.

The birth, maturity and death of the earliest artistic achievement of mankind found in Europe occupies a very long period. Somewhere around 45,000 years ago appear decorated and coloured objects, often of bone and ivory. Then, four or five millennia later, we reach the first figurative art. Soon after that we reach the peak of the prehistoric aesthetic achievement, the great painted and incised cave ‘sanctuaries’ (as they have been called), with their processions of animals and mysterious repeated symbolic shapes. This high phase lasted about 5,000 years, a startlingly long time for the maintenance of so consistent a style and content. So long a period – almost as long as the whole history of civilization on this planet – illustrates the slowness with which tradition changed in ancient times and its imperviousness to outside influence. Perhaps it is an index, too, of the geographical isolation of prehistoric cultures. The last phase of this art that has been discerned takes the story down to about 9000 BC; in it, the stag more and more replaces other animals as subject-matter (no doubt thus reflecting the disappearance of the reindeer and the mammoth as the ice retreated), before a final burst of richly decorated tools and weapons brings Europe’s first great artistic achievement to an end. The age which followed produced nothing approaching it in scale or quality; its best surviving relics are a few decorated pebbles. Six thousand years were to pass before the next great art.