Features of Paleolithic rock art. Rock art of the Paleolithic era. Cave of Altamira. Spain

Art of small forms or mobile art (small plastic)
An integral part of the art of the Paleolithic era are objects that are commonly called "small plastic".
These are three types of objects:
1. Figurines and other three-dimensional items carved from soft stone or other materials (horn, mammoth tusk).
2. Flattened objects with engravings and paintings.
3. Reliefs in caves, grottoes and under natural canopies.
The relief was knocked out with a deep contour or the background around the image was shy.

Relief

One of the first finds, called small plastics, was a bone plate from the Shaffo grotto with images of two fallow deer or deer:
Deer swimming across the river. Fragment. Bone carving. France. Late Paleolithic (Madeleine period).

Very interesting figurines of women. Most of these figurines are small in size: from 4 to 17 cm. They were made of stone or mammoth tusks. Their most notable distinguishing feature is their exaggerated "corpulence", they depict women with overweight figures.
"Venus with a goblet". Bas-relief. France. Upper (Late) Paleolithic.
Goddess of the Ice Age. The canon of the image is that the figure is inscribed in a rhombus, and the stomach and chest are in a circle.

Sculpture- mobile art.
Almost everyone who has studied Paleolithic female figurines, with some differences in detail, explains them as cult objects, amulets, idols, etc., reflecting the idea of motherhood and fertility.

"Willendorf Venus". Limestone. Willendorf, Lower Austria. Late Paleolithic.
Compact composition, no facial features.

"The Hooded Lady of Brassempouy". France. Late Paleolithic. Mammoth bone.
The facial features and hairstyle have been worked out.

In Siberia, in the Baikal region, a whole series of original figurines of a completely different stylistic appearance was found. Along with the same as in Europe, overweight figures of naked women, there are figurines of slender, elongated proportions and, unlike European ones, they are depicted dressed in deaf, most likely fur clothes, similar to "overalls".
These are finds at the Buret sites on the Angara River and Malta.
conclusions
Rock painting. Features of the pictorial art of the Paleolithic - realism, expression, plasticity, rhythm.
Small plastic.
In the image of animals - the same features as in painting (realism, expression, plasticity, rhythm).
Paleolithic female figurines are cult objects, amulets, idols, etc., they reflect the idea of motherhood and fertility.

Mesolithic

(Middle Stone Age) 10 - 6 thousand BC

After the melting of the glaciers, the usual fauna disappeared. Nature becomes more pliable for man. People become nomads.
With a change in lifestyle, a person's view of the world becomes broader. He is not interested in a single animal or a random discovery of cereals, but in the vigorous activity of people, thanks to which they find whole herds of animals, and fields or forests rich in fruits.
Thus, in the Mesolithic, the art of multi-figured composition was born, in which it was no longer the beast, but the man who played the leading role.
Change in the field of art:
the main characters of the image are not a separate animal, but people in some action.
The task is not in a believable, accurate depiction of individual figures, but in the transfer of action, movement.
Many-figured hunts are often depicted, scenes of honey gathering, cult dances appear.
The nature of the image is changing - instead of realistic and polychrome, it becomes schematic and silhouette. Local colors are used - red or black.

Hive honey harvester surrounded by a swarm of bees. Spain. Mesolithic.

Almost everywhere where planar or three-dimensional images of the Upper Paleolithic era were found, there seems to be a pause in the artistic activity of people of the subsequent Mesolithic era. Perhaps this period is still poorly understood, perhaps the images made not in caves, but in the open air, were washed away by rain and snow over time. Perhaps, among the petroglyphs, which are very difficult to accurately date, there are those related to this time, but we still do not know how to recognize them. It is indicative that small plastic objects are extremely rare during excavations of Mesolithic settlements.
Of the Mesolithic monuments, only a few can be named: Stone Grave in Ukraine, Kobystan in Azerbaijan, Zaraut-Sai in Uzbekistan, Mines in Tajikistan and Bhimpetka in India.

In addition to rock art, petroglyphs appeared in the Mesolithic era.
Petroglyphs are carved, carved or scratched rock art.

When carving a picture, ancient artists knocked down the upper, darker part of the rock with a sharp tool, and therefore the images stand out noticeably against the background of the rock.

The scene of the hunt. Spain.
Some scenes of driven hunts with archers in the paintings of the Spanish and African cycles are, as it were, the embodiment of the movement itself, brought to the limit, concentrated in a stormy whirlwind.

Neolithic

(New stone age)
from 6 to 2 thousand BC

Neolithic- New Stone Age, the last stage of the Stone Age.
periodization. The entry into the Neolithic is timed to coincide with the transition of culture from an appropriating (hunters and gatherers) to a producing (agriculture and/or cattle breeding) type of economy. This transition is called the Neolithic Revolution. The end of the Neolithic dates back to the time of the appearance of metal tools and weapons, that is, the beginning of the copper, bronze or iron age.
Different cultures entered this period of development at different times. In the Middle East, the Neolithic began about 9.5 thousand years ago. BC e. In Denmark, the Neolithic dates from the 18th century. BC, and among the indigenous population of New Zealand - the Maori - the Neolithic existed as early as the 18th century. AD: before the arrival of Europeans, the Maori used polished stone axes. Some peoples of America and Oceania still have not fully passed from the Stone Age to the Iron Age.

The Neolithic, like other periods of the primitive era, is not a specific chronological period in the history of mankind as a whole, but characterizes only the cultural characteristics of certain peoples.

Achievements and activities
1. New features of the social life of people:
- Transition from matriarchy to patriarchy.
- At the end of the era in some places (Anterior Asia, Egypt, India) a new formation of a class society took shape, that is, social stratification began, the transition from a tribal-communal system to a class society.
- At this time, cities begin to be built. One of the most ancient cities is Jericho.
- Some cities were well fortified, which indicates the existence of organized wars at that time.
- Armies and professional warriors began to appear.
- One can quite say that the beginning of the formation of ancient civilizations is connected with the Neolithic era.

2. The division of labor, the formation of technologies began:
- The main thing is simple gathering and hunting as the main sources of food are gradually being replaced by agriculture and cattle breeding.
The Neolithic is called the "Age of Polished Stone". In this era, stone tools were not just chipped, but already sawn, polished, drilled, sharpened.
- Among the most important tools in the Neolithic is an ax, previously unknown.
development of spinning and weaving.

In the design of household utensils, images of animals begin to appear.

An ax in the shape of an elk head. Polished stone. Neolithic. Historical Museum. Stockholm.

Wooden ladle from the Gorbunovsky peat bog near Nizhny Tagil. Neolithic. GIM.

For the Neolithic forest zone, fishing becomes one of the leading types of economy. Active fishing contributed to the creation of certain stocks, which, combined with the hunting of animals, made it possible to live in one place all year round.
The transition to a settled way of life led to the appearance of ceramics.
The appearance of ceramics is one of the main signs of the Neolithic era.

Cup from Ledce (Czech Republic). Clay. Culture of bell-shaped goblets. Eneolithic (Copper Stone Age).

Monuments of Neolithic painting and petroglyphs are extremely numerous and scattered over vast territories.
Their accumulations are found almost everywhere in Africa, eastern Spain, on the territory of the former USSR - in Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, on Lake Onega, near the White Sea and in Siberia.
Neolithic rock art is similar to Mesolithic, but the subject matter becomes more varied.

"Hunters". Rock painting. Neolithic (?). Southern Rhodesia.

For about three hundred years, the attention of scientists was riveted to the rock, known as the "Tomsk Pisanitsa".
"Pisanitsy" refers to images painted with mineral paint or carved on the smooth surface of a wall in Siberia.
Back in 1675, one of the brave Russian travelers, whose name, unfortunately, remained unknown, wrote:
“The prison (Verkhnetomsky prison) did not reach the edges of the Tom, a stone is large and high, and animals, and cattle, and birds, and all sorts of similarities are written on it ...”
Real scientific interest in this monument arose already in the 18th century, when, by decree of Peter I, an expedition was sent to Siberia to study its history and geography. The result of the expedition was the first images of the Tomsk petroglyphs published in Europe by the Swedish captain Stralenberg, who participated in the trip. These images were not an exact copy of the Tomsk inscription, but conveyed only the most general outlines of the rocks and the placement of drawings on it, but their value lies in the fact that they can be seen drawings that have not survived to this day.

Images of the Tomsk petroglyphs, made by the Swedish boy K. Shulman, who traveled with Stralenberg across Siberia.

For hunters, deer and elk were the main source of livelihood. Gradually, these animals began to acquire mythical features - the elk was the "master of the taiga" along with the bear.
The image of the elk plays the main role in the Tomsk petroglyphs: the figures are repeated many times.
The proportions and shapes of the animal's body are absolutely correctly conveyed: its long massive body, a hump on its back, a heavy large head, a characteristic protrusion on the forehead, a swollen upper lip, bulging nostrils, thin legs with cloven hooves.
In some drawings, transverse stripes are shown on the neck and body of moose.

Moose. Tomsk writing. Siberia. Neolithic.

The small plastic of the Neolithic acquires, as well as painting, new subjects.
"Man Playing the Lute". Marble (from Keros, Cyclades, Greece). Neolithic. National Archaeological Museum. Athens.

The schematism inherent in Neolithic painting, which replaced Paleolithic realism, also penetrated small plastic arts.
Schematic representation of a woman. Cave relief. Neolithic. Croisart. Department of the Marne. France.

Relief with a symbolic image from Castelluccio (Sicily). Limestone. OK. 1800-1400 BC National Archaeological Museum. Syracuse.

conclusions

Mesolithic and Neolithic rock art
It is not always possible to draw a precise line between them.
But this art is very different from the typically Paleolithic:
- Realism, accurately fixing the image of the beast as a target, as a cherished goal, is replaced by a broader view of the world, the image of multi-figured compositions.
- There is a desire for harmonic generalization, stylization and, most importantly, for the transfer of movement, for dynamism.
- In the Paleolithic there was a monumentality and inviolability of the image. Here - liveliness, free fantasy.
- In the images of a person, a desire for grace appears (for example, if we compare the Paleolithic "Venuses" and the Mesolithic image of a woman collecting honey, or Neolithic Bushman dancers).

Small plastic:
- There are new stories.
- Greater craftsmanship and mastery of craft, material.

Achievements

Paleolithic
- Lower Paleolithic
> > fire taming, stone tools
- Middle Paleolithic
> > out of Africa
- Upper Paleolithic
> > sling

Mesolithic
- microliths, bow, canoe

Neolithic
- Early Neolithic
> > agriculture, animal husbandry
- Late Neolithic
> > ceramics

Eneolithic (Copper Age)
- metallurgy, horse, wheel

Bronze Age

The Bronze Age is characterized by the leading role of bronze products, which was associated with an improvement in the processing of metals such as copper and tin, obtained from ore deposits, and the subsequent production of bronze from them.
The Bronze Age succeeded the Copper Age and preceded the Iron Age. In general, the chronological framework of the Bronze Age: 35/33 - 13/11 centuries. BC e., but different cultures are different.
Art is becoming more diverse, spreading geographically.

Bronze was much easier to work than stone and could be molded and polished. Therefore, in the Bronze Age, all kinds of household items were made, richly decorated with ornaments and of high artistic value. Ornamental decorations consisted mostly of circles, spirals, wavy lines and similar motifs. Particular attention was paid to jewelry - they were large in size and immediately caught the eye.

The Paleolithic is the oldest and longest period in history. For the study of the art of the primitive system, the Late Paleolithic is most important, since it was during this period that the tribal organization finally took shape, art appeared in its original form. The Late Paleolithic is the time of the birth of primary religious beliefs: magic, totemism and animism, which are inextricably linked with art and find their expression both in sculpture and in the fine arts of the primitive system. Some scientists consider the version that it was the emerging religious beliefs that gave impetus to the development of art and its further improvement.

Having mastered the skills of creating primitive tools in previous periods, the man of the late Paleolithic gradually improved them, he already learned certain crafts, the ability to build primitive dwellings, the dressing of animal skins, and a tribal organization began to take shape. It should be noted that as early as the Middle Paleolithic era, man began to create the first items related to spiritual needs. This is evidenced by the finds in the cave of La Ferasi in France - small stone slabs with colorful spots applied to them or hollowed out recesses arranged in a strict order.

At the beginning of the Late Paleolithic, a small round sculpture (from 5 to 10 cm) appears, created from soft rocks of stone, horn, bone, clay, that is, those materials that are available for processing. Reliefs carved on the walls of caves can be conditionally attributed to the Late Paleolithic sculpture. The plots all refer to images of animals that a person hunted. Apparently, they had a magical significance, served as an element of magical rituals in the late Paleolithic. Small plastic art is especially widespread in Eastern Europe and Siberia.

Separately, it can be considered as an example of plasticity - figures of women created according to the same principle. The limbs of such figurines are barely outlined, there are no facial features, but at the same time, the signs of a woman-mother are hypertrophied. This is most likely due to the image of the progenitor and the beginnings of the fertility cult. Similar figurines are often found in the Late Paleolithic. The most famous of them is the Venus of Willendorf. Facial features are simply not important to the artist. If necessary, the masters of the Paleolithic were able to convey the appearance of a person quite well and expressively. This is clearly visible in the head from Brassempui. And in the image of the head from Dolny Vestonitsy, this is not a generalized face, but the specific appearance of a person, a young girl, with individuality and emotionally colored.

Concluding the review of Paleolithic sculpture, we can say that its main feature is the ability to choose the main thing, to highlight the main feature of the depicted, the gradual complication of forms, the use, albeit simplified, but very expressive techniques in practice. Primitive man can already create the form he needs, give it expressiveness, feel the specific expressive possibilities of the material.

Primitive (or, otherwise, primitive) art geographically covers all continents except Antarctica, and in time - the entire era of human existence, preserved by some peoples living in remote corners of the planet to this day.

Most of the most ancient paintings were found in Europe (from Spain to the Urals).

It was well preserved on the walls of the caves - the entrances turned out to be tightly filled up millennia ago, the same temperature and humidity were maintained there.

Not only wall paintings have been preserved, but also other evidence of human activity - clear footprints of bare feet of adults and children on the damp floor of some caves.

Reasons for the emergence of creative activity and the function of primitive art Man's need for beauty and creativity.

beliefs of the time. The man portrayed those whom he revered. People of that time believed in magic: they believed that with the help of paintings and other images, one could influence the nature or outcome of the hunt. It was believed, for example, that it was necessary to hit a drawn animal with an arrow or spear in order to ensure the success of a real hunt.

periodization

Now science is changing its opinion about the age of the earth and the time frame is changing, but we will study by the generally accepted names of the periods.
1. Stone Age
1.1 Old Stone Age - Paleolithic. ... to 10 thousand BC
1.2 Middle Stone Age - Mesolithic. 10 - 6 thousand BC
1.3 New Stone Age - Neolithic. From 6 - to 2 thousand BC
2. Bronze Age. 2 thousand BC
3. Age of iron. 1 thousand BC

Paleolithic

Tools of labor were made of stone; hence the name of the era - the stone age.
1. Ancient or Lower Paleolithic. up to 150 thousand BC
2. Middle Paleolithic. 150 - 35 thousand BC
3. Upper or late Paleolithic. 35 - 10 thousand BC
3.1 Aurignac-Solutrean period. 35 - 20 thousand BC
3.2. Madeleine period. 20 - 10 thousand BC This period received its name from the name of the La Madeleine cave, where murals related to this time were found.

The earliest works of primitive art date back to the Late Paleolithic. 35 - 10 thousand BC
Scientists are inclined to believe that naturalistic art and the representation of schematic signs and geometric figures arose simultaneously.
Pasta drawings. Impressions of a human hand and a disorderly weave of wavy lines pressed into the wet clay with the fingers of the same hand.

The first drawings from the Paleolithic period (Old Stone Age, 35–10 thousand BC) were discovered at the end of the 19th century. Spanish amateur archaeologist Count Marcelino de Sautuola, three kilometers from his family estate, in the cave of Altamira.

It happened like this:
“An archaeologist decided to explore a cave in Spain and took his little daughter with him. Suddenly she shouted: “Bulls, bulls!” The father laughed, but when he raised his head, he saw on the ceiling of the cave huge, painted figures of bison. Some of the bison were depicted standing still, others rushing with inclined horns at the enemy. At first, scientists did not believe that primitive people could create such works of art. Only 20 years later, numerous works of primitive art were discovered in other places and the authenticity of the cave painting was recognized.

Paleolithic painting

Cave of Altamira. Spain.
Late Paleolithic (Madeleine era 20 - 10 thousand years BC).
On the vault of the cave chamber of Altamira, a whole herd of large bison, closely spaced to each other, is depicted.

Panel of bison. Located on the ceiling of the cave. Wonderful polychrome images contain black and all shades of ocher, rich colors, superimposed somewhere densely and monotonously, and somewhere with halftones and transitions from one color to another. A thick layer of paint up to several cm. In total, 23 figures are depicted on the vault, if we do not take into account those of which only outlines have been preserved.

Fragment. Buffalo. Cave of Altamira. Spain. Late Paleolithic. They illuminated the caves with lamps and reproduced from memory. Not primitivism, but the highest degree of stylization. When the cave was discovered, it was believed that this was an imitation of a hunt - the magical meaning of the image. But today there are versions that the goal was art. The beast was necessary for man, but he was terrible and elusive.

Fragment. Bull. Altamira. Spain. Late Paleolithic.
Nice brown shades. The tense stop of the beast. They used the natural relief of the stone, depicted on the bulge of the wall.

Fragment. Bison. Altamira. Spain. Late Paleolithic.
Transition to polychrome art, darker stroke.

Cave Font-de-Gaume. France

Late Paleolithic.
Characterized by silhouette images, deliberate distortion, exaggeration of proportions. On the walls and vaults of the small halls of the Font-de-Gaumes cave, at least about 80 drawings are applied, mainly bison, two indisputable figures of mammoths and even a wolf.

Grazing deer. Font de Gome. France. Late Paleolithic.
The image of the horns in perspective. Deer at this time (the end of the Madeleine era) replaced other animals.

Fragment. Buffalo. Font de Gome. France. Late Paleolithic.
The hump and crest on the head are emphasized. Overlapping one image with another is a polypsest. Detailed work. Decorative solution for the tail. Image of houses.

Wolf. Font de Gome. France. Late Paleolithic.

Cave of Nio. France

Late Paleolithic.
Round room with drawings. There are no images of mammoths and other animals of the glacial fauna in the cave.

Horse. Nio. France. Late Paleolithic.
Depicted already with 4 legs. The silhouette is outlined in black paint, retouched in yellow inside. The character of a pony horse.

Stone sheep. Nio. France. Late Paleolithic. Partially contour image, the skin is drawn on top.

Deer. Nio. France. Late Paleolithic.

Buffalo. Nio. Nio. France. Late Paleolithic.
Among the images, most of all are bison. Some of them are shown as wounded, arrows in black and red.

Buffalo. Nio. France. Late Paleolithic.

Lascaux cave

It so happened that it was the children, and quite by accident, who found the most interesting cave paintings in Europe:
“In September 1940, near the town of Montignac, in the South-West of France, four high school students went on an archaeological expedition they had planned. In place of a long-rooted tree, there was a gaping hole in the ground that aroused their curiosity. There were rumors that this was the entrance to a dungeon leading to a nearby medieval castle.
There was also a smaller hole inside. One of the guys threw a stone at it and, from the noise of the fall, concluded that the depth was decent. He widened the hole, crawled inside, nearly fell over, lit a flashlight, gasped, and called out to the others. From the walls of the cave in which they found themselves, some huge beasts were looking at them, breathing with such confident force, at times it seemed ready to turn into a rage, that they became terrified. And at the same time, the power of these animal images was so majestic and convincing that it seemed to them as if they had fallen into some kind of magical kingdom.

Lasko cave. France.
Late Paleolithic (Madeleine era, 18 - 15 thousand years BC).
Called the primitive Sistine Chapel. Consists of several large rooms: rotunda; main gallery; pass; apse.
Colorful images on the calcareous white surface of the cave.
Strongly exaggerated proportions: large necks and bellies.
Contour and silhouette drawings. Clear images without layering. A large number of male and female signs (rectangle and many dots).

The scene of the hunt. Lasko. France. Late Paleolithic.
genre image. A bull killed by a spear butted a man with a bird's head. Nearby on a stick is a bird - maybe his soul.

Buffalo. Lasko. France. Late Paleolithic.

Horse. Lasko. France. Late Paleolithic.

Mammoths and horses. Kapova cave. Ural.
Late Paleolithic.

KAPOVA CAVE- to the south. m Ural, on the river. White. Formed in limestones and dolomites. Corridors and grottoes are located on two floors. The total length is over 2 km. On the walls - late Paleolithic picturesque images of mammoths, rhinos

Paleolithic sculpture

Relief

One of the first finds, called small plastics, was a bone plate from the Shaffo grotto with images of two fallow deer or deer:

Deer swimming across the river. Fragment. Bone carving. France. Late Paleolithic (Madeleine period).

Everyone knows the wonderful French writer Prosper Mérimée, author of the fascinating novel Chronicle of the Reign of Charles IX, Carmen and other romantic novels, but few know that he served as an inspector for the protection of historical monuments. It was he who handed over this disc in 1833 to the Cluny Historical Museum, which was just being organized in the center of Paris. Now it is kept in the Museum of National Antiquities (Saint-Germain en Le).
Later, an Upper Paleolithic cultural layer was discovered in the Shaffo Grotto. But then, just as it was with the painting of the cave of Altamira, and with other pictorial monuments of the Paleolithic era, no one could believe that this art is older than the ancient Egyptian. Therefore, such engravings were considered examples of Celtic art (V-IV centuries BC). Only at the end of the 19th century, again, like cave painting, they were recognized as the oldest after they were found in the Paleolithic cultural layer.

"Venus with a goblet". Bas-relief. France. Upper (Late) Paleolithic.
Goddess of the Ice Age. The canon of the image is that the figure is inscribed in a rhombus, and the stomach and chest are in a circle.

"Willendorf Venus". Limestone. Willendorf, Lower Austria. Late Paleolithic.
Compact composition, no facial features.

"The Hooded Lady of Brassempouy". France. Late Paleolithic. Mammoth bone.
The facial features and hairstyle have been worked out.

conclusions
Rock painting. Features of the pictorial art of the Paleolithic - realism, expression, plasticity, rhythm.
Small plastic.
In the image of animals - the same features as in painting (realism, expression, plasticity, rhythm).
Paleolithic female figurines are cult objects, amulets, idols, etc., they reflect the idea of motherhood and fertility.

Mesolithic

(Middle Stone Age) 10 - 6 thousand BC

A honey harvester from a hive, surrounded by a swarm of bees. Spain. Mesolithic.

Of the Mesolithic monuments, only a few can be named: Stone Grave in Ukraine, Kobystan in Azerbaijan, Zaraut-Sai in Uzbekistan, Mines in Tajikistan and Bhimpetka in India.

In addition to rock art, petroglyphs appeared in the Mesolithic era.
Petroglyphs are carved, carved or scratched rock art.
When carving a picture, ancient artists knocked down the upper, darker part of the rock with a sharp tool, and therefore the images stand out noticeably against the background of the rock.

In the south of Ukraine, in the steppe, there is a rocky hill of sandstone rocks. As a result of strong weathering, several grottoes and sheds were formed on its slopes. Numerous carved and scratched images have long been known in these grottoes and on other planes of the hill. In most cases, they are difficult to read. Sometimes images of animals are guessed - bulls, goats. Scientists attribute these images of bulls to the Mesolithic era.

Stone grave. South of Ukraine. General view and petroglyphs. Mesolithic.

To the south of Baku, between the southeastern slope of the Greater Caucasus Range and the coast of the Caspian Sea, there is a small Gobustan plain (a country of ravines) with highlands in the form of table mountains composed of limestone and other sedimentary rocks. On the rocks of these mountains there are many petroglyphs of different times. Most of them were discovered in 1939. Large (more than 1 m) images of female and male figures, made with deep carved lines, received the greatest interest and fame.
Many images of animals: bulls, predators and even reptiles and insects.

Kobystan (Gobustan). Azerbaijan (territory of the former USSR). Mesolithic.

Grotto Zaraut-Kamar
In the mountains of Uzbekistan, at an altitude of about 2000 m above sea level, there is a monument widely known not only among archaeologists - the Zaraut-Kamar grotto. Painted images were discovered in 1939 by local hunter I.F.Lamaev.
The painting in the grotto is made with ocher of different shades (from red-brown to lilac) and consists of four groups of images, in which anthropomorphic figures and bulls participate.

Here is a group in which most researchers see bull hunting. Among the anthropomorphic figures surrounding the bull, i.e. There are two types of "hunters": figures in robes widening downwards, without bows, and "tailed" figures with raised and stretched bows. This scene can be interpreted as a real hunt of disguised hunters, and as a kind of myth.

The painting in the grotto of Shakhta is probably the oldest in Central Asia.
"What does the word Mines mean," writes V.A. Ranov, "I don't know. Perhaps it comes from the Pamir word "mines", which means rock."

In the northern part of Central India, huge rocks with many caves, grottoes and sheds stretch along the river valleys. In these natural shelters, a lot of rock carvings have been preserved. Among them, the location of Bhimbetka (Bhimpetka) stands out. Apparently, these picturesque images belong to the Mesolithic. True, one should not forget about the uneven development of cultures of different regions. The Mesolithic of India may turn out to be 2-3 millennia older than in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

Some scenes of driven hunts with archers in the paintings of the Spanish and African cycles are, as it were, the embodiment of the movement itself, brought to the limit, concentrated in a stormy whirlwind.

Neolithic

(New Stone Age) from 6 to 2 thousand BC

In the design of household utensils, images of animals begin to appear.

An ax in the shape of an elk head. Polished stone. Neolithic. Historical Museum. Stockholm.

Wooden ladle from the Gorbunovsky peat bog near Nizhny Tagil. Neolithic. GIM.

The village of Chatal-Guyuk (Eastern Turkey) is one of the places where the most ancient samples of ceramics were found.

Cup from Ledce (Czech Republic). Clay. Culture of bell-shaped goblets. Eneolithic (Copper Stone Age).

"Hunters". Rock painting. Neolithic (?). Southern Rhodesia.

For about three hundred years, the attention of scientists was riveted to the rock, known as the "Tomsk Pisanitsa".
"Pisanitsy" refers to images painted with mineral paint or carved on the smooth surface of a wall in Siberia.
Back in 1675, one of the brave Russian travelers, whose name, unfortunately, remained unknown, wrote:
“The prison (Verkhnetomsky prison) did not reach the edges of the Tom, a stone is large and high, and animals, and cattle, and birds, and all sorts of similarities are written on it ...”
Real scientific interest in this monument arose already in the 18th century, when, by decree of Peter I, an expedition was sent to Siberia to study its history and geography. The result of the expedition was the first images of the Tomsk petroglyphs published in Europe by the Swedish captain Stralenberg, who participated in the trip. These images were not an exact copy of the Tomsk inscription, but conveyed only the most general outlines of the rocks and the placement of drawings on it, but their value lies in the fact that they can be seen drawings that have not survived to this day.

Images of the Tomsk petroglyphs, made by the Swedish boy K. Shulman, who traveled with Stralenberg across Siberia.

On the border between the Sahara and Fezzan, on the territory of Algeria, in a mountainous area called Tassili-Ajer, bare rocks rise in rows. Now this region is dried up by the desert wind, scorched by the sun and almost nothing grows in it. However, earlier in the Sahara meadows were green ...

- Sharpness and accuracy of drawing, grace and grace.
- A harmonious combination of shapes and tones, the beauty of people and animals depicted with a good knowledge of anatomy.
- The swiftness of gestures, movements.

The small plastic of the Neolithic acquires, as well as painting, new subjects.

"Man Playing the Lute". Marble (from Keros, Cyclades, Greece). Neolithic. National Archaeological Museum. Athens.

The schematism inherent in Neolithic painting, which replaced Paleolithic realism, also penetrated small plastic arts.

Schematic representation of a woman. Cave relief. Neolithic. Croisart. Department of the Marne. France.

Relief with a symbolic image from Castelluccio (Sicily). Limestone. OK. 1800-1400 BC National Archaeological Museum. Syracuse.

conclusions

Small plastic:
- There are new stories.
- Greater craftsmanship and mastery of craft, material.

Achievements

Paleolithic
- Lower Paleolithic
> > fire taming, stone tools
- Middle Paleolithic
> > out of Africa
- Upper Paleolithic
> > sling

Mesolithic
- microliths, bow, canoe

Neolithic
- Early Neolithic
> > agriculture, animal husbandry
- Late Neolithic
> > ceramics

Eneolithic (Copper Age)
- metallurgy, horse, wheel

Bronze Age

Megalithic architecture

In 3 - 2 thousand BC. appeared peculiar, huge structures of stone blocks. This ancient architecture was called megalithic.

The term "megalith" comes from the Greek words "megas" - "big"; and "lithos" - "stone".

Megalithic architecture owes its appearance to primitive beliefs. Megalithic architecture is usually divided into several types:
1. Menhir is a single vertically standing stone, more than two meters high.
On the Brittany Peninsula in France, the so-called fields stretched for miles. menhirs. In the language of the Celts, the later inhabitants of the peninsula, the name of these stone pillars several meters high means "long stone".
2. Trilith - a structure consisting of two vertically placed stones and covered by a third.
3. A dolmen is a building whose walls are made up of huge stone slabs and covered with a roof made of the same monolithic stone block.
Initially, dolmens served for burials.
Trilit can be called the simplest dolmen.
Numerous menhirs, triliths and dolmens were located in places that were considered sacred.
4. Cromlech is a group of menhirs and triliths.

Stone grave. South of Ukraine. Anthropomorphic menhirs. Bronze Age.

Stonehenge. Cromlech. England. Age of Bronze. 3 - 2 thousand BC Its diameter is 90 m, it consists of boulders, each of which weighs approx. 25 tons. It is curious that the mountains from where these stones were delivered are located 280 km from Stonehenge.
It consists of triliths arranged in a circle, inside a horseshoe of triliths, in the middle - blue stones, and in the very center - a heel stone (on the day of the summer solstice, the luminary is exactly above it). It is assumed that Stonehenge was a temple dedicated to the sun.

Age of Iron (Iron Age)

1 thousand BC

In the steppes of Eastern Europe and Asia, pastoral tribes created the so-called animal style at the end of the Bronze Age and the beginning of the Iron Age.

Plaque "Deer". 6th century BC Gold. Hermitage Museum. 35.1 x 22.5 cm. From a mound in the Kuban region. The relief plate was found attached to a round iron shield in the chief's burial. An example of zoomorphic art ("animal style"). The deer's hooves are made in the form of a "big-beaked bird".
There is nothing accidental, superfluous - a complete, thoughtful composition. Everything in the figure is conditional and extremely truthful, realistic.
The feeling of monumentality is achieved not by size, but by the generalization of form.

Panther. Plaque, shield decoration. From a mound near the village of Kelermesskaya. Gold. Hermitage Museum.
Age of Iron.
Served as a shield decoration. The tail and paws are decorated with figures of curled up predators.

Age of Iron

Age of Iron. The balance between realism and stylization is tipped in favor of stylization.

Cultural ties with Ancient Greece, the countries of the ancient East and China contributed to the emergence of new plots, images and visual means in the artistic culture of the tribes of southern Eurasia.

Scenes of a battle between barbarians and Greeks are depicted. Found in the Chertomlyk barrow, near Nikopol.

Zaporozhye region Hermitage Museum.

conclusions

Scythian art - "animal style". Striking sharpness and intensity of images. Generalization, monumentality. Stylization and realism.

Features of primitive art

Monuments of ancient art show us what people's attention was focused on at that time. Paintings and engravings on rocks, sculptures made of stone, clay, wood, drawings on vessels are devoted exclusively to scenes of hunting game animals.

The main object of creativity of the Paleolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic times were animals. And rock carvings and figurines help us to capture the most essential in primitive thinking. The spiritual forces of the hunter are aimed at comprehending the laws of nature. The very life of primitive man depends on this. The hunter studied the habits of a wild beast to the smallest subtleties, which is why the artist of the Stone Age was able to show them so convincingly. Man himself did not enjoy as much attention as the outside world, which is why there are so few images of people in cave paintings and Paleolithic sculptures are so close in the full sense of the word.

The main artistic feature of primitive art was the symbolic form, the conditional nature of the image. Symbols are both realistic images and conventional ones. Often, works of primitive art represent entire systems of symbols that are complex in their structure, carrying a great aesthetic load, with the help of which a wide variety of concepts or human feelings are conveyed.

Images of the Upper Paleolithic can be divided into the following types:

I. Painting (“monumental”, the one that adorns the walls and vaults of caves and “fragmentary” - applied to individual stones);

II. Primitive reliefs;

III. Sculpture (stone and bone carving);

IV. Engraving on stone and bone.

Painting. Primitive painting can be conditionally divided into three large periods: Aurignacian (30 thousand years BC); Solutrean, the beginning of the Madeleine period (18 thousand years); Madeleine period (XII millennium).

The earliest pictorial experiments known to us are "negative" handprints (i.e. outline), then the hand is smeared with paint. It turns out that the silhouette was primary in the history of painting.

Examples of the first works of primitive art are schematic contour drawings of animal heads on limestone slabs found in the caves of La Ferracy (France). These ancient images are extremely primitive and conditional. But in them, no doubt, one can see the beginnings of those ideas in the minds of primitive people that were associated with hunting and hunting magic.

The hunter's eye detects images of familiar animals in the outlines of stones. He recognizes their silhouettes and outlines them with paint or a chisel. It is no coincidence that primitive painting develops in parallel with petroglyphs (images carved, embossed or scratched on stone), - recognizing the signs - ideograms hidden on the surface of the stone, the primitive artist helps them to free themselves from inert matter and translates them into three-dimensional space. The contour line framing the petroglyph gradually deepens, while the colorful line becomes more saturated in color and occupies a larger area. The surface of the stone inside the contour is filled with black or red paint. The use of a second color in painting helps to make the drawing more voluminous. Animals in cave paintings are usually depicted in profile, while hooves and horns are shown in front or three-quarters. By the end of the first period, images appear that combine two different techniques - painting and petroglyphs.

Speaking about the perception of primitive painting in our time, it should be noted that each individual image was considered in isolation from the neighboring one, because constant twilight reigned in the caves. Nothing has such a devastating effect on the true values of primitive art as the brilliance of electric light in this realm of eternal night. A trembling fire or small stone lamps with animal fat, samples of which have been found, allow only a fragmentary examination of the colors and lines of the depicted objects. In such a soft, unstable light, the latter seem to acquire magical mobility. In strong light, the imprinted lines and even surfaces covered with paints lose their brightness, and sometimes disappear altogether. Only in the first case can the fine veins of the designs be seen without being overwhelmed by the rough surface of the stone. Primitive man did not associate caves with architecture.

For a long time primitive painting was not known. In 1871, the Spanish archaeologist Marcelino de Savtuola first discovered images of bison on the walls and vaults of the Altamira cave. His colleagues thought that Savtuola himself created the painting - the subject of universal ridicule, and not so long ago. Altamira was the first of many dozens of similar caves found later in France and Spain: La Moute, La Madeleine, Cambarrel, Font de Gaumes Trois Frere with the famous image of a sorcerer in a mask and deer horns, etc. The main monuments of primitive painting of the Paleolithic era are concentrated on southern France and Spain.

If we talk about our country, here in 1959 the famous Kapova Cave was discovered in the Southern Urals. At a great depth, seven mammoths, horses, rhinos and anthropomorphic figures are written in red paint. This is the only place located outside the Franco-Cantabrian zone.

Rock paintings, including cave paintings of the Paleolithic era, flourished in the Solutrean and Magdalenian times. The bulk of the plots of rock art were images of animals, usually life-sized with primitive single contours: mammoth, rhinoceros, wild horse, deer, fallow deer, bull, bison, bison, elk. Most of the drawings of this time, found by archaeologists, were scratched with a chisel on the surface of the rock. Some of them, such as the images of animals in the cave of Altamira, discovered by Marcelino de Sautuola in 1879, and in the Lascaux cave, were covered with paint. Artists used not only black paint (probably replaced by charcoal), but also yellow and red, which were obtained by grinding ocher and other minerals into powder. The powder was then mixed with water or fat. As a binder, he used animal fat, blood, honey. The paint was applied to the walls with a stick or brush made from animal fur. Perhaps this method was also used: the artist blew the powder onto a damp wall with the help of an improvised tube - a hollow bone, and the paint, hardening, retained its color for many millennia.

Paleolithic drawings also preserved traces of the rudiments of writing in the form of pictography. Geometrical figures (sticks, triangles, trapezoids), denoting the direction of the path, the number of animals killed or the plan of the area, served as a kind of information addition to the image. The primitive artist learned to generalize, abstract, acquired the skills of a rational distribution of drawing elements on a plane, experimented with color and volume. Evidence of the development of abstract thinking was a departure from the principle of naturalism, schematism and a decrease in the size of images during the Neolithic period. The main purpose of the drawings stemmed from the practical needs of people and was of a magical nature. Painting was supposed to attract game animals to the territory of the tribe or promote their reproduction, bring good luck in hunting, etc.

At the end of the Solutrean - the beginning of the Madeleine period, cave painting becomes more detailed and detailed, primitive masters began to pay more attention to details: they depicted wool with oblique parallel strokes, learned to use additional colors (various shades of yellow and red paint) to paint spots on the skins of bulls, horses and bison. The contour line also changed: it became brighter and darker, marking the light and shadow parts of the figure, skin folds and thick hair (for example, horse manes, massive buffalo manes), thus conveying volume. In some cases, the contours or the most expressive details were emphasized by ancient artists with a carved line.

In the XII millennium BC. cave art reached its peak. Painting of that time conveyed volume, perspective, color and proportions of figures, movement. At the same time, numerous ensembles of primitive painting were created: huge pictorial "canvases", expressive cave frescoes and multi-figure compositions of a hunting and domestic nature (hunting and military scenes, dances and religious ceremonies), covering the vaults of deep caves, the continuation of monumental paintings in Lascaux, Frere, Montespan and many others.

One of the most interesting finds is the Lascaux cave, discovered in 1940 and called the "prehistoric Sistine chapel." Currently, it has become a real museum representing the art of the Paleolithic era. Scientists have determined that the most ancient exhibits of the Lasko cave were created in the 18th millennium BC. This kind of museum opens with the Great Hall, or the Hall of the Bulls. A visitor who finds himself in this hall sees a wall with images of animals to his left: a huge bull, a cow and a calf, a horse, a bear, and deer. The arches at the end of the hall are covered with drawings representing bison, rams and horses. Between the figures of animals and above them, ancient artists placed squares painted with different colors, making up rectangles, wavy lines and images resembling plants.

The figures of horses painted in golden ocher, outlined in black, amaze with expressiveness and lively dynamics. With great accuracy, the primitive artist conveys the proportions of animals, admires his ability to create volume and perspective. The images of the steppe horses and a cow preparing to jump over an obstacle invisible to the viewer are made realistically and convincingly. Undoubtedly, the ancient painter had a subtle observation and an excellent memory, because he did not depict his models from nature. It is impossible to call this art realism in the full sense of the word, although these monuments contain elements of typification and generalization, the search for expressive features characteristic of the depicted animal is clearly visible.

In the next room, on one of the walls, the viewer sees images of eight heads of rams. Four of them are written in red paint, four in black. On the opposite wall, the artist placed five deer heads. On the right side of the hall there is a narrow corridor, the vault of which is covered with picturesque images and petroglyphs (drawings carved on stone) - small figures of animals, covered with a huge silhouette of a cow. Horses and bison are also drawn here, the images of which cross the lines of arrows and spears.

In the last room of the Lascaux cave, a whole scene was painted in black paint, the meaning of which many scientists tried to unravel. In the center of the drawing is the figure of a falling man with a bird's head. To his right stands a wounded buffalo with entrails spilling out and a spear passing over its body. Next to the man lies a spear-thrower adorned with the figure of a bird. On the left, the artist painted a rhinoceros, which, when running away, leaves clear dots-traces behind it. Probably, the ancient master depicted a tragedy that happened to one of his fellow tribesmen: a man saw a bison mortally wounded by a rhinoceros and approached him. But the dying buffalo suddenly rushed at the hunter and knocked him down. What is surprising about this image is that among all the drawings of the Madeleine period found by archaeologists, it is the only one that has a composition that combines the figures of animals and humans. Therefore, researchers argued for a long time about its dating, attributing this monument of ancient art to a later time. But the execution technique and style suggest that the scene depicted by the artist still belongs to one of the early stages of the Madeleine period.

The drawings of the Madeleine period delight the viewer with their craftsmanship and their authenticity. Ancient artists very realistically convey the habits of animals, their manner of behavior. The curves of the body, the position of the legs and the turn of the head show exactly whether the animal is in motion or frozen, ready to hide at the slightest danger. The images found allowed scientists to determine which animals lived in those distant times. Thanks to the drawings found in the Chauvet grotto, an amazing discovery was made: animals that now live in hot African countries (lions, rhinos) and inhabitants of the northern countries (reindeer) once existed in one place, on the territory of modern France. It is also surprising that in these polychrome (multi-color) paintings, the artists' desire to convey perspective is noticeable: volumes are formed by changing the strength of tones, thanks to which, as well as the ability to maintain proportions, a great resemblance to the objects of the image is achieved. The reliability of the drawings allowed the researchers to determine, for example, that in the cave of Ekain the primitive painter painted a brown, and in the grotto of Shove - a cave bear.

Careful study of Lasko's paintings revealed one of the features of the work of the ancient masters: the drawing on the walls of the cave was sometimes superimposed on the previous one. Often, artists depicted entire herds of animals, they are especially common in bone engravings. In such images, the figures in the foreground are rendered in detail, while the rest are schematic.

In the picturesque ensemble of another cave - Altamira - numerous life-size figures of bison are presented on the ceiling. In addition to them, there are also horses and wild boars. The earliest images are represented by outline monochrome drawings. The painting of the "Large Ceiling" as well as in Lascaux, does not have a composition in the modern sense of the word, since its main quality, orderliness, is absent.

Images of people or fantastic creatures that have both human and animal characteristics are less common. For example, in the Chauvet grotto, on the ledge of one of the walls, the figure of a half-human half-bison is clearly visible. Most of the murals are dominated by images of animals, it was at this time that animalistic painting was born. Paleolithic painting reached its peak in the 12th millennium BC. e. It was to this time that the animalistic paintings of the caves of Rufignac, Niot, Montespan, Trois Frere, Font de Gome, La Madeleine, Lascaux, Combarelle, Marsula and others date back. Most of the drawings show the remarkable skill of ancient artists in conveying volume, perspective, proportions, the ability to capture the movement of animals.

At the same time, with rare exceptions, pictorial monuments are a disorderly heap of drawings, only some paintings have a composition that combines two or three figures (a scene from Lascaux, as well as an image of a deer, a cow and a sorcerer - a man with a bull's head - from Trois Frere caves). Often, artists painted pairs of animals of the opposite sex (bulls, horses, deer, bison), which is most likely associated with magical rites.

At the end of the Paleolithic, the technical skills of primitive painters improved, drawing became free and dynamic. At the same time, the three-dimensionality gradually disappears, and the image takes on a planar and schematic form (for example, artists depict a hand in the form of a rake with five teeth with fingers).

Primitive reliefs. Creating "high" reliefs (high relief), primitive man often uses natural ledges on the walls of caves, as, for example, in the "Buffalo" relief from the Spanish Castillo cave. On the left wall of Lascaux Cave, an unusually expressive horse head (Madeleine period) is scratched in the technique of deep relief, and in Levanzo Cave there is an image of a bison, currently partially hidden under stalagmite deposits. Later, the technique of scratched relief would be developed in ancient Egypt. Reliefs are not only applied to the walls of caves, they can also decorate the tools of people. One of these products is a spear thrower with a bird figurine (Madeleine, Saint Germain Museum, France). Along with zoomorphic reliefs, images of people are also recognizable. Presumably female and male images (bas-reliefs) from Lossel are in the Bordeaux Museum.

Creating a relief is a more time-consuming task than painting, moreover, this hard physical work is carried out on an uneven surface. According to the legend, the first picturesque images originated from the outline of the silhouette. Perhaps this also applies to the relief. Penetrating into the stone, the primitive master for the first time makes an attempt to create the illusion of not only two-dimensional (painting), but also three-dimensional space of the wall, pushing its natural boundaries. Who are these animals and people on the reliefs - real creatures snatched from life or gods and patron totems of this tribe? Most likely, the reliefs had their original, natural color, because, as the surviving paintings testify, the colors were strong enough and could not disappear on these products without a trace.

Sculpture (stone and bone carving). Plastic art is widely represented by sculptural images of animals (or their heads), female figures. The earliest primitive sculpture is the so-called. "Paleolithic Venus" from Willendorf (about 30 thousand years BC). It is difficult to judge how much this first statue is connected with reality. It is hard to believe that this creature with a huge, hypertrophied lower part and sagging breasts from constant feeding was the standard of beauty for the people of that time. Perhaps there is some exaggeration of volumes here, conveying the idea of motherhood, fertility, femininity. The face is not shown on this small figurine: it is covered by a cap of curly hair. Most of the "Venuses" of that time can be called faceless. Primitive sculptors were not interested in facial features, their task was not to reproduce a specific nature, but to create a certain generalized image of a woman-mother, a symbol of fertility and the keeper of the hearth. Male images in the Paleolithic era are very rare. Simultaneously with them, generalized expressive images of animals appear (statues made of stone, bone and clay; engraved figures or heads on bone, stone, horn), recreating the characteristic features of a mammoth, elephant, horse, deer, etc.

The closer to the end of the Upper Paleolithic, the more "Venuses" began to correspond to normal human proportions, such as, for example, the "Savignan Venus" from Italy. Speaking in modern art language, the "Venus" from Willendorf gave rise to a number of imitations in different regions of Eurasia. The isolation of small groups of people from each other was so great that it is simply meaningless to talk about influences, styles and schools. Nevertheless, there are a lot of similar "Venus": from Dolni Vestonice, Malta, Gagarino, Avdeevo.

The different climate gave rise to the "northern" edition of the typology of the Willendorf Venuses - "Venus" from Kostenki. Her main feature is that she is dressed in a "fashionable" and practical fur jumpsuit.

The materials from which the primitive sculpture was created were different. It is clay and ash mixed with burnt bones and fat. The first clay items were found at the largest site of Paleolithic hunters in Dolni Vestonicy (Czechoslovakia). Small clay sculptures are the oldest examples of pottery.

In addition to clay, easy-to-work steatite, and calcite, and, finally, mammoth bone were also used. It is from it that one of the earliest female (or male) heads from Brassempuis (Aurignacian period, France, Saint-Germain Museum) is created. It is assumed that this head with a decorative stylized hairstyle is a fragment of the now lost ancient Venus. The mentioned head is also devoid of facial features. The heroes of primitive art have not yet acquired faces, possessing a certain degree of conventionality, and at the same time they are naturalistic reproductions of female figures and heads. Starting from this moment, humanity begins to navigate in three-dimensional space, masterpieces of round sculpture are created.

Engraving on stone and bone. The art of bone carving is a favorite occupation of the peoples of the modern North to this day. It also originated then, in the Paleolithic era. The famous image on the bone plate, dating back to the Madeleine era, was the so-called "Crossing the deer across the river" (France, Saint-Germain Museum). The frieze-like composition represents an ongoing event in a “transverse” section: a view of the deer “from the side” is shown, as if the master himself climbed into the river and swims at some distance from these animals; along with them, a school of fish is shown, and the images of these fish can be called "X-ray", since their skeleton is clearly visible. The heads of the fish touch the torsos of the deer, their rhythmic alternation allows us to perceive this composition as an ornament, the first ornament where the real world appears before us clearly and visibly. It is still devoid of decorative stylization of later times. The primitive artist does not show here a tendency to abstract generalization of the material.

The first works of ancient art on earth - images of animals, made by the hand of a Paleolithic man, were discovered in the caves of France at the beginning of the last century. In 1837, during excavations, a piece of the bone of a fossil animal with carved images of two deer was found in the Shaffo grotto. 27 years later, in 1864, Edouard Larte, one of the founders of the science of the primitive past of mankind, discovered the famous image of a mammoth on a bone plate in the La Madeleine cave. It testifies that the people of the Paleolithic era reproduced the appearance of this animal in drawings amazing in accuracy and expression.

It was so unexpected that the image was declared a fake by a clever forger. It took the discovery of a grandiose accumulation of bison drawings in Altamirskaya and other caves, as well as the hard work of archaeologists on the stratigraphy of these caves, so that the existence of monuments of Paleolithic art became an indisputable fact. Nevertheless, until the end of the 19th century, there was a struggle in science between those who unconditionally believed in the reality of Paleolithic art, which so unexpectedly arose from the darkness of centuries and expressed itself in forms unexpected in perfection, and those who still stubbornly saw in cave paintings and Paleolithic sculpture forgery.

Soon after the first finds in the West, monuments of Paleolithic art were also discovered in Russia. Russian scientists recognized them as irrefutable proof of the emergence of art among people of the ancient Stone Age.

Initially limited only by the territory of Western Europe, the area of distribution of monuments of Paleolithic art, through the efforts of Russian archaeologists of the 19th century, included vast expanses of Russia from the Dnieper to Baikal. The first finds were made in Siberia. In 1871, during excavations at the site of a military hospital under construction in Irkutsk, I. D. Chersky and A. D. Chekanovsky collected a unique collection of the most ancient carved bone. In his major work - the first consolidated work on the Stone Age in Russia - the largest archaeologist of that time A.S. Uvarov dated the Irkutsk finds to the Paleolithic era and noted their importance for the history of ancient art.

Other equally significant discoveries soon followed. In Kyiv, at the Kirillovskaya site, a richly ornamented mammoth tusk was found (ill. 1). In Mezina on the Desna (Ukraine), a collection of stylized sculptural images of birds was collected in 1909-1914 and a number of bone items decorated with ornaments of rare perfection were discovered.

The accumulation of more and more new materials on Paleolithic art continued with particular vigor after the Great October Socialist Revolution. In 1928, during excavations in Kostenki (near Voronezh), P. P. Efimenko discovered a female figurine (ill. 2), which aroused the keenest interest of scientists in the Soviet Union and abroad. This was followed by remarkable finds by S. N. Zamyatnin in the village of Gagarin on the Don and new, more abundant discoveries in Kostenki, which became one of the richest places where Paleolithic sculpture was found (ill. 3). In 1928, traces of a Paleolithic man were discovered in the village of Malta on the Angara; here, then, M. M. Gerasimov collected a first-class collection of art products. In 1936 and 1939, new interesting finds were made in Buret on the Angara.

Ancient rock carvings were discovered in Mgvimevi in the Caucasus and in Shishkin on the Lena. One of the most recent significant discoveries is the cave drawings discovered in the Kapova Cave by the zoologist A. V. Ryumin and then studied by O. N. Bader. For the first time in our country and in Europe outside of Spain and France, drawings depicting a mammoth, a wild horse and a rhinoceros were found here (ill. 4).

Now found in almost all regions of the European part of the USSR, in Siberia, the Caucasus and Central Asia, the artistic products of people of that time characterize the various stages in the development of the art of the Upper Paleolithic and partly the Mesolithic and give an idea of the local artistic cultures of these eras.

The art of the Paleolithic man was not uniform: in different parts of the Soviet Union it developed in its own special ways, with characteristic artistic traditions and stylistic features. The diversity of local groups and trends was determined by the natural geographical situation and the peculiarities of the ethnic make-up and culture of the people of the most ancient era.

The richest represented and best known in the literature is that ancient artistic "school" of Paleolithic masters, the remains of whose activity were found during excavations of the settlement of Kostenki I, as well as the Avdeevsky settlement. The art of the inhabitants of these settlements is a definite and complete artistic and stylistic unity.

The second pronounced local group is represented by the collection of bone objects from Mezin.

It is distinguished by originality of sculptural forms, richness and complexity of ornamentation.

No less original was the art of the most ancient Siberian tribes. It is clearly divided into two cultural-chronological groups. The first, the oldest, includes products made from mammoth tusk found in a settlement near a military hospital in Irkutsk. They are characterized by the simplicity of three-dimensional geometric shapes, which are based on a ball, a circle, a cylinder concave towards the middle. The ornament that adorns these items is strict and simple. These are linear "belts" that emphasize the shape of objects. The second group, typical of finds in Malta and Bureti, consists of things of a completely different nature. Here are found works of small plastics, filled with echoes of reality, specific in content, depicting animals and people.

Finally, what little is known about the art of the most ancient population of the Caucasus, probably Late Paleolithic and Mesolithic (Mgvimevi, Agtsa, Kobystan), shows that it was part of the distribution area of the southern tribes - "Caspians" - hunters and gatherers who lived differently than all the other semi-sedentary and sedentary pre-glacial tribes of Europe and Siberia, and created a different culture.

Here, in the Caucasus, as well as in Central Asia, purely ornamental art acquires a dominant position in the Paleolithic era, although here, as we will see, over time, already during the transition to the Mesolithic, such remarkable expressive rock art as the drawings of Kobystan and Zarautsay arose. .

Without delving into the details and characterizing the local variants of Paleolithic art on the territory of our country, we will dwell on its general features.

The development of Paleolithic art was inextricably linked with the specific historical situation of that remote time, when the entire life of the most ancient man proceeded among a different nature than now, at the end of the Ice Age.

The main condition for the emergence and flourishing of the art of the people of the Ice Age was the progressive development of the labor, social and spiritual activities of our distant ancestors, who rose about 40-30 thousand years ago to a qualitatively new level - a reasonable man, a Cro-Magnon type man, a neoanthrope. At the same time, at the initial stage of the development of art in Europe and Siberia, the peculiar natural and cultural-historical conditions that prevailed here during the time between 30 and 12 thousand years ago, during the Wurm time of the geological scheme, favorably affected.

The ancient inhabitants of the Russian Plain and Siberia, like some modern northern peoples, had enough leisure in this era to spend it on artistic carving. In winter, when a blizzard raged all around and mountains of snow lay, this work could serve them as entertainment and relaxation. They had at their disposal an abundance of first-class material for carving: mammoth tusks and animal bones, as well as soft stone, which itself “asked” into the hands of masters. Perhaps that is why plastic art flourished here, richly represented by three-dimensional images and round sculptures.

Of essential importance for the development of artistic activity, especially for the depiction of animals, was the fact that hunting tribes, due to their way of life, are usually characterized by acute observation, an invariable craving for empirical accuracy, and a specific liveliness of drawing and sculpture. No one portrayed wild animals so vividly and so directly as primitive hunters did. For them, a deep knowledge of the habits and psyche of animals was a matter of life and death, the most urgent necessity.

It is not surprising, therefore, that the largest number of works of primitive art in Europe and Asia are in one way or another connected with images of animals. The Paleolithic artist appears to us first and foremost as an animal painter. All his worldview and artistic creativity is permeated with ideas that were born as a result of constant contact with the surrounding world of nature, with the world of animals.

The first, truly "title" place in the gallery of animal images of Paleolithic art rightfully belongs to the largest and most powerful animal of that time - the mammoth. Mammoth images were made both in three-dimensional plastic form, and engraved on the bone or painted with paint. Figures of mammoths painted with ocher were found, as already mentioned, in the Kapova cave in the Urals. Miniature (2-4 cm in length) sculptural figures of mammoths, carved from soft stone - marl, were found in Kostenki (in Kostenki 1 ten such figures were found, in the upper horizon of Kostenki IV - also ten, in the second layer of Anosovka II - fifteen ).

Despite the miniature size of these works, the appearance of a mammoth is conveyed with great impressive power. They clearly show the heavy body of the animal, a large knobby head, separated by a saddle-shaped depression from a steep hump above the front shoulder blades. The falling, as if chopped off line of the back of the animal is just as clearly outlined.

A magnificent example of Paleolithic art is also represented by the image of a mammoth, engraved on a plate from the tusk of this animal, found in Malta. It surprisingly echoes the finest engraved drawing from La Madeleine in France, and in any case is closest to it in spirit.

Images of the rhinoceros, the "eternal companion" of the mammoth in the Paleolithic era, are rare, perhaps because it died out or was exterminated by man before the mammoth. The rhinoceros is masterfully drawn in the Kapova cave. There are also figurines of rhinos in the collection from Kostenki I.

Among the sculptures made of marl collected in Kostenki I, there are miniature three-dimensional images of animals. Of these, the heads of predatory bears, cave lionesses and wolves are especially lively, conveying the characteristic features of these animals with amazing accuracy. A true masterpiece, which can be safely put on a par with the best world-famous monuments of the era, is the head of a lioness with powerful jaws and small ferocious eyes.

A different character and a different mood are conveyed in a softly modeled miniature head, obviously a cave lion. The bloodthirsty animal squints its narrow eyes, as if squinting from the sun. The heads of camels with high steep foreheads are made in a sharp graphic manner. One of the camels has a small round eye. The eye looks at the viewer like a camel from above, with a haughty expression characteristic of this animal.

This whole group of miniature images directly and vividly conveys not only the appearance of animals, but also their mood. It can be called a series of sketches that recorded the appearance of the animals of the ice age.

At the Paleolithic settlement of Sungir, near Vladimir, original images of a horse were found, carved from pieces of mammoth tusk (ill. 5). They well reproduced the general outlines of the horse's body, completely covered with small, carefully made pits that convey hair.

The image of a horse is also among the oldest rock paintings in the Kapova cave and in the village of Shishkino on the Lena. In the Kapova cave, the image of a horse is made in the same way as in Altamira: engraved and painted. First, the artist engraved the contours, marked the mane with sharp strokes and small knockouts - the eyes and ears. Then the engraved drawing was painted with dark yellow ocher. The horse has an elongated body, a small head, short, curved, like steppe horses, legs and a short tail.

The oldest images of horses in Shishkin are represented by two drawings. The first of them, of enormous size (2.8 X 1.5 meters), entirely occupies a large plane of heavily weathered and cracked rock.

The drawing is linear, contour, made with pale red paint with a lilac tinge, lying in a wide stripe. The horse is shown in profile. Her body is massive, with a strongly pendulous belly and a distinct arch of the back. The neck is short and steep, the head is small. The legs are bent, on the front - an exaggerated hoof. The tail is bushy and long. Close to this drawing is the second image of a horse on the Shishkinsky rocks. There is also a drawing of a bull, made in the same contour manner and in the same way - with red paint. The bull seemed to be frozen on the move, his whole overweight, ponderous figure is full of dynamics and strength.

A special theme in Paleolithic art is the images of birds and snakes. The world of birds in Paleolithic art is most fully represented in sites located at opposite ends of our country: in Ukraine (in Mezina) and in Siberia (in Malta and Bureti). The images are different in style, although both in the south and in the north they are three-dimensional figurines carved from mammoth tusk.

There are images of birds in Kostenki I. They are carved from marl, but they are schematic and cannot be compared with the collection of archaeological finds from Mezin, amazing in richness and originality.

A series of figurines of birds (ill. 6) were found in Mezina, revealing features characteristic of predators - a falcon or a kite. They have a small, slightly protruding head, a wide short body with a strongly convex chest. The tail, long and widening at the bottom, like the tail of a flying falcon, is depicted with emphatic thoroughness. The wings are indicated by a conventional technique: they are carved on the body of the bird with thin ornamental lines. When viewed from the side, it seems that the bird is soaring in the sky, spreading its wings wide.

The richness and unexpected complexity of the zigzag meander ornament on the body of the Mezin birds. It must not only conditionally convey plumage, but also has a broader meaning, linking the image of a bird with the sky, with clouds and with the celestial element in general (a meander pattern is usually associated in ethnography with ideas about water and the underworld or sky and clouds ).

In Malta and Buret, in contrast to Mezin, there is not a single image of raptors, but there are many figurines of waterfowl (ill. 7). Among them, the first place in terms of the number of works found is occupied by images of a bird similar to a loon - an ancient sacred bird of Siberian shamans. Birds have a clearly modeled small head on a long, tensely elongated neck and a short, massive body. The birds are shown in flight.

The collection from Malta has three bird figurines unlike any other. The first two figures depict a duck and a goose. The duck seems to be floating on water. The goose stands on one leg, slightly stretching its head forward and bowing it. The third figurine most likely depicts a snow partridge, an inhabitant of the tundra and forest tundra. She has a wide flat body and a large head with a sharp beak. The wings and plumage are conventionally designated by rows of semilunar pits.

Significantly less frequently depictions of birds in Paleolithic art are depictions of reptiles and fish. Images of snakes were found only in Malta, on two plaques that served as amulets. On one of these plates are three snakes with undulating writhing bodies and large, exaggerated stylized heads. In these images one should see the first echoes of the snake cult.

Very schematic, ornamentalized images of fish, engraved on bone and tusk, were found in the group of Desninsky sites (in Timonovka, Suponev and Eliseevichi), and in addition - in the Sagvardizhile cave in Georgia.
The subjects of Paleolithic art are not limited to the animal world. It presents
and man. Among the images found on the territory of the USSR, there is not a single male figure. On the other hand, female figurines found in various regions of the Soviet Union are among the best works of art of the Paleolithic era and are world famous.

Images of women carved from horn, mammoth tusk and soft stone were found in Kostenki I, Gagarino, Avdeevo, Eliseevichi, Malta, Bureti and Krasny Yar. In total, 41 whole figurines, 16 blanks and 57 fragments are kept in the museums of the USSR. For the most part, these figurines convey a stable, almost canonical in its completeness, image of a naked woman, most often in the same position - full-length, with folded arms. The body is sometimes rendered with somewhat exaggerated details that characterize a mature woman-mother: with massive hips, a large sagging belly and an emphasized sign of sex.

Three figurines found in Kostenki are especially expressive in their interpretation of the forms of the naked body. These are authentic "Venuses" of the ancient stone age. The proportions of the female figure are conveyed in them truthfully and accurately; the details are proportionate to the whole. But the main thing is not even in this, but in that special manner, that warmth and softness with which the rounded outlines of the torso are conveyed.

One of these figures, discovered in 1936, differs from other Paleolithic images of women found in the European part of the USSR and Siberia in its extraordinary truthfulness in the interpretation and position of the hands. In most Paleolithic figurines, the hands are given very schematically - they are usually lifelessly folded on the lower abdomen. Here it is clearly shown that the hands rest under the breasts and support them. Breasts, bulging and massive, as if overflowing with milk, hang heavily on top of them.

Paleolithic female figurines from Malta and Bureti on the Angara are clearly divided into two groups. The first includes figurines of elongated proportions, with a narrow and long body - of an asthenic constitution. In the second - figurines of massive proportions, with a short body, with deliberately exaggerated lower back and hips - a picnic constitution. Perhaps these two groups do not correspond to two types of female figure, but convey images of women of mature age and young women, which expresses the desire of the ancient masters to accurately capture the characteristic features of nature.

Figurines have been found in Malta and Bureti with rather carefully modeled faces. Such is the already mentioned figurine from Buret, found in 1936 (ill. 8). The oblong head is narrowed upwards. The forehead is small and convex, the cheeks and cheekbones are outlined quite definitely, they protrude forward. The rounded chin is delicately modeled. The mouth is not marked, but it is guessed, and its absence is not striking. A somewhat blurred, softly outlined nose and narrow, slanting eyes in the form of almond-shaped recesses immediately evoke Mongoloid faces in memory.

In a different manner, much rougher and simpler, the face on one of the figurines found in Malta (ill. 9) is rendered with sharp distinct contours, but the same anthropological features are visible in it. Flat and wide, it is reminiscent of the Mongoloid bony faces on Buryat and Tungus carved wooden sculptures made in the 19th century.

The masters of the Paleolithic era carefully depicted women's headdresses and hairstyles. The hair on the heads of statuettes found in Kostenki, Gagarin, in Malta and Buret, as well as in Western European statuettes from Brasempui, Lossel, Menton and Willendorf, are always arranged in a strict order, symmetrically and beautifully. These monuments indicate that women in the Paleolithic era had lush and complex hairstyles; some figurines have carefully combed hair falling in a wave; they are apparently enclosed in a bag or net. In some, they are collected in concentric circles, forming a wide cap, or arranged in zigzag vertical stripes.

The figurines usually don't wear clothes. But in some cases there are its elements and individual details. For example, on four figurines, a belt in the form of a roller is clearly visible, decorated with thin transverse cuts-cloves, conveying an ornament or sewn beads. One figurine from Malta shows carved stripes on the top of the legs. It appears to be a loincloth. Many figurines from Kostenki and Malta have images of baldrics - ribbons and necklaces. On a figurine found in Kostenki in 1951, such a baldric in the form of a patterned ribbon of three parallel lines crossed by oblique cuts covers the chest. The number of ornaments depicted on the figurines includes bracelets. On the hands of the figurines from Malta and Avdeev they are depicted as thin transverse lines.

Although most of the Paleolithic figurines depict a naked figure, on three Siberian figurines one can see clothes such as fur, wool-out, overalls, tightly fitting the body from head to toe. Such clothes are most clearly shown on a figurine found in 1936 in Buret: the fur from which the clothes are sewn is indicated by semicircular pits-notches arranged in regular rows from top to bottom, along the surface of the entire figurine; they are not on the face. On the head of the figurine is a fur hood, turning into a jumpsuit. Wide and flat at the back, it tapers and tapers towards the top. Deep narrow grooves that form the convex edges of the hood and separate it from the face convey a thick, fluffy fur border.

The figurines of the Paleolithic era obviously correspond to what the carver could see in everyday life. When a piercing and cold wind blew in the open steppes and tundras that stretched from the Arctic Ocean to the Atlantic, the Paleolithic people, like the modern Arctic peoples, had to wrap themselves in thick clothes and furs. A fur hood is an indispensable accessory of the costume and the modern northern peoples. But in their cramped dwellings, Paleolithic people took off their clothes and remained naked. That is how, with absolute fidelity to nature, the Paleolithic sculptor depicted his contemporaries. They were only bandages, belts, bracelets.

An exceptionally important area of Paleolithic art is ornament. The most ancient man generously covered with ornament various things that had a utilitarian purpose. Such, for example, are the handles of the oldest tools, picks or hoes from Kostenki I, decorated with an excellently executed finest geometric pattern in the form of parallel transverse stripes, ornamental belts of small wedge-shaped notches and vertical zigzag lines,
reminiscent of the pattern of a woven mat. On one of the hoes from the settlement of Borshchevo I, a pattern of intersecting lines forms a continuous grid of miniature diamonds.

The original spatulas made from animal ribs, found in Kostenki I and Avdeev, can serve as an example of decorating household items with an ornament. It is highly probable that these mysterious articles were used, like similar objects by the Chukchi, Eskimos and Koryaks, to knock snow out of fur clothes. The most curious detail of the Kostenkov and Avdeev spatulas is their figured handle in the form of a rounded or heart-shaped pommel, on which oval depressions or holes are located in pairs, resembling the oblique eyes of an animal.

In Malta and Bureti, needle-shaped bone points and awls or pins are decorated with ornaments. In some, the head is sculpted in the form of a hat, in others the stem looks like a spiral. The sculptural decorations of small awl-shaped pins from Kostenki I and the Avdeevsky settlement are original. Their handles look like a carefully modeled foot of an animal, most of all similar to the rounded and wide foot of a camel. In the settlement of Molodov V on the Dniester, ornamented "batons of chiefs" were found. One of them is decorated with an anthropomorphic figurine.

Complex and often carefully executed ornaments adorn many different fragments of bone products, as well as fragments of bone and pieces of tusk, which obviously did not have a utilitarian purpose. Whole mammoth tusks were also covered with an ornament. An example is the well-known tusk from the Kirillovskaya site in Kyiv. In complex patterns, skillfully engraved on it, the researchers find similarities with birds and even a turtle. On a par with this tusk, you can put ornamented pieces of tusk - "churingi" from Eliseevichi (on the Sudoeti River in the Bryansk region) and Timonovka near Bryansk. Equally peculiar and mysterious are various sculptures in the form of flattened balls, spindle-shaped and other figures from the Irkutsk site and Kostenki.

Absolutely exceptional in artistic design is the shoulder blade and two lower jaws of a mammoth painted with red paint, found in 1954-1956 in Mezina. The smooth outer surface of the scapula is almost completely covered with zigzag stripes; in its upper part, the remains of a meander painting are visible. Both jaws are painted with the same linear geometric pattern in the form of parallel straight and zigzag stripes.

Paleolithic ornamentation in the European part of the USSR and in Siberia had a rectilinear-geometric character. These are mainly straight short strips-notches, pits; sometimes, as in Malta and Bureti, semi-lunar depressions. Zigzag lines, triangular figures, corners, rhombuses were widespread. Combining and repeatedly repeating simple ornamental motifs, the Paleolithic artist sometimes created unexpectedly complex ornamental compositions. From simple oblique lines, rhombic nets are formed on the “churingas” from Eliseevichi and on the hoes from Borshchev II. From zigzag lines arranged in parallel rows, ornamental fields and zones on hoes from Kostenki I were created. Finally, meander compositions were formed from broken lines and triangles, in which the ornamental art of the Paleolithic era reached its greatest height. Thus, carved meanders on bone products from Mezin and Malta surpass everything that was created by man of the Paleolithic era in the field of ornamental art in richness and correctness of the pattern.

Paleolithic ornament, at first glance, may seem so simple and uniform, so abstract, that it would be pointless to look for any meaning in it. However, even the simplest ornamental elements, and even more so their compositions, have a certain content and often mean various objects, images, ideas. For example, in simple wavy and zigzag patterns, you can read the conventional image of water or a snake. This is clearly seen on an ornamental plaque from Malta (ill. 10, 11). On one of its sides, the snakes are depicted in wavy lines, on the other, the snakes are twisted into coiled balls.

Jewelry and amulets, which apparently had a magical meaning, occupied an important place in the life and art of Paleolithic people. In addition to magnificent hairstyles and hats, they wore head hoops similar to the royal diadems of the ancient world. Such a diadem was found on the forehead of a baby buried under the floor of one of the Malta dwellings. A rich necklace of patterned beads carved from mammoth tusk was worn around the baby's neck. The necklace ended, like a precious pendant, with a figurine of a skillfully stylized flying bird.

In many settlements, simpler decorations were also found: discs with holes, beads, decorations made from shiny sea shells, including fossils, from animal teeth. The most popular were the fangs of the deer, which attracted people of the Stone Age with their brilliance and white color, and the fangs of predators, which, one must think, were associated with magical ideas.

The material for jewelry, for the manufacture of which a person spent a lot of effort, in addition to mammoth ivory, various colored stones served. In Malta and Bureti, white calcite, which still retains its luster and transparency, was used to make button beads in the form of bars with a groove in the middle for stringing. A noble green serpentine was also used for the same purpose. In Bureti, a real workshop has survived, where this pleasant-colored and viscous gemstone was processed. Even a miniature disk with a hole in the middle was found in the workshop of Bureti, carved from an even rarer and more valuable stone - green Sayan jade - the first sample of this mineral in the world used by man as an ornament. Similar decorations were found in Malta.

In terms of fine workmanship and richness of ornamentation, Paleolithic bracelets rank above all - true masterpieces of bone-carving art, made with simple tools.

The well-known bracelet from Mezin (find in 1912, see ill. 12) looks like a wide thin hoop, the outer surface of which is completely covered with the finest meander pattern, separated by stripes of parallel zigzags. Found in Mezina during excavations in 1954-1957, the bracelet consists of five composite thin plates of mammoth tusk. Their outer surface is decorated with a "herringbone" pattern, the stripes of which are dissected by rhombus meanders.

Clothing was not only complemented by beads and bracelets, but, of course, in itself was a work of art. The costume of the people of the Paleolithic era, apparently, was decorated with applique from pieces of multi-colored fur; fur tails and fancy fringes hung from it.

A peculiar area of the decorative art of the Stone Age was a tattoo, with which an ancient man covered his body. The use of a tattoo can be guessed from the patterns on some Paleolithic figurines, which evoke the tattoo of various peoples.

The artistic creativity of the Paleolithic people is most vividly and fully represented by works of plastic arts, rock paintings and ornaments. But we must not forget about other branches of art, which also have their origins, going back to the depths of the Ice Age.

This, first of all, includes the rudiments of architecture. Already at the end of the Middle Paleolithic, as excavations in Molodov on the Dniester and in the Ilskaya site in the Kuban showed, the first artificial dwellings made of wood, stone and bones of large animals appeared. In the Upper Paleolithic, various types of dwellings were built, local building techniques and traditions arose. Differences are found already in terms of housing. Some tribes built round, small isolated dwellings. Others attached them one to the other along the axis. Still others built square or rectangular houses. Finally, some erected huge, oval-shaped buildings or corral fences, surrounded on all sides by outbuildings-dugouts and storage pits. Such giant structures, probably belonging to a whole family, could accommodate dozens of people.

Depending on the natural conditions in which the people of that time lived, they used various materials for their dwellings. In Malta and Bureti, limestone slabs were used in the construction of some houses. Some tribes widely used mammoth and rhinoceros bones as building material. So, for example, the dwellings of the inhabitants of Buret were built. The basis for such a dwelling was a square depression dug in the loess soil, from which a tunnel-like corridor led to the river. Along the edges of the dwelling and along the sides of the corridor, tubular mammoth bones were dug vertically. They served as the foundation for the wooden pillars on which the roof rested. The latter probably consisted of poles, on which deer antlers were completely laid, intertwined with their processes. A hearth was dug into the earthen floor in the middle of the house. Bones of giant animals, mammoth skulls with tusks were also used in the construction of a round house, opened in Mezina.

In the Paleolithic era, such types of arts were born in which artistic creativity was not associated with its material embodiment, that is, dance, theatrical action, song and music. The beginnings of music are documented by a remarkable find of a Paleolithic flute made from a drilled reindeer antler at the settlement of Molodova on the Dniester, in the fourth cultural layer, at a depth of 2.2 meters.

Considering the works of the first sculptors and painters of our planet, one cannot avoid the question of their place in the world history of art.

Some scientists have developed views, the essence of which is to affirm the primordial existence of art and the sense of beauty in man as an expression of an absolute idea, an absolute spirit. Supporters of the idealistic concept sought to discover in the Paleolithic "pure", "disinterested art", created by the genius of the "chosen" race - Cro-Magnons, or, as they are called, "Paleolithic Greeks".

On the other hand, scientists who stood on the positions of vulgar materialism could not understand the qualitative specifics of ancient art as a social phenomenon and tried to reduce it to the level of biological phenomena. They argued that the aesthetic sense in humans has an innate biological, and not social, character, and that in this respect there is no fundamental difference between man and animal.

There are different views on the content of Paleolithic art and its role in the social life of the Paleolithic era. Some scientists believe that art is born of magic. Others, on the contrary, consider him absolutely free from any influences of magic.

All these points of view are one-sided and largely wrong. Their adherents ignore the complexity and dialectical nature of the development of Paleolithic art, its role in the knowledge and development of the world by man. In fact, the art of the Paleolithic arose on the basis of the development of labor. It was brought to life by the social needs of man and developed along with them and on their basis. This is also evidenced by the special significance of animal plots in Paleolithic art, which is explained by the role of the animal in the life of ancient hunters, in their economy and everyday life.

Killing the beast and eating it was the main concern of Paleolithic man, since rare moments of abundance of food alternated with long days, weeks, and sometimes months of a hungry life.

The sculptural and rock carvings of animals of the Paleolithic era were associated in their origin with the magical actions of primitive hunters. At the same time, elements of a magical ritual were combined, perhaps, with practical preparation for hunting, with preliminary training of its participants.

The ideas associated with magical rituals, however, were by no means limited to only one goal - to bewitch, attract the beast and kill it. No matter how helpless and naive the Paleolithic man was, he thought not only about today, but also about tomorrow, tried to look ahead, into the future. A peculiar expression of this concern is the material traces of the cult of fertility.

Images of animals could be associated not only with magical beliefs and rituals, but also with totemic legends, which are based on the ideas of the relationship of human communities with animals, myths about animal ancestors. Such myths about friendly relations between animals and people (the so-called "animal epic") transfer the relations that developed in the tribal community to the animal world and are their fantastic reflection.

Inextricably linked with social life and economy, fantastically refracted in the worldview of primitive man, in his myths and beliefs, was the image of a woman in the art of the Paleolithic. The special significance of female images for Paleolithic man is evidenced by the conditions in which they are found during excavations of ancient settlements. Figurines of women are sometimes carefully placed in special pits-storerooms and covered with bones or stone tiles. But most often they are found near the hearths.

Holes in the legs of female statuettes from Bureti and Malta indicate that the owners wore them like amulets, although they hung them upside down in a somewhat unexpected way for us.

Cases have been noted when figurines were found as if deliberately broken. P. P. Efimenko believed that they were deliberately “defiled” by the enemies of the inhabitants of the ancient settlement, who thus wanted to inflict as much harm on their opponents as possible.

In any case, there is no doubt that the statuettes of women were cult objects, talismans and shrines of the Paleolithic settlements.

To some extent, the materials of modern ethnography, which characterize the life and spiritual culture of the northern tribes, help to clarify the ideas associated with these figurines of the people of the most ancient era. The way of life of the inhabitants of the North, due to the harsh nature and hunting economy, reveals the greatest similarity with the everyday life of the Upper Paleolithic hunters of the glacial regions of Europe and Asia. Reconstruction of the life of the peoples of ancient times on the basis of ethnographic materials, of course, cannot be absolutely accurate, since science does not know a single people at the level of development of a Paleolithic person. But still, such a reconstruction is the only way to imagine in detail the life and culture of the people of primitive society.

In the religious beliefs of some Arctic peoples, even in the 19th century, much of what helps to understand the worldview of Paleolithic man and the ideological content of his art was preserved in the form of remnants. In Eskimo settlements, there were often female figurines made of wood and bone, striking in their resemblance to Paleolithic ones. On the island of Punuk, for example, a walrus tusk figurine was discovered, which, like the Paleolithic figurines, realistically conveys the appearance of an elderly woman.

Among the Eskimos, such figures often depicted specific people who were in a long absence. The figurines were credited with the properties and abilities of these people, as well as the magical power to attract animals to the hunter. Eskimo women, during a long absence of their husband, made a figurine depicting him, which they then fed, dressed and undressed, put to bed; in a word, they took care of her in every possible way, as of a living being. Anthropomorphic images were also made in the event of a person's death in order to instill in them the soul of the deceased. In such figurines, a recess was made, where they put the hair of the deceased, which, according to the ideas of the Eskimos, was the receptacle of the soul.

It is characteristic that, like the Paleolithic figurines, the overwhelming majority of Eskimo dolls depicted females. But the soul enclosed in the doll did not have to return to the world of the living in the form of a woman. According to the beliefs of the Eskimos, a woman could sometimes be reborn to a new life as a man, and a man as a woman.

The ideas of the Eskimos associated with "dolls" depicting women are very archaic. There are still no real idols here, not even a genuine cult and veneration of the dead. They clearly reflect the ancient ideology of the people of the maternal clan in the early stages of its development. It can therefore be assumed that the images of women had a magical meaning in the Paleolithic era and served as a fetish for procreation.

The fact that the ideas that gave rise to the Paleolithic images of women were based on the idea of a female progenitor associated with the cult of fertility and maternal principles can also be judged by the general appearance of the figurines. Most of them convey the same type of woman-mother, they express the idea of motherhood.

This idea is conveyed with the utmost brevity in the so-called "medallions", that is, pieces of marl, on which a sign of the feminine is carved, primitively, but quite clearly. There is no eroticism in such medallions found in Kostenki I and in some Paleolithic settlements in France. In them, the most ancient cult of fertility, concern for procreation, for the growth and prosperity of the primitive community stand out in relief.

The cult of the woman-mother was closely intertwined with the hunting cult. This is explained by the fact that in the earliest periods of human history, in the Lower Paleolithic era, a woman participated in collective hunting on an equal basis with a man. In the era of the Upper Paleolithic, this participation was preserved in the ideas of people and in rituals as a relic. The important role of women in hunting is evidenced by hunting scenes in the Mesolithic rock paintings of Kobystan.

As the observations of ethnographers show, primitive hunters believed in a kind of magical "division of labor" between men who kill animals and women who, by their sorcery, "attract" animals under the blows of hunters. This is evidenced by the legends and myths that were preserved among the hunting tribes in the 19th century.

What was the basis of the magical power, which, according to primitive hunters, attracted animals to their death? According to the myths of the hunting tribes, werewolves and people could have sexual intercourse. Women attracted animal males, and men - females. On the same basis, more complex ideas about the mythical woman, the mistress and mother of animals, were developed. Entering into contact with her, the hunter was rewarded with hunting happiness - good luck and the opportunity to kill the beast. From here came the later totemic myths about the marriage of an animal and a woman, as a result of which a demigod hero is born, and at the same time an ancestor of the clan. From these myths, in turn, developed a world folklore story about innocently persecuted divine heroes-fugitives. The demigod-animal then becomes, among the agricultural tribes, an anthropomorphic suffering deity.

The mythological ideas of the Paleolithic people about a woman and the feminine were perhaps even wider. The same Eskimos had an ancient cult of the elements of nature, personifying the most important, from their point of view, forces of nature in the images of powerful female spirits - “mistresses”. The sea element, with which the well-being of the Eskimos, who lived by hunting walruses and seals, was mainly associated, was personified in the ugly old walrus woman Sedna, the mistress of the sea and all its inhabitants. The life and death of the Eskimo tribe depended on the will of Sedna. The land was equally sovereignly disposed of by Pinga, the mistress of deer and all four-legged inhabitants of the land. The air was dominated by Halla and Assiyak - the mistresses of the wind, thunder and lightning. Also, apparently, the Paleolithic man subordinated the entire surrounding world and the elemental forces of nature to the power of the mythical female creatures created by his own fantasy. The dominance of the image of a woman and the secondary role that in art belonged to the image of a man reflected in a peculiar way the ideology of the primitive hunters of Europe and Asia.

In the art of the Paleolithic, ancient myths and primitive magic, which formed the basis of primitive religion, found expression. And yet it would be wrong to derive this art only from magical practice and religious ideas and thereby limit its essence. Primitive art was not born either by magic or religion, in its very essence opposite to the free creative fantasy of artists who drew creative impulses from the surrounding reality.

Paleolithic art was primarily a form of human cognitive activity aimed at the active development of the surrounding world, at the struggle of man for existence. A direct expression of this creative force is the striking realism of cave paintings and sculptures of people of the Ice Age. These works reflected the life experience of primitive hunters, their labor achievements, a keen perception of the world and, first of all, the knowledge of the world of animals, which is vital for hunters, affected.

All this, taken together, became a prerequisite for the transition from simple and ordinary production activity to a new one, qualitatively different in content and character - to artistic activity, to art.

Of course, the low level of productive forces and social relations negatively indicated the development of art in this initial era. Art at the infant stage of its existence was still very far from the stage when it stands out as a special sphere of social life. It was directly connected with the practice of human collectives and inseparable from it. There were, of course, no professional artists either. There was no specialization of artistic labor yet. But there is no doubt that there was already present, at least in embryo, that specific quality that distinguishes artistic activity from any other and gives it the right to be called art.

In its development, primitive art followed certain aesthetic norms, obeyed special laws of beauty. Therefore, the history of the artistic activity of primitive mankind is, first of all, the history of the emergence and development of the aesthetic principle in its consciousness and creativity.

Aesthetic norms, of course, did not exist forever. They arose and developed in the course of the development of labor, society and man. In the process of the development of labor and concrete-sensory cognition of reality, ancient man became more and more fully aware of the expediency and beauty of the forms of nature. He was also aware of the beauty of his own creations, beginning with tools. On this basis, he developed and, over time, became richer and brighter a sense of beauty, reflected in the naive, but truly artistic works of the Paleolithic masters.

Another feature of ancient art is that, unlike art in a class society, it permeated the entire life of a person and completely belonged to the entire primitive community, and not to the ruling elite of society, as happened later. Primitive art appeared precisely because it was vital to man and the society in which he lived - the primitive tribal community.

The most ancient art allowed a person to more fully and deeply understand the surrounding reality. It reflected by its specific means all the main things that the primitive community lived by. It rallied and united its members. It enriched them spiritually, raising man higher and higher above the animal world from which he emerged.

On this day:

Birthdays
1821 Was born Jindrich Wankel- Czech doctor, archaeologist and speleologist. The excavations carried out by him in the sites of prehistoric man in the area of the Moravian Karst gave important results on the history of the Czech Republic during the period of its settlement by man.
1860 Was born Max von Oppenheim- German diplomat, orientalist and archaeologist in the Middle East, discoverer of the settlement on the hill of Tel Halaf and Halaf culture.
1929 Was born Vladimir Antonovich Oborin- Soviet and Russian archaeologist, specialist in the ancient and medieval history of the Urals.
Discoveries
1799 French sappers during the Egyptian expedition of Napoleon discovered rosetta stone.