Explain the meaning of the words: cave painting, witchcraft, soul, “land of the dead,” religious beliefs.
- Cave painting - images in caves made by ancient people, one of the types of primitive art.
- Witchcraft is the practice of magic as a craft in which the sorcerer declares contact with supernatural forces (demons, spirits of ancestors, nature and others).
- Soul - according to religious and some philosophical beliefs, an immortal substance, an immaterial essence in which the divine nature and essence of man is expressed.
- “The Land of the Dead” - according to religious beliefs, this is the afterlife, where the soul of a deceased person goes.
- Religious beliefs are beliefs that emerged among primitive people in witchcraft, in the soul, in life after death.
Test yourself
1. How was cave painting discovered?
In 1879, the Spanish amateur archaeologist Marcelino-Sans de Sautuola, along with his 9-year-old daughter, during a walk, accidentally came across the Altamira Cave in Northern Spain, the vaults of which were decorated with many drawings of animals made by ancient people. The discovery, which had no analogues, greatly shocked the researcher and prompted him to study it closely. Subsequently, works of primitive art were found in many other caves in which ancient people lived.
2. Why did primitive artists depict mammoths, bison, deer, and horses? What role did these animals play in people's lives?
The most ancient artists painted the animals they hunted. The authors managed to convey the exact appearance and character of the animals: deer seemed sensitive and wary, horses - fast and swift, mammoths - massive, heavy with a high convex head. These animals played a huge role in the life of primitive people, who used their meat for food, sinews as fastening material, bones for making tips and other tools, and skins for making clothing.
3. What ancient religious beliefs do you know?
Ancient people believed in hunting magic, in the human soul and the “land of the dead”, where the souls of their ancestors go.
4. How did primitive people imagine the life of their ancestors in the “land of the dead”?
Primitive people imagined the life of the souls of their ancestors in the “land of the dead” to be similar to their own life. The souls of ancestors move to the distant “land of the dead”, live there in tribal communities, hunt, fish and collect edible fruits. When burying a relative, people put in his grave everything necessary for traveling to the “land of the dead” and for life in this country: food and strong shoes, clothes, weapons, jewelry.
Think and discuss
1. What did the artist want to tell about when he created the scene with the bison and the defeated hunter (see figure on p. 19)? Guess what preceded what is depicted.
Probably, the artist captured the story of one of the hunts, in which a member of the community died, but a bison was defeated, while the hunters managed to avoid meeting a rhinoceros. Perhaps this is part of the so-called primitive “hunting magic”, and the drawing symbolizes and predicts a successful hunt, avoiding danger from larger animals, but also shows the inevitability of victims during the hunt.
2. Why did primitive artists sometimes depict a hand on the body of an animal drawn in a cave?
Perhaps this is how primitive artists sought to show the power of man over animals, i.e. domesticated animal.
3. For what purposes do archaeologists excavate ancient graves? What and why can you find in them? (See figure on page 19.)
Primitive people believed that, when dying, the soul of a relative goes to the distant “land of the dead”, where it continues to live, hunt and enjoy the fruits of hunting and gathering. To ensure that the soul’s path to the “land of the dead” and the afterlife was good, people put in the grave everything that the deceased might need on this path: clothes, weapons, jewelry. Archaeologists excavate ancient graves to learn more about the deceased person. From the bones you can determine who a person was, what he looked like, how he lived, how he died. And from the things in the grave, scientists can describe the life and level of development of the community. The totality of such data makes it possible to find out where and how the ancestors of modern man appeared, and to determine the path that humanity has taken in its development.
Let's summarize and draw conclusions
Who are called primitive people? Where and when, according to scientists, did the most ancient people live?
Primitive people are called representatives of numerous humanoid species who lived before the era of the invention of writing, after which it became possible historical research based on the study of written sources. The man passed long haul evolution from primitive apes, australopithecines, Homo habilius, Homo erectus to Homo sapiens.
Human evolution goes back 5 million years. Oldest ancestor modern man - Homo habilius (Homo habilius) appeared in East Africa 2.4 million years ago. He knew how to make fire, build simple shelters, collect plant food, process stone and use primitive stone tools. Many stone tools various shapes and sizes were found in the Olduvai Gorge (Tanzania).
Homo habilis lived only in Africa. Homo erectus was the first to leave Africa and enter Asia and then Europe. It appeared 1.85 million years ago and disappeared 400 thousand years ago. A successful hunter, he invented many tools, acquired a home and learned to use fire. The tools used by Homo erectus were larger than the tools of early hominids (man and his immediate ancestors). In their manufacture we used new technology– upholstery of the stone blank on both sides. They represent the next stage of culture - Acheulean, named after the first finds in Saint-Acheul, a suburb of Amiens in France.
Compare ancient people and homo sapiens. What is the difference between them? What are the similarities?
Ancient man was very similar to a monkey. He had a rough face with a wide, flat nose, a heavy lower jaw without a chin, and a forehead receding back. There was a ridge above the eyebrows. People's gait was not yet quite straight, jumping, Long hands hung below the knees. People didn't know how to talk yet. Homo sapiens differed from ancient people in a number of anatomical features, relatively high level development of material and non- material culture(including the manufacture and use of tools), the ability to articulate speech and developed abstract thinking.
However, the most ancient people and homo sapiens also had similarities. They all lived in groups, carried out joint activities for obtaining food, arranging homes and protecting from predators.
Who did the oldest artists on Earth depict? What do you know about the religious beliefs of primitive people?
Ancient artists depicted animals, people and hunting scenes in the caves in which they lived. Due to the antiquity of cave paintings, reliable evidence about the reasons for the creation and significance of cave paintings has not been preserved. Modern researchers have a number of hypotheses regarding their meaning; consensus Science has not been able to work out the purpose and meaning that ancient artists put into their works. Some scientists suggest that rock paintings served as part of the rituals of “hunting magic” and, according to the ideas of primitive people, were supposed to bring good luck in the hunt. Other scientists, based on examples of tribes that still live by hunting and gathering, believe that cave painting is part of the shamanic beliefs of primitive people, and that the drawings were created by tribal shamans who entered a state of trance and captured their visions, perhaps in an attempt to gain some special powers.
Primitive people had their own religious beliefs. They believed in hunting magic, performing rituals before the hunt. They also believed in the existence of a person’s soul, which flew out of the body while the person was sleeping and lived its own life. And when a person died, his soul went to the distant “land of the dead”, where it continued to live and hunt. In order to ensure the long journey of the soul to the afterlife, ancient people placed in the grave of the deceased everything that he might need in life after death: clothes, weapons, jewelry, etc.
Lesson 4. Lesson topic: The emergence of art and religious beliefs
Lesson objectives:
Educational: contribute to the formation in students of knowledge about the origin of art and religious beliefs;
Educational: contribute to the formation of a sense of respect and interest in the history of one’s people, humanity as a whole; formation and development of students’ cognitive interest;
Developmental: contribute to the general cultural, personal and cognitive development of students, ensuring the ability to learn.
Lesson objectives:
development in students of educational and communicative (improving oral speech skills), educational and informational (working with a map, textbook), educational and logical (working with terms and concepts, comparative characteristics of hunting techniques of ancient and ancient people, their way of life) skills and abilities ;
developing in students an attitude towards labor and cognitive activity as the main difference between humans and animals and the main factor of development;
to develop students' knowledge about the origins of art, ancient monuments on the territory of our country;
to form in students knowledge about the emergence of religious ideas and rituals;
formation of concepts: rock painting, soul, “land of the dead,” witchcraft ritual, religious beliefs.
Lesson type: combined
Approach to training : problem-activity, personality-oriented.
Teaching methods: explanatory and illustrative, method of problem presentation.
Forms of student work in the lesson: frontal, individual, steam room.
Principles of lesson organization: minimal amount scientific concepts, involvement of the maximum number of channels of perception, emotional richness, connection with needs, measurability of concepts, stimulation of independent activity of students, competitiveness.
Concepts and terms: rock painting, soul, “land of the dead,” witchcraft ritual, religious beliefs.
Description of the necessary technical equipment to conduct the lesson : textbook General history. Ancient world history. 5th grade: textbook for general education institutions/A. A. Vigasin, G.I. Goder, I.S. Sventsitskaya; edited by A.A. Iskenderova. – M.: Education, 2012, computer with the ability to play presentations and multimedia files on a large screen, presentation PowerPoint .
Structure and course of the lesson:
Organizational moment
The class's readiness for the lesson is checked and absences are noted. The topic and goals of the lesson are announced. The topic is written down by the teacher on the board and by the students in notebooks.
II. Checking the studied material.
1 Frontally, orally, short answers from the seat to the teacher’s questions
When did the first people settle in our country?
What changes did they have compared to the most ancient people?
How did the climate change?
Why did it become possible for people to live in places with cold, frosty winters?
What did people's homes look like at that time?
2. Detailed answer at the board
Hunting. Changes in hunting.
After answering, the student is asked to compare
3. Student message “Mammoth”. Students listen, then ask questions about the topic of the message. Both the work of the speaker and the quality of the questions asked are assessed.
If necessary, other students or the teacher help the speaker and complement his answer. It is clarified that mammoths were of different types. The smallest are up to 2 m tall and weigh up to 900 kg, and the largest species are about 5 meters high and weigh 12 tons, which is twice as heavy as the largest modern land animal - the African elephant. It is proposed to compare the size of the mammoth with some modern objects.
4. Detailed answer at the board
Tribal communities.
Additional question . What characteristics of a tribal community does the word “community” express? What are the characteristics of the word “generic”?
5. Performing a test task.
Orally, answers from the spot
Choose the correct option and complete the sentence
The emergence of new tools was associated withIII . Preparing to study new material
Statement of a problematic question.
IV . Learning new material
Frontal, oral, explanatory and illustrative narration with elements of conversation and the use of ICT (presentation PowerPoint ).
1 Discovery of cave painting
In 1878, in Spain, the archaeologist Sautuola and his daughter went to the Altamira Cave. When Sautuola lit the torch, they saw pictures painted on the walls and roof of the cave. Later, other caves with drawings by ancient artists were discovered. Among the images, bison and deer, bears and rhinoceroses are easily recognizable. All drawings were made with amazing skill. There were images of animals with a lot of legs - this is how artists tried to convey movement
The archaeologist who discovered the cave paintings suggested that they were created by primitive hunters many thousands of years ago. What was his assumption based on? 1) bison are depicted - animals that have long since become extinct; 2) bones of another extinct animal - a cave bear - and fragments of stone tools were found nearby; 3) the artists did not use modern paints, but colored clay - ocher, deposits of which were found in the same cave. But almost none of the contemporary scientists believed that images of bison were created by primitive people. How can you figure out why? What objections did scientists have? Some students can make correct guesses (“scientists believed that people had never been able to draw so beautifully”), which the teacher helps to substantiate.
2. Mysteries of ancient drawings
Working with textbook illustrations.
Look at the pictures of rock paintings on pages 17-19 of the textbook. What do you see on them?
Many of the drawings contain riddles - strange signs and objects, people with bird heads, or in clothes that look like a spacesuit. But most importantly, we cannot understand why scenes depicting hunting were painted in inaccessible, dark caves
3. Drawing and magic ritual
Why do you think primitive people often painted dying animals struck by spears and arrows? 30 thousand years ago people were still dependent on the forces of nature; they didn't know how to fight forest fires, floods, diseases, and often suffered from hunger. Unlike the most ancient people, “Homo sapiens” wanted to understand why people get sick and die, what determines the harvest of fruits and berries in the forest, and success in hunting. Sometimes the forest was full of game, the river abounded in fish, but suddenly both disappeared. Where have the animals gone? Why aren't there any fish caught?
There was not enough knowledge for correct answers, people began to think that nature was being controlledsupernatural strength. There is a belief that supernatural forces can be brought to one’s aid, for example, by bewitching an animal, depicting it as wounded and dying, and if you depict such an animal in a cave, it will definitely fall into a trap.
It is possible that ritual rituals were performed before the drawings - the hunters seemed to be practicing the course of the future hunt. Look at the picture on page 24
4. The emergence of religion
In those days, people began to believe in werewolves, in the miraculous properties of individual objects. People began to deify natural phenomena. Unable to explain the nature of the appearance of dreams, ancient man began to believe in the existence of the soul. Fear of natural elements and the inability to explain the phenomena of the surrounding world led to the emergence of religious ideas.
5. Ancient stone structures
From primitive times, huge structures called megaliths have reached us. The most famous of them is the Stonehenge complex in England. The ancient builders built a structure of forty stone slabs weighing tens of tons each. Scientists have been struggling with the mystery of Stonehenge for several decades.
According to one version, the complex is an astronomical calendar, since many plates are oriented to the most important stars, and the Sun, Moon and stars are visible through the passages on key days of the year.
V . Consolidation
1 Parallel during the study of new material.
2 Discuss with students and answer the questionWhat caused the emergence of art and religion?
3 Look at the drawing “Scene with a wounded bison and a hunter” page 19. What do you think the artist wanted to show with this image? What could have preceded such an image?
4 Conversation on issues:
Why did primitive artists depict mammoths, bison, horses, and deer?
What role did these animals play in their lives?
What is called religion, religious beliefs?
Has religion always existed?
When did it arise?
Why did religious beliefs arise?
What are the oldest religious beliefs you know?
What word can replace the following expressions:
Belief in gods and spirits -...(religion).
Images of revered gods and spirits - ...(painting).
Gifts to the gods and spirits -...(sacrifice).
Defeat of a painted animal with spears -...(witchcraft ritual).
Creatures that were the fantasy of ancient people - ...(werewolves).
5 Describe the drawing “Witchcraft ritual before the hunt.” What are these people doing? Why and why? What phenomenon does this picture indicate?
V . Homework assignment
VI . Summarizing
1. Reflection.Reflective circle.
1) All participants in pedagogical interaction sit in a circle.
2) The teacher sets the reflection algorithm:
what new did you learn?
what did you feel?
what are the reasons for this?
How do you rate your participation in the lesson?
3) All participants express their opinions.
4) The teacher completes the reflective circle, summarizing the information received.
2. Lesson summary
3. Lesson evaluation
Federal Agency for Culture and Cinematography of the Russian Federation
Branch of Moscow State University of Culture and Arts
Department of Social and Humanitarian Disciplines
Test
Course: “History of Fine Arts”
topic: Specific features of the art of primitive society
Completed:
2nd year student
group 802
Aleeva Yu. R.
Checked:
Rudneva Ya.B.
Naberezhnye Chelny, 2010
Introduction………………………………………………………………………………3
Paleolithic art………………………………………………………4
Mesolithic art………………………………………………………..9
Neolithic art………………………………………………………………………………10
Art of the Bronze Age……………………………………………………...15
Art at the beginning of the Iron Age……………………………………………………20
Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………24
References………………………………………………………...25
Introduction
Man's amazing ability to perceive and recreate images of the world around him has its roots going back thousands of years. Primitive art developed over a very long time, and in some parts of the world - in Australia and Oceania, several regions of Africa and America - it existed until the 20th century. under the code name “traditional art”.
The specificity of primitive art lies in its fusion with other forms of social consciousness. It reflects all spheres of society - economic, social and religious. Most often, ancient sculpture is found in special places of worship or in burials. This speaks of its inextricable connection with religious ideas and rituals. The consciousness of ancient people was a complex interweaving of realistic and illusory principles, and this syncretism of primitive thinking had a decisive impact on the nature of creative activity.
From its very inception, primitive visual arts developed in two directions. The first of these includes monumental forms(drawings in caves and on rocks, megaliths), the second is presented monuments of art of small forms: small sculpture, clay sculpture, artistic carving on stone, bone and wood.
Entire areas of ancient artistic creativity disappeared without a trace in the depths of millennia. Even wood is preserved only in special conditions - in the extremely wet soil of peat bogs, and materials such as birch bark, fur, fabrics are extremely short-lived and are extremely rare in archaeological excavations. Ethnographic observations indicate that they were widely used by primitive people to make objects of art. But those few monuments of primitive art that have come down to us are extremely diverse and expressive.
Paleolithic art
Paleolithic (Old Stone Age) is the earliest and longest period in human history. Moreover, art originated only in the late (Upper) Paleolithic, that is, about 40 thousand years BC, when, according to archaeologists, all types of fine art appeared.
At its core, Paleolithic art is naively realistic. He is characterized by a powerful spontaneous sense of life, masculinity and simplicity. At the same time, while showing vigilance in relation to individual objects, primitive man was not yet able to grasp the whole picture of the world, generalize and connect phenomena with each other and nature. He did not master the composition, did not give a detailed plot, did not feel the space.
Paleolithic monuments have been found in large numbers in Europe, South Asia and North Africa. An outstanding place in this series is occupied by paintings on the walls and ceilings of caves, in the depths of underground galleries and grottoes. Early drawings are primitive: contour images of animal heads on limestone slabs (caves of La Ferrassie, Pech-Merle in France); random interweaving of wavy lines pressed into damp clay with fingers - the so-called “pasta” or “meanders”; impressions of human hands outlined in paint - so-called “positive” or “negative” handprints.
Handprints primitive man. 30-21st millennium BC e.
Monumental images were applied with a flint chisel on stone or with paint on a layer of damp clay on the walls of caves. Earth paints, yellow and brown ochre, red-yellow iron ore, black manganese, coal and white lime were used in painting.
Paleolithic art reached its peak in Magdalenian period(25-12 thousand BC). In rock paintings, the image of the beast takes on specific features; animals are depicted in motion. In painting, a transition is made from the simplest contour drawing, evenly filled with paint, to multi-color painting; by changing the strength of tones, three-dimensional forms are modeled. The most characteristic examples of the Magdalenian period are associated with cave paintings - single images almost life-size, but not connected by action into a single composition: Altamira (Spain), Lascaux, Nio (Nio), Font-de-Gaume (France), Kapova Cave (Russia) ) and etc.
IN late XIX V. cave painting was still unknown. In 1877, in Spain, in the province of Santander, archaeologist Marcelino de Savtuola discovered images on the walls and ceiling of the Altamira cave. The discovery was published, but the material turned out to be so unexpected and sensational that the archaeological community considered it a fake. Only in 1897, the French archaeologist Emile Rivière was able to prove the authenticity of the images he discovered on the walls of the La Moute cave (France). To date, as a result of targeted searches, about a hundred caves with images and other traces of primitive man’s presence in them have been found in France alone.
In September 1940, one of the most famous primitive caves, Lascaux (Lasko) in France, was discovered quite by accident. This cave, which modern researchers call the “prehistoric Sistine Chapel,” was discovered by four boys who, while playing, climbed into a hole that opened under the roots of a tree that had fallen after a storm.
"Scene with the wounded buffalo." Rock painting. Upper Paleolithic. Lascaux Cave. Dordogne department. France.
"Bulls". 15-11th thousand BC e. Painting of the Lascaux cave. France
Lascaux has now been turned into a first-class museum. Lascaux painting is one of the most perfect artistic works of the Paleolithic era. Its oldest images date back to approximately 18 thousand BC. The cave complex consists of several “halls”. The most perfect piece in terms of quality of painting and excellent preservation is considered “ Big hall"or "Hall of the Bulls".
The Shulgan-Tash cave, better known as Kapova, is located in the Southern Urals in the valley of the Belaya River in the territory of the reserve of the same name (Republic of Bashkortostan). Images of animals on the walls of the Kapova Cave were discovered in 1959. They were contour and silhouette drawings made with red ocher based on animal glue. Currently, speleologists have discovered 14 drawings of animals. Among them are mammoths, horses, rhinoceros and bison. Most of the images are concentrated in the “Hall of Drawings”, in addition, images were later found on the southern wall in the “Hall of Chaos”. In addition to the identified images of animals, geometric signs, anthropomorphic images and fuzzy outlines shaded with ocher are noted on the walls of the cave.
During the Upper Paleolithic era, carvings on stone, bone, wood, as well as round plastic art developed. The oldest figurines of animals - bears, lions, horses, mammoths, snakes, birds - are distinguished by accurate reproduction of the main volumes, texture of fur, etc. Perhaps these figurines were created as a container for souls, which is in good agreement with ethnographic data, and served as amulets-amulets that protected people from evil spirits.
The image of a woman - one of the main subjects in the art of the Late Paleolithic era - was brought to life by the specifics of primitive thinking, the need to reflect in a “tangible” concrete figurative form the ideas about the unity and kinship of primitive communities. At the same time, these images were also credited with special magical powers, the ability to influence the successful outcome of the hunt. Figures of dressed and naked women of that period - “Paleolithic Venuses” - in terms of the perfection of their forms and thoroughness of processing, indicate a high level of development of bone-carving skills among Ice Age hunters. Made in the style of naive realism during the period of matriarchy, the figures convey with utmost expressiveness the main idea of this generalized image - a woman as a mother, ancestress, keeper of the home.
If Eastern Europe is characterized by images of plump women with exaggerated female forms, then female images of Siberia of the Upper Paleolithic do not have such exaggerated modeled forms. Carved from mammoth ivory, they represent two types of women: “thin” with a narrow and long torso and “massive” with a short torso and deliberately exaggerated hips.
"Woman with a Cup." Limestone relief (from Laussel, Hautes-Pyrenees, France). Upper Paleolithic. Museum of Fine Arts. Bordeaux.
T.n. Venus of Willendorf. Limestone (from Willendorf, Lower Austria). Upper Paleolithic. Natural History Museum. Vein.
Mesolithic art
In the Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age) and Neolithic (New Stone Age) eras, the development of the population of the south and north took different paths. This difference was especially pronounced in economic activities, which were most closely related to the specific natural conditions of each of the two zones. The law of uneven development of different regions came into force. And if in the southern regions during this period people began to lead a sedentary lifestyle - tribes of farmers and cattle breeders appeared, then in the north traditional forms of farming - hunting and gathering - continued to develop. With the retreat of glaciers in Europe, warming begins.
Profound changes in climatic conditions have led to significant changes in flora and fauna. Reindeer, which served as the main prey of Magdalenian hunters, is finally disappearing in Southern and Central Europe. The subject of hunting is elk, red deer, bison, wild boar, small animals, and waterfowl. Fisheries are developing intensively. The processing of stone tools is being improved, thanks to the invention of the boat, very vast spaces are beginning to be actively developed, and the appearance of the bow and arrow makes hunting more effective. The emergence of patriarchy complicates relationships between people.
The role of magic is increasing, the naive perception of nature disappears.
These changes were reflected in art, primarily in rock paintings. If Paleolithic cave painting consists of individual, unrelated figures, then Mesolithic rock painting is dominated by multi-figure compositions, vividly reproducing various episodes from the life of hunters. Colorful and engraved images of small size on the open rocks of Eastern Spain, the Caucasus, and Central Asia demonstrate a clearly expressed new approach to solving a plot scene, due to an appeal to the compositional principle of organizing visual material, on the basis of which an expressive and semantic whole is created, a narrative beginning is developed.
The central place, both in quantity and quality of images, belongs to scenes of hunting and battles. “Fighting Archers” is one of the most striking Mesolithic compositions (Eastern Spain). The content of the image is related to the person. The battle itself is reproduced using eight human figures. They are variants of a single motif: a person in rapid movement is depicted with somewhat zigzag dense lines, slightly widening in the upper part of the “linear” body, and a rounded spot on the head. The main pattern in the arrangement of the figures is their repeatability at a certain distance from each other.
Neolithic art
Significant changes in the life of primitive society made it possible to call this period of history the “Neolithic revolution.” The melting of glaciers, which left a mark in the memory of mankind in the form of the legend of the Great Flood, set in motion peoples who began to intensively populate new spaces. The most significant change was the transition to a productive economy, which involves a sedentary lifestyle with permanent settlements. Man learned to build new types of housing - on stilts, structures made of sun-dried bricks (raw bricks), and learned to defend his settlement. In the art of that time, images of people began to play an increasingly significant role, and the activities of the collective became the central theme of art.
The visual creativity of the Eurasian population in the Neolithic era is represented by two directions: monumental rock paintings
"Leopards". Rock relief
in Fezzan (Libya). Neolithic. Schematic images of human figures. Rock painting. Neolithic. Sierra Morena Mountains. Spain.
and monuments of art of small forms - wooden, stone and bone sculpture, clay sculpture and images on ceramics.
Bucket from the Gorbunovsky peat bog (Sverdlovsk region, RSFSR). Tree. Neolithic. Historical Museum. Moscow
Ax in the shape of a moose head. Polished stone. Neolithic. Historical Museum. Stockholm
Tools decorated with reliefs. Bone (from the Isturitz cave, Bas-Pyrenees department, France). Neolithic. Private collection. Paris.
Ceramic production is one of the most ancient on earth. The presence of easily accessible material – clay – led to the early and almost universal development of ceramic craft. Initially, back in the Paleolithic, the main type of ceramic products were thick-walled vessels with a porous shard and a round or conical bottom. They were sculpted by hand by building up individual strands of clay. Crushed shells and crushed granite were added to the clay so that it would not crack when fired over an open fire. Based on numerous fingerprints, it was established that the oldest ceramic vessels were made by women.
During the Neolithic era, humanity first learned to skillfully make pottery. The richness of forms (jugs, bowls, cups) and the ornamentation of Neolithic vessels allow us to consider them as artistically designed works of art. It is possible to trace the development of the ornament from the simplest patterns, extruded with a stamp and a point (the so-called pit-comb type), which covered the entire outer surface of the vessels in various combinations, to much more diverse and artistically expressive paintings, consisting of rhythmically alternating spirals, concentric circles, wavy lines , mesh and checkerboard patterns, etc. The patterns were often multi-colored. Combinations of red, white, black and other colors were used.
Neolithic craftsmen knew and appreciated clear rhythm, symmetry in the arrangement of patterns, proportionality of forms and strict ornamental composition. It is ceramics in its more or less mass production, due to its uniformity and slow evolution of decorative elements, that gives archaeologists reliable chronological guidelines and allows us to talk about a particular archaeological culture, most often of one region.
The earliest examples include ceramics from the settlements of Karadepe and Geoksyur in Central Asia. All signs of the painting have a certain meaning associated with the emerging animistic (animate) perception of nature. In particular, the cross is one of the solar signs denoting the sun or moon.
Tripolye ceramics (Tripolye village, Ukraine) marks the next stage in the development of ceramics, dating back to the end of the 3rd millennium BC. Significant changes are taking place in the content of the paintings. Tripoli ceramics depict wavy, zigzag lines, a running spiral, rhombuses, crosses, as well as people, animals - in other words, many elements. Moreover, all abstract pictorial forms are full of semantic significance. A wavy line is a river, a running spiral is the continuous running of the sun, the movement of time, rhombuses are symbols of a female deity sending “heavenly moisture” to the earth, a cross is a solar disk, a zigzag line is a snake, the patroness of the house, a mediator between heaven and earth, a symbol of rain , “herringbone” is a plant or cereal ear.
Ceramic painting represented a unique narrative about the surrounding reality in all its versatility and diversity. The focus of human consciousness is no longer on a single phenomenon (beast), not a single action of people, a specific event in the life of human society (battle, hunting, dance, etc.), but the diversity of the surrounding world - a new, higher and more complex stage of development consciousness (including abstract thinking) of primitive man.
Separately, it is necessary to say about the development of ornament, which appears not only on clay vessels, but also on other household items. The simplest ornament appears as a trace of weaving coated with clay. Subsequently, geometric patterns (parallel stripes, double spirals, zigzags, concentric circles, etc.) and plant motifs with various semantic meanings appear.
IN ancient sculpture Neolithic hunter-fishermen found their embodiment in two main themes: man and beast. The continuation of the traditions of Paleolithic art can be seen especially clearly in zoomorphic sculpture. It is characterized by a realistic interpretation of the image, careful modeling of the animal's face, and the stability of visual techniques in conveying individual details. The sculpture is dominated by images of individual animal heads, which is one of the features of primitive animal art. In the eyes of the ancient hunter, the head personified the very essence of the beast. The specificity of primitive thinking forced him to express this idea visually, and therefore the head was made disproportionately large, and its details were drawn out especially carefully. This pattern is also observed when depicting the full figure of an animal.
Anthropomorphic figurines were made from the same materials as everyday objects (wood, clay, bone, horn, stone). However, in certain historically established groups, a certain selectivity of material can be traced, which is probably due to ethnic tradition and the purpose of specific images. We can also talk about the predominance of one or another type of image in certain centers of ancient art. The discovery of figurines of foreign types in such a hearth indicates the existence of contacts between the populations of different areas. Anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figurines, conveying certain images of ancient mythology, were, undoubtedly, integral accessories of very specific religious rites. Anthropo-zoomorphic figurines, found in small quantities, symbolized the inextricable connection of man with the nature around him.
Anthropomorphic guise. Rock art. Neolithic. Sheremetyevo rocks. Khabarovsk region.
Another characteristic genre visual arts In the Neolithic era there were petroglyphs - multi-figure plot compositions in which images of humans and animals predominate. Petroglyphs were common in Northwestern Europe, the Urals, Siberia, Transcaucasia, and Central Asia. They were knocked out on rocks or rocky river banks (“Boats, deer”, 2nd millennium BC, Karelia).
Bronze Age Art
Usually, two large periods are distinguished - the Chalcolithic (Copper-Stone Age) - the transition period from the Stone Age to the Metal Age and the Bronze Age (III - II millennium BC). Important milestones in human history are associated with the Bronze Age. First of all, this is the further spread of the productive economy - agriculture and cattle breeding and the development of a new material - metal, primarily copper and its alloys. At the beginning of the Metal Age, contacts between peoples living over vast territories expanded. This process was especially noticeable in the territory of steppe Eurasia, where a productive cattle-breeding economy has been developing since the paleometal era. This was largely due to new technical inventions, in particular, with the advent of the wheeled cart, and in the Late Bronze Age - with the use of horses for riding.
In the Bronze Age, with the introduction of new forms of economy and metal tools, a large social division of labor occurred, which created the conditions for regular exchange and increased property inequality. Craft is separated from agriculture, male labor is becoming increasingly important, which finally leads to the establishment of patriarchy, unquestioning submission to the elders in the clan community.
Since the end of the Neolithic, art has been enriched with more and more new subjects. The subject matter of images is expanding, new techniques for conveying images are emerging, the role of figurative symbolism is sharply increasing, and the tendency to depict fantastic characters is becoming more and more noticeable. On the other hand, there is a desire for stylization and simplification of the drawing. Images of animals appear less and less often. Geometric patterns are spreading everywhere, for which the main thing is the sign.
The art of the Bronze Age has a number of features. It is becoming more diverse and spreading geographically. Petroglyphs, images on stone steles and slabs, sculpture, small sculptures, ornaments, the use of artistic images in the design of tools and household items - all this is becoming a ubiquitous phenomenon. In the art of this time, for the first time, it is possible to trace vivid themes associated with the mythology of ancient peoples, in particular Indo-European ones. The images of ancient art become a kind of “visual language”, a sign system understandable to related groups of the population. This feature is especially striking ancient art continues to manifest itself in the ornamentation of ceramics and other household items.
In the visual arts of the Bronze Age, two main directions can be distinguished: anthropomorphic and zoomorphic sculpture and household items - wooden, clay, stone, bone and bronze, as well as structures of megalithic architecture.
The ancient art of the European northwest is extremely characterized by a unique anthropomorphic clay sculpture. A special group in it consists of small human figures with a strongly curved body. Despite the plastic properties of clay, which allow for wide variations in shapes, these images are made in strictly regulated canons. The image itself is extremely generalized: the arms are missing, the legs are shown together. Details such as a massive protruding nose and a “visor” hanging over the face are emphasized.
Among the early monuments of primitive canonized art are anthropomorphic sculptures widespread in the southern regions of Europe and the Mediterranean, including the so-called “stone women” of the Northern Sea Coast - vertically standing, roughly hewn stone slabs with a more or less clearly defined head and arms folded on the chest . Among the additional elements (bow, mace, staff), the most canonical are the images of the belt and the human foot. The signs of gender are not always indicated on the steles, but some indirect evidence indicates that most of the anthropomorphic sculptures of the late Neolithic and Bronze Age correspond to their Russian nickname “stone woman”. In France, where such images are found not only on steles, but also in the form of reliefs carved on the walls of numerous caves, they are considered the personification of the Neolithic goddess - “the patroness of the dead.”
There are also images of people in wood (Eastern Trans-Urals). The variety of forms of anthropomorphic sculpture in the Early Bronze Age clearly shows that already at that time, as a result of the primitive collective’s awareness of the social essence of man, his image occupied one of the central places in the work of ancient masters.
Mastering the technique of bronze casting expanded the creative capabilities of ancient masters. Bronze items, tools, and weapons appeared. Often the handles of bronze daggers are topped with the heads of animals, in particular elk. Made in metal, they continue the traditions of ancient wood and horn carving.
The art of bronze casting was especially clearly manifested in the objects of the Galich treasure (mid-2nd millennium BC), found in the Kostroma region and now located in the State Historical Museum in Moscow. Particularly interesting is the bronze dagger, the handle of which is crowned with the head of a snake with an open mouth. In the slot of the handle there is an image of a crawling snake. Among the items in the treasure is a bronze face mask, repeating the basic facial features of anthropomorphic male idols. It is topped with two profile images of animals looking in opposite directions. A hollow figure of an animal with a long tail and a “beak-like” muzzle is also part of the treasure. In general, the bronze items of the Galich treasure probably represent attributes associated with the formation of shamanism.
The most important phenomenon, almost universally characterizing the Bronze Age, was megalithic architecture. Monuments of megalithic architecture were closely connected with religious and cult tasks and thus went beyond the scope of immediate utilitarianism. The relatively uniform nature of these ancient architectural structures, approximately the same time of their appearance in Europe, great amount their unusually wide distribution testifies to the existence of some homogeneous beliefs that existed among various peoples who erected these gigantic monuments everywhere from Ireland to Burma and Korea, from Scandinavia and Madagascar. There are about four thousand of them in France alone.
There are three types of megalithic structures:
Menhirs– lonely cigar-shaped stone pillars up to 20 meters high – bear the features of both architecture and sculpture. Sometimes reliefs were carved on them, sometimes their shape resembled a human figure (conditionally, “stone women” can also be classified as menhirs). They were erected on a hill, and the force of impact on the viewer was achieved by the contrasting juxtaposition of the proudly rising vertical mass of a powerful monolith with the small wooden huts or dugouts surrounding it.
The architectural principle is most strongly expressed in dolmens- most likely burial structures made of several vertically placed stones, covered with a wide horizontal stone slab. Dolmens are widespread in Western Europe, North Africa, Crimea and Kakaz.
More complex buildings - cromlechs. The most grandiose of them was erected at Stonehenge (beginning of the 2nd millennium BC, England) from huge roughly hewn tetrahedral blocks of blue stone. In plan, it is a round platform with a diameter of 30 meters, closed by four rings of vertically placed stones, connected by beams lying on them, forming something like a giant round dance. The inner ring, in the center of which there is a stone slab - possibly an altar, is made up of small menhirs.
As a result of archaeological excavations, burials are often discovered inside megalithic monuments, either under them or near them. This leads archaeologists to interpret the monuments as places of special significance for the funeral rituals followed by the agricultural communities of the area.
In New Grange (Ireland) there is a huge 11-meter mound made of stones and peat. Through the base of the mound, a corridor stretches 24 meters deep, lined with massive stones below and above. It ends with three rooms, also lined with stone. On certain days, the rays of the rising sun penetrate the corridor and illuminate the central hall, located in the very depths.
In Carnac (Brittany, France), rows of vertical stones stretch across the plain for several kilometers. Today, of the ten thousand stones originally supplied, only three thousand remain. Although no burials have been found under the Karnak menhirs, there are many megalithic graves nearby.
The hypothesis about some unknown unified cultural tradition is also supported by the fact that not only the idea of such structures itself is becoming widespread, but also some symbols and decorative elements associated with them, including solar signs. The possibility of a connection between megalithic structures and the cult of the sun is also indicated by the fact that some of them (for example, Stonehenge) are oriented with their main axis to the point of sunrise on the day of the summer solstice.
Art at the beginning of the Iron Age
The widespread use of iron finally supplanted stone tools and gradually completely replaced bronze ones in the 1st millennium BC, which led to the further rapid development of human economic life.
The most famous works of art of that period are bronze and iron objects discovered in Scythian burial mounds.
The world first learned about the Scythians more than 2.5 thousand years ago from the Greeks, who then began to explore the Northern Black Sea region and encountered warlike semi-nomadic tribes of skilled horsemen. Herodotus (5th century BC) dedicated an entire book to the Scythians in his “History,” who, it is believed, himself visited the Black Sea region and traveled through these places.
There are two understandings of the term “Scythians”: ethnographic and geographical. Actually, the Scythians lived in the Black Sea region, between the Danube and Don. Greek and Latin texts preserved several Scythian names and place names, from which it is clear that their language belonged to the Indo-Iranian group of the Indo-European language family. Of the modern languages, the Ossetian language is closest to Scythian. By their appearance, as well as by numerous identifications of skulls from excavated burials, the Scythians were undoubtedly Caucasian. Therefore, Blok’s “slanting and greedy eyes” are the fantasy of the great poet. Conventionally, such Scythian tribes are called “European”.
Nomadic tribes, close to the Scythians in language and culture, occupied a much larger territory - the entire steppe belt from the Don to the Baikal region, including the foothills and mountain valleys of the Tien Shan, Pamir, Hindu Kush, Altai and Sayan. Recent excavations have found typically Scythian objects not only in Xinjiang, where this is not surprising, but also in the interior of China, Iran and Anatolia. Among the horsemen of the Asian steppes and foothills there were also many different tribes, the names of which are mentioned in various ancient sources. In Greek, Iranian and Chinese texts they were called “Sauromatians”, “Massagetae”, “Saki”, “Se” respectively. These are the “Asian Scythians”. Among the numerous finds in the mounds of European Scythia, along with objects bearing elements of Greek and ancient Eastern artistic traditions, one can also see a “purely” Scythian style, the same in its stylistic features as in the images found in Central Asia and South Siberia.
Since the Scythians led a nomadic or semi-nomadic lifestyle, the basic knowledge about their material culture was formed from the results of excavations of burial mounds, which are conventionally called “royal”, since it was in them that the most luxurious and precious things were found. The most striking and richest finds from Scythian and later Sarmatian burial mounds are presented in the Hermitage collection, which has been accumulated for more than 200 years. At first (from 1726) it was stored in the first Russian museum- Kunstkamera, and since 1859, since the creation of the Imperial Archaeological Commission - in the Hermitage. Nowadays, ancient artistic objects of the Scythians and related tribes of the steppe Eurasia are in many other museums in Russia (in Moscow - in the State Historical Museum) and foreign countries. They are also kept in museums of Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, in museums of Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, China, Mongolia, in the USA (Metropolitan), in France (Guime, Saint-Germain en Lay), in England (British Museum) and in a number of private collections (for example, the A. Sackler collection in New York). Siberian museums store thousands of Scythian artistic bronzes found in different time, starting from the 17th century. until today. Numerous gold and silver jewelry comes from Siberian burial mounds.
The most famous mounds are Chertomlyk (the right bank of the Dnieper) and Kul-Oba (Crimea). In each large Scythian mound, the servants and concubines of the deceased were buried, as well as up to several dozen bridled and saddled horses. In one of the large mounds, about 400 horse skeletons, a whole herd, were found. A traditional “set” of personal jewelry of the leader, decorations of horses and weapons, and household items (in particular cups) was found in the mounds. Numerous and varied weapons were decorated with gold plates, with engraved images covering almost the entire surface of scabbards, quivers, handles, axes, etc. A characteristic feature of Scythian decorative and applied art is the dominance of the so-called “animal style,” where the full-blooded image of an animal was combined with an ornamental design of details.
For example, a find is considered unique - a cup from the Kul-Oba mound. A rounded electric goblet, decorated in the lower part with a typical Greek pattern, is covered in the upper half with images arranged in a circle, representing a kind of sequential visual narrative. There are seven figures of male Scythians on the goblet, six of them are arranged in three pairs, and one Scythian drawing a bow is shown separately. This emphasis allows us to see him as a central figure. Another bow hangs from his belt. Since the usual set of Scythian weapons included only one bow, the question immediately arises, what is the function of the second? In 1970, the famous Moscow Scythologist prof. D.S. Raevsky carefully examined different versions of the Scythian genealogical legend, fragments preserved in Greek and Latin texts. From these options, the following core plot of the legend about the origin of the Scythians emerged. In the mythology of every nation there is its own ancestor, usually a king. Among the Scythians, such an ancestor was King Targitai, born from the marriage of Heaven and Earth (a mythology common to all Indo-European peoples). He had three sons (also a very popular situation that turned into fairy tales): Kolaksai, Lipoksai and Arpoksai. Feeling the approach of old age and thinking about an heir, Targitai set a condition for his sons: the one who can string his bow and gird himself with the royal armor belt will ascend to the kingdom. The eldest son began to draw the bow, but the bow escaped his hands and hit him in the jaw; The middle son's shin was damaged by a rebellious bow, and only the youngest son coped with the task and became king.
Conclusion
Art in the early stages of its historical development had not yet emerged as an independent sphere of human spiritual life. In primitive society there was only nameless artistic creativity that belonged to the whole society. It was closely intertwined with primitive beliefs, but was by no means determined by them. Primitive art reflected man’s first ideas about the world around him; thanks to it, knowledge and skills were preserved and passed on, and people communicated with each other. Art was associated with human labor activity. Only everyday work experience allowed the ancient masters to create works that not only went beyond their original purpose, most often cult, but also still excite us with the expressiveness of their artistic images.
Primitive art played an important role in the history and culture of ancient humanity. The human imagination has been embodied in a new form of existence - artistic. By consolidating his life experience and worldview in visible images, primitive man deepened and expanded his ideas about reality and enriched his spiritual world.
Having learned to create images (sculptural, graphic, painting), man acquired some power over time. Primitive art reflected man’s first ideas about the world around him; thanks to it, knowledge and skills were preserved and passed on, and people communicated with each other. In the spiritual culture of the primitive world, art began to play the same universal role that a pointed stone played in labor activity. The conversion of primitive people to a new type of activity for them - art - is one of the greatest events in the history of mankind.
Bibliography
1. Alekseev V.P., Pershits A.I. History of primitive society: Textbook for universities. - M.: Higher School, 1990.
2. Kravchenko A.I. Culturology: Tutorial for universities. - 3rd ed. - M.: Academic project, 2001
2. Larichev V. E. Cave sorcerers. – Novosibirsk: West Siberian Book Publishing House, 1980.
One of features primitive culture is... or deity, led to specific motor impulse, which... society, i.e. performs an ideological function. The basis of the works art preliterate and especially ...
Society and social processes
Abstract >> SociologyCultures - " art For art". In contrast... other processes. More specifically theories approach modernization... Marxism: it was believed that primitive society replaced by class slaveholding, ... or groups in society. Peculiarities conflict: clear...
Primitive art
Primitive art. Paleolithic art.
The art of the era of the primitive communal system arose around the 30th millennium BC. e., in the late Paleolithic, when modern man appears. By consolidating the results of labor experience in art, a person deepened and expanded his ideas about reality, enriched his spiritual world and rose more and more above nature. The emergence of art therefore meant a huge step forward in human cognitive activity, contributed to the strengthening of social ties and the strengthening of the primitive community. The immediate cause of the emergence of art was real needs Everyday life. For example, the art of dance grew out of hunting and military exercises, from original performances that figuratively conveyed the labor activities of the primitive community and the life of animals. In the emergence of song and music great importance had rhythms of labor processes and the fact that musical and song accompaniment helped organize collective work.
Works of fine art appeared already in Aurignacian time (that is, at the very beginning of the Late Paleolithic). The most important monuments of Paleolithic art are cave images [caves in Spain (Altamira, etc.), in southern France (Lascaux, Montespan, etc.), in the Russian Federation - Kapova Cave], where full of life and the movements of the figure of large animals that were the main objects of hunting (bison, horses, deer, mammoths, animals of prey, etc.). Less common are images of people and creatures that combine the characteristics of humans and animals, handprints, schematic signs, partially decipherable as reproductions of dwellings and hunting traps . Cave images were made with black, red, brown and yellow mineral paints, less often in the form of bas-reliefs, often based on the resemblance of natural convexities of the stone to the figure of an animal. In addition, in the late Paleolithic, works of round sculpture depicting people and animals appeared (including clay figurines of women - the so-called Aurignacian-Solutrean “Venuses”, associated with the cult of “progenitors”), as well as the first examples artistic carving(engraving on bone and stone). Characteristic Paleolithic art - its naive realism. The amazing vitality of many Paleolithic images of animals is due to the peculiarities labor practice and the worldview of Paleolithic man. The accuracy and sharpness of his observations were determined by the daily work experience of hunters, whose entire life and well-being depended on their knowledge of animals and their ability to track them. For all its vital expressiveness, Paleolithic art was, however, completely primitive and infantile. It did not know generalization, the transfer of space, composition in our sense of the word. To a large extent, the basis of Paleolithic art was the display of nature in living, personified images of primitive mythology, the spiritualization of natural phenomena, endowing them with human qualities. The bulk of the monuments of Paleolithic art are associated with the primitive cult of fertility and hunting rituals. In the Late Paleolithic, the beginnings of architecture took shape. Paleolithic dwellings appear to have been low, dome-shaped structures sunk about a third into the ground, sometimes with long tunnel-like entrances. As building material bones of large animals were sometimes used. Numerous examples of Late Paleolithic art were discovered on the territory of the Russian Federation [in Ukraine (Mezinskaya site), in Belarus, on the Don (Kostenkovsko-Borshevsky sites), in Georgia, Siberia (Buret, Malta)].
Mesolithic art.
Between the 10th and 8th millennium BC. e. The gradual retreat of the glaciers that covered the territory of Europe to the north begins. As a result of warming, vast steppe spaces that served as pastures for mammoths, bison, reindeer and horses are turning into dense, endless forests. Large animals that were previously hunted by humans are dying out or moving far to the north in search of food. Thus, reindeer disappeared from the territories of Central and Southern Europe. Now elk, red deer, wild boar, bison and smaller animals become prey for people. Fishing and oyster collecting are becoming widespread. Climate warming contributed to the fact that our ancestors began to lead a sedentary lifestyle. Parking lots ancient man Now they are located mainly along the shores of seas, rivers and lakes. Primitive craftsmen invent the bow and new tools, domesticate the dog and begin cattle breeding and farming. Construction and the beginnings of weaving production appeared.
The worldview of a person who feels more courageous and independent also changes. The role of magic is significantly strengthened, agricultural mythology appears and develops. All these changes are reflected in art, which acquires a cult sound. The multi-colored nature of painting disappears and becomes monochrome (one-color). Typically, drawings are made with one paint - black or red; their main elements are schematism and silhouette. The volume disappears almost completely.
At the same time, many new things appear that are uncharacteristic of the Paleolithic. Events in the paintings of artists of this time are presented in interconnection, that is, a composition appears. The plots are enriched, the main object of the image becomes a person, his victories or defeats in the world around him.
Painting techniques are also undergoing changes. The basis of paints are substances such as egg white, honey and even blood. First, contours are applied to the surface with a brush, and then the design is painted over with paint of the same color.
These new elements can be seen in rock art discovered in the coastal mountainous areas of Eastern Spain (Spanish Levant). Artists focus their main attention on depicting humans rather than animals, and humans are almost always shown in action. Volume, perspective and color do not matter, the main thing is to convey the movement of the figures.
Paleolithic painting, as mentioned above, consists of separate figures that have no connection with each other. The rock paintings of the Spanish Levant are multi-figure compositions depicting events that happened to the artist himself and his contemporaries.
The very first Mesolithic paintings in Eastern Spain were discovered by archaeologists in 1908. Painted rocks rise along the edges of valleys and in mountain gorges between Barcelona and Valencia. They are also found further south. These are mainly picturesque scenes (there are practically no petroglyphs here) depicting people and various animals. The size of animal figures usually does not exceed 75 cm, and human figures are slightly smaller.
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| Honey collector. Arana. |
There are very large compositions, for example, in Alpera (province of Albasem, Eastern Spain) there are paintings in which dozens of animals and hundreds of human figures are represented.
Many paintings from the Spanish Levant are dedicated to hunting scenes. The paintings depict herds of animals being pursued by people with bows, or hunters running away from a wounded animal.
Of great interest is a drawing from Arana depicting a honey collector climbing a rope to a nest surrounded by bees.
In the Valttorta gorge, researchers discovered a whole gallery of paintings with scenes of hunting deer, wild boars and rams. There are images of military battles, as well as paintings that apparently tell about an execution (in the center is a man pierced by arrows, around him are people with bows).
In the rock art of Eastern Spain, depictions of women are very rare. One of the most famous compositions is the so-called. “Walk”, in which an ancient artist painted a woman and child walking. If the male figures in the paintings are full of dynamics, then the female ones are static, but more naturalistic.
Scientists have traced how the development of Mesolithic painting took place. Early painting, dating back to this time, was distinguished by naturalism and proportionality in the depiction of human figures. Gradually, the correct proportions disappeared, and people with unusually narrow waists, thin arms and long legs. Top part The body became like a triangle, topped with a round head.
Over time, the proportions became even more deformed; painters began to depict a man with a short torso, overly large legs and a head turned in profile. In the end, schematism completely pushed aside naturalism. The human body, his legs and arms in the paintings of this time are represented by ordinary thin lines, making it possible to easily convey movement and reproduce a wide variety of poses.
This trend has hardly extended to animal images. As human hunting prey, they had to have the appropriate appearance and therefore retained the weight of their forms and realism.
Some picturesque monuments of the Mesolithic era represent numerous layers of drawings. A number of researchers explain this by the fact that certain territories passed from one warring tribe to another many times and the winners tried to secure their right to a given area with the help of painting.
Deer hunting. Painting in a cave in Spain. Mesolithic.
Neolithic era.
The Mesolithic was followed by the Neolithic - the New Stone Age, or the Age of Polished Stone. glacial period, and with it both the megafauna and species diversity of humanity were left behind. Neanderthals left the historical stage, our ancestors - people of the Cro-Magnon type - became the winners. Therefore, our history begins with the Neolithic era. In the Neolithic era, the production process, and with it spiritual life, became so complicated that the development of material culture in certain territories has its own characteristics. If in earlier eras art developed almost equally everywhere, now it acquired its own local characteristics in each region, by which one can distinguish the Neolithic of Egypt from the Neolithic of Mesopotamia, the Neolithic of Europe from the Neolithic of Siberia, etc. But there are also features common to Neolithic art: small sculptures made of stone, bone, horn, and clay are widespread. The animal figures are real, although they are interpreted in a general way. The images of female figures are simplified and schematic, sometimes covered with ornaments reproducing patterns on clothing. The development of decorative art is especially characteristic of the Neolithic; Almost everywhere we see the desire to decorate things that people use every day.
Most of all, ornamented pottery has reached us. In the forms of Neolithic vessels, and especially in the method and variety of their decoration, one region differed from another. One can trace the development of ornamentation from the simplest patterns on vessels of the pit-comb type (Eastern Europe) to the superbly made and richly painted vessels of Egypt or Tripoli. A striking and expressive example of Neolithic culture is the culture of Tripoli, widespread in the 4th-3rd millennia BC. in the south of the European part of Russia and Ukraine and in a number of Balkan countries. The end of the Trypillian culture dates back to the Chalcolithic (Copper Age) and Bronze Ages. Trypillian settlements of farmers were most often located along river banks. Houses made of clay and wood, rectangular in plan, were probably covered with ornamental paintings on the inside. Models of dwellings and small female figurines were found in the settlements. But the creativity of the Trypillians in decorating ceramics developed especially richly and widely. In terms of variety of forms and ornaments, Trypillian ceramics are not inferior to either Egyptian or Western Asian ones. Trypillian vessels were made of bright yellow or orange clay; The body of the vessel is covered with a variety of geometric patterns, but almost always consisting of spiral lines, painted in red, black, brown, and white colors.
Neolithic painting
In the northern forest areas, where hunting continued to exist, the old traditions of rock art were preserved. But the emergence of a new, more progressive stage of development can be seen here too: rock carvings, made mainly using percussion techniques, sometimes painted.
In addition to animals, humans also appear in rock paintings, but in terms of the power of expressiveness, images of people are inferior to images of animals, although it is always clear what the artist wanted to express.
Neolithic rock art has been discovered not only in Western and Central Asia and Europe, but also in more southern regions of the globe, for example, in some areas of Africa (Southern Rhodesia, Sahara), in Spain.
In this painting and rock art, for the first time in primitive fine art, the desire for grace appears. To be convinced of this, just look at the image of a woman collecting wild honey (Arana, Spain). Unlike the mighty “Venuses” of the Paleolithic, here the youth is depicted in paint on the stone. female body, graceful and captivating.
Or, for example, rock paintings discovered on the territory of Algeria, in the Sahara, in an area called Tassili-Ajjer. Analysis of seeds recovered during excavations shows that there was abundant vegetation here several thousand years ago. Blooming, colorful and mysterious to us fantasy world reveals itself to us in the art of Tassili-Adjer.
Rich pastures and fat herds of hundreds of heads. Slender shepherds guarding equally slender cows. The bodies of people and animals are deliberately elongated in an effort to be decorative and graceful. A symphony of tones - brown, black, reddish and yellow with golden tints. Stylization and fantasy. A solemnly elegant horned dancer or goddess in luxurious attire. Mighty bulls, graceful antelopes. Giraffes fighting, running from hunters or just walking; their necks and legs form a flexible, fabulously bold pattern. Thread-like dancing figures. Hunters with animal faces. Figures in masks, probably expressing some kind of magical symbols. Bows and arrows, alternating in a rapid rhythm that captivates the viewer. War chariots rushing at full speed. Unrestrained movement and suddenly again the peace of the grazing herd.
Let us remember the paintings of the Lascaux cave. There was a monumentality there, as if the inviolability of the image captured by the artist. Here - liveliness, fluidity and free imagination, sharpness and accuracy of drawing, grace and elegance, a harmonious combination of forms and tones, the beauty of people and animals depicted with a good knowledge of their anatomy, the swiftness of gestures, impulses, general symphony beauty - that's what amazes and enchants in the grandiose rock " art gallery"of the African desert, the world's largest "museum" of prehistoric art.
It is significant that this art, characteristic of the Neolithic, continued to exist for a long time among African tribes that preserved primitive communal relations. The remarkable rock art of the Bushmen is Neolithic in inspiration and style.
On the eastern shore of Lake Onega, in the vicinity of the village of Besov Nos, a monument of late Neolithic fine art was discovered: dozens of figures were carved on it about 4 thousand years ago. Elks and deer, geese and swans and large boats with oarsmen. All this is clearly indicated. But besides that, there are some circles, either with appendages or on long poles... We don’t know what they represent. Is this a cult of the Sun? Or the Moon? Everything taken together is obviously a magical mystery designed to give man victory over beasts, i.e. again a triumph over nature.
Neolithic sculpture
The first examples of Neolithic sculpture are associated with the funerary cult and are symbolic in nature. Numerous human and animal skulls, decorated with mother-of-pearl inlays and covered with a layer of clay painted with red ocher, were discovered in the ancient settlements of Jericho and Catal-Huyuk (Anatolia, Turkey).
These are nude figures of women (sometimes pregnant women) with exaggerated breasts and hips. Other “sculptures” represent the moment of childbirth, with the figure placed on a high seat flanked by zoomorphic figures. Another type of sculpture represents a mother with a baby in her arms. The mother is depicted with curvaceous hips and breasts and a sketchy head with small slit-like eyes on her face. This type of figure was discovered in the site of Hacilar (western Turkey).
In Europe, the Gumelnitsa culture (Romania) also provides characteristic examples of sculpture of this type, but with even greater schematism. In not so ancient settlements (around the 4th millennium BC) in the southeast of Europe - Serbia, Romania, Thrace - a type of sculpture developed that gravitated towards geometric schematism. The most representative examples are those found in Romania, in the burial of Cernavoda; their shapes are reduced to elementary volumes (cone and sphere). These are seated figures with their hands supporting their heads or resting on their knees. The head rests on a powerful neck, the face is round, with a cylindrical nose.
Another group of sculptures comes from Vinča (Serbia). In this case, the sculptural images are simplified to the shape of triangles. The head and individual parts of the body are especially emphasized; in some places there are holes for attaching some additional elements. Individual details are carved in the form of relief, outlining the contours of the eyes or fingers of the limbs.
In southern Europe, a type of monumental sculpture emerged that was closely related to the megalithic culture. We are talking about menhir statues, most often representing women, less often men, and sometimes characters of indeterminate gender.
These statues continue the tradition of decorative carving and polychrome sinuous line painting associated with some dolmens in France, Spain and Portugal. The outlines of the bodies in some cases are outlined in the same way as in the statue from Saint-Sernin (Museum of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Paris), in which eyes, nose and limbs can be distinguished; sometimes they completely disappear in the process of simplification, leaving only hints of the convexity of the breasts, like the Neolithic goddess from the Coisard grotto (France).
"Deer Swimming the River" Bone carving (from Lorte, Hautes-Pyrenees, France). Upper Paleolithic. Museum of National Antiquities. Saint-Germain-en-Laye.
"Woman with a Cup." Limestone relief (from Laussel, Hautes-Pyrenees, France). Upper Paleolithic. Museum of Fine Arts. Bordeaux.
Anthropomorphic guise. Rock art. Neolithic. Sheremetyevo rocks. Khabarovsk region.
"Scene with the wounded buffalo." Rock painting. Upper Paleolithic. Lascaux Cave. Dordogne department. France.
"Hunters". Rock painting. Neolithic (?). Southern Rhodesia.
Relief with a symbolic image from Castelluccio (Sicily). Limestone. OK. 1800-1400 BC e. National Archaeological Museum. Syracuse.
"Leopards". Rock relief in Fezzan (Libya). Neolithic (?).
Schematic images of human figures. Rock painting. Neolithic. Sierra Morena Mountains. Spain.
Head of a woman. Mammoth bone (from Brassanpuy, Landes department, France). Upper Paleolithic. Museum of National Antiquities. Saint-Germain-en-Laye.
Schematic representation of a woman. Cave relief. Neolithic. Croisard. Department of the Marne. France.
T.n. Venus of Willendorf. Limestone (from Willendorf, Lower Austria). Upper Paleolithic. Natural History Museum. Vein.
"The Man Playing the Lute." Marble (from Keros, Cyclades, Greece). Neolithic. National Archaeological Museum. Athens.
Combarel, an Upper Paleolithic site in a cave (Combarel, near Les Ezyes in the Dordogne department (France). On the walls in the depths of the cave of a narrow corridor 237 m long in 1901, over 400 images of various animals were discovered (mammoths, rhinoceroses, horses, bison, deer , alpine lions, etc.), as well as anthropomorphic figures. The technique of drawing is mainly engraving.
Zaraut-Sai, a gorge in the southwestern spurs of the Gissar ridge. Ocher drawings were found on the rocky overhangs of the west-north, in niches and small grottoes. Researched by G.V. Parfenov in and A.A. Formozov in The main subject of the rock art is the hunting of wild bulls, goitered gazelles, goats, and wild boars by people with dogs; hunters are armed with bows and arrows and dressed in camouflage clothing; There are other images. Possible date Neolithic Mesolithic drawings. More recent images have also been found. Zaraut-Sai, a gorge in the southwestern spurs of the Gissar ridge. Ocher drawings were found on the rocky overhangs of the west-north, in niches and small grottoes. Researched by G.V. Parfenov in and A.A. Formozov in The main subject of the rock art is the hunting of wild bulls, goitered gazelles, goats, and wild boars by people with dogs; hunters are armed with bows and arrows and dressed in camouflage clothing; There are other images. Possible date of the drawings is Neolithic Mesolithic. Later images were also found. Neolithic-MesolithicNeolithic-Mesolithic
White Sea petroglyphs are compact - their distribution area does not exceed 1.5 sq. km. There are 10 known points on large (Bolshoi Malinin, Erpin Pudas, Shoyrukshin) and small unnamed islands. Drawings are embossed on durable crystal slates gray. In ancient times they were located near the water. Most of the knockouts are small (20-50 cm), but there are also giants 3-3.5 m long; There are also very small ones – less than 5 cm.
Kobustan. Rock paintings. Within Kobustan, in the river basin. Jeyrankechmaz, over 4 thousand ancient rock images are known (silhouette and contour engravings, paintings), including scenes of harvest, sacrifice, dances, images of boats with oarsmen, people and various animals (dating from the Mesolithic to the Middle Ages). Stone Age sites were discovered next to the rock carvings, in caves and rock shelters. Kobustan. Rock paintings. Within Kobustan, in the river basin. Jeyrankechmaz, over 4 thousand ancient rock images are known (silhouette and contour engravings, paintings), including scenes of harvest, sacrifice, dances, images of boats with oarsmen, people and various animals (dating from the Mesolithic to the Middle Ages). Near the rock carvings, in caves and rock shelters, Stone Age sites were discovered.rock carvingsrock carvings
Rock art of Tassili Elephant (Oued Jerath) dating to the "buffalo period". The subject is very common in the rock art of the Sahara from the "buffalo period" to the present, especially in Aira, where elephants lived less than a hundred years ago. In the Jerat oud there are 96 images related to different periods. The elephant shown in the picture is carved on a vertical slab; the squares that line the ear should represent the folds of skin on its outer side. Width 1.8 m.
The "buffalo period" design on the horizontal slab (oued Jerat) represents two felines; one, apparently, is about to grab the other in the back; the lower one resembles a cheetah, the upper one may represent a canine hyena or a spotted wolf, the only animal of this family that lives in a shroud, but is capable of making forays into desert areas, it is the size of a hyena. Length cm.
Ram with “helmet” (Bu Alem, South Oran); above him is a human figure with a shield; height about 1.5 m. This is one of the best drawings of the “buffalo period”, both from the point of view of the excellent rendering of form and detail, and from the point of view of execution with the right stroke and a superbly polished surface. Since there is a disk on the ram's head, it was long believed that it had a connection with the Egyptian ram god Ammon. But it is now known that this is not so and that the design is much older than all the images of rams in Egypt.
Ancient buffalo with a spiral on a vertical slab (oued Jerat), height about 2 m. Bubalus antiguus is a now extinct species of buffalo, probably extinct in the Neolithic. It plays in the Sahara the role of a “determinant fossil” for the drawings of the ancient period, to which, by virtue of this very fact, its name is assigned. This animal had huge horns, the distance between which could reach 3 m. In this case, its image is accompanied by a double spiral carved on the body; This symbol is very common in rock paintings Ueda Jerath, but its meaning remains mysterious. There are other drawings on the same slab; many of them are polished, among these latter a horse can be distinguished. There are also designs that are outlined with dots, such as a giraffe between the horns of a buffalo and a human figure to the left of them.
Rock painting (oued Jerat) depicting palm trees and a chariot, the wheels of which have been erased from the painting. Refers to the "horse period", which corresponds to approximately 1200 BC. e. It can be seen that the old dried trees have been cut down, which means that the palm tree was cultivated. In the hands of the people there are something like sickles on long handles, which were perhaps used for cutting date bunches. This is the oldest image of a date palm found in North Africa and the Sahara, in this case it is contemporary with chariots with horses “in a flying gallop”.
Painting (Takededumatin site, Tassili) depicting cattle herders. The ovals on the left represent huts; there is no one in the first; female and child figures are visible in front of others; this is a reflection of the life of a polygamous family, such as we can still observe among the Fulani shepherds in the cereal steppes south of the Sahara. In front of the huts, calves are tied up, and behind them the rest of the herd is grazing, bulls, but more cows, with udders full of milk. Some people have hairstyles in the form of helmets, others in the form of small caps, like the modern Fulani.
An image of a man wearing a “magistrate’s” headdress. The figure is 2 m high and is remarkable from a decorative point of view, although it has suffered from time and is partially destroyed. The profile is fleshy, negroid; the lower part of the face appears to be covered by a mask; the hair is rendered with white, densely applied strokes, and the face is covered with small vertical strokes and white dots. To the right is small human head in the same style, but the face is covered with a mask, and a ribbon with vertical multi-colored stripes written in red, yellow and white ocher is woven into the hairstyle.
Detail of a large panel from the Bovid Period, called the Judgment Scene. People dressed in ceremonial clothes have caps on their heads, sometimes decorated with dots, sometimes with horizontal and vertical lines; large cloaks extend from neck to toe, covering the back. They move to the right, rounding their backs and bending slightly, depicting as if elderly respectable people who have committed an act of justice; the last of them holds a bow in one hand. Above them, a younger and more simply dressed man is holding another.
