Key Points for Global Prehistory
• Periods and definitions
• Prehistory (or the prehistoric period) refers to the time
before written records, however, human expression existed across
the globe long before writing.
• Writing emerged at different times in different parts of the world.
The earliest writing is found in ancient Mesopotamia, c. 3200
B.C.E.
• Homo sapiens (modern humans are a subspecies) - homo
sapiens migrated out of Africa between 120,000 and 50,000 years
ago.
• The stone age is a prehistoric period when stone implements were
widely used. The stone age is divided into the Paleolithic (old
stone age) and Neolithic (new stone age). After the Stone age, the
next periods are known as the bronze age and the iron age.
Key Points for Global Prehistory
• Historians distinguish the Neolithic period by the transition from
people living as hunter-gatherers to the development of farming
and the domestication of animals. The "Neolithic
revolution" allowed people to create a more settled way of life.
This happened at different times in different parts of the world.
The first agriculture occurred in southwest Asia—in an area
historians call the "fertile crescent."
• Prehistory was a time of major shifts in climate and
environment.
• Modern archaeology uses a stratigraphic process, where
archaeologists precisely record each level and the location of all
objects.
Key Points for Global Prehistory
• Art making
• The earliest peoples were hunter-gatherers (until about 12,000
years ago) who created imagery in many different media—fired
ceramics, painting, sculpture and who built architecture.
• The oldest “art” found to date are rock paintings and sculpture
from c. 77,000 years ago.
Key Points for Global Prehistory • In Asia, we have found Paleolithic and Neolithic cave paintings
that feature animal imagery (in the mountains of Central Asia
and Iran). Animal imagery has also been found in rock
shelters throughout central India. In prehistoric China, we find
ritual objects created in jade, (beginning a 5,000-year tradition
of working with the precious medium). Ritual, tomb, and
memorializing arts are found across Neolithic Asia, including
impressive funerary steles from Saudi Arabia and Yemen.
Key Points for Global Prehistory
• In Europe, we have found small human figural sculptures (central
Europe), cave paintings (France and Spain), and outdoor,
monumental stone assemblages (British Isles) that date from the
Paleolithic and Neolithic periods.
Spotted Horses and Human
Hands
Paint on limestone
Individual horses are over 5' (1.5
m) in length.
Horses 25,000–24,000 BCE;
hands c 15,000 BCE
Pech-Merle Cave, Dordogne,
France
Key Points for Global Prehistory • In the Pacific region, people migrated from Asia approximately
45,000 years over land bridges. The earliest created objects have
been dated to c. 8,000 years ago. The Lapita peoples, who moved
eastward from Melanesia to Polynesia beginning about 4,000
years ago, created pottery with incised geometric designs that
appear across the region in multiple media today.
The Oldest Art: Ornamentation
• Humans make art. We do this for many reasons and with whatever technologies
are available to us. Extremely old, non-representational ornamentation has been
found across Africa. The oldest firmly-dated example is a collection of 82,000
year old Nassarius snail shells found in Morocco that are pierced and covered
with red ochre. Wear patterns suggest that they may have been strung beads.
Nassarius shell beads found in Israel may be more than 100,000 years old and
in the Blombos cave in South Africa, pierced shells and small pieces of ochre
(red Haematite) etched with simple geometric patterns have been found in a
75,000-year-old layer of sediment.
Blombos Cave, South Africa
about 80,000 BC
Apollo 11 Cave Stones
c.25,500 BCE
The Oldest Art: Representational • The oldest known representational imagery comes from the Aurignacian culture of the
Upper Paleolithic period (Paleolithic means old stone age). Archeological discoveries
across a broad swath of Europe (especially Southern France, Northern Spain, and
Swabia, in Germany) include over two hundred caves with spectacular Aurignacian
paintings, drawings and sculpture that are among the earliest undisputed examples of
representational image-making. The oldest of these is a 2.4-inch tall female figure
carved out of mammoth ivory that was found in six fragments in the Hohle Fels cave
near Schelklingen in southern Germany. It dates to 35,000 B.C.E.
Lion-Human
Mammoth ivory
height 11⅝" (29.6 cm)
c. 30,000–26,000 BCE
Woman from Brassempouy
Ivory
height 1¼ (3.6 cm)
Probably c 30,000 BCE
Woman from Ostrava Petrkovice
Hematite
height 1¾" (4.6 cm)
c. 23,000 BCE
Woman from Willendorf
Limestone
height 4⅜" (11 cm)
c. 24,000 BCE
Camelid Sacrum in the shape of a canine
14,000-7000 B.C.E.
Tequixquiac, central Mexico
Camelid Sacrem Analysis
The Oldest Art: The Caves
• The caves at Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc, Lascaux, Pech Merle, and Altamira contain
the best known examples of pre-historic painting and drawing. Here are
remarkably evocative renderings of animals and some humans that employ a
complex mix of naturalism and abstraction. Archeologists that study Paleolithic
era humans, believe that the paintings discovered in 1994, in the cave at
Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc in the Ardéche valley in France, are more than 30,000
years old. The images found at Lascaux and Altamira are more recent, dating to
approximately 15,000 B.C.E. The paintings at Pech Merle date to both 25,000
and 15,000 B.C.E.
Hall of Bulls
Paint on limestone
length of the largest auroch (bull) 18' (5.50 m)
c. 15,000 BCE
The Lascoux Cave
Bird-Headed Man with Bison
Paint on limestone
length approx. 9' (2.75 m)
c. 15,000 BCE
Running horned woman.
Tassili n’Ajjer, Algeria.
6000–4000 B.C.E.
Pigment on rock
UNESCO Site Overview
Beaker with Ibex Motif
Susa, Iran
4200-3500 B.C.E.
Painted terra cotta
Ibex Beaker Analysis
Anthropomorphic Stele
Arabian Peninsula
4000 B.C.E.
Sandstone
Stele Origins
Jade Cong
Liangzhu, China
3300-2200 B.C.E.
Carved Jade
Stonehenge
c. 2750–1500 BCE
Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire England
Secrets of Stonehenge
The Ambum Stone
c. 1500 BCE
Ambum Valley, Papua New Guinea
Greywacke
Tlatilco Female Figurine
Central Mexico, site of Tlatilco
1200–900 B.C.E.
Ceramic
Tlatilco Figurine Analysis
Terra Cotta Fragment. Lapita.
Solomon Islands, Reef Islands
1000 B.C.E