Prehistoric Art

Prehistoric Art

The lecture surveys prehistoric art and architecture from the Paleolithic to the Neolithic. Because prehistory predates written records, interpretations rely on objects, images, archaeological context, and landscape evidence; many explanations remain uncertain.

Paleolithic Art and Ways of Making It

Paleolithic hunter-gatherers were nomadic, so many surviving artworks are small and portable. Artists made carvings, engravings, paintings, and sculptures from materials such as bone, ivory, stone, and clay. Cave paintings do not necessarily mean people lived in caves: the lecture describes temporary shelters, including huts built from mammoth bones.

• Lascaux, France: The Hall of Bulls features animals rendered in varying styles, from detailed shading to simple outlines. Flickering torchlight could make the figures seem to move. The Shaft of the Dead Man shows a puzzling scene—a stick-figure person, a bird, and a wounded bison. Scholars cannot establish whether it depicts a myth, an actual event, or a shamanic vision.
• Pech Merle, France: Handprints appear above spotted horses. The lecturer suggests they may have marked individual painters or community members. The spotted horses are presented as evidence that artists depicted animals they had seen.
• Tuc d’Audoubert, France: Two large clay bison were modeled in profile. The sculptor brought clay from elsewhere in the cave, smoothed its surfaces with a spatula, and shaped details such as eyes and nostrils with their fingers.
• Chauvet, France: Animal paintings, including horses and other large mammals, show shading, highlights, and a sense of three-dimensional form. Multiple artists made the images over time. Bear-claw marks and bear remains were also found in the cave.

The lecture also examines the small Venus of Willendorf, sometimes called the “Nude Woman.” Her emphasized breasts and abdomen have led to interpretations of her as a fertility figure, but that meaning—and even the label “Venus”—is uncertain. Her small size and hand-fitting form are consistent with a portable object. She is compared with later images of Venus by Botticelli and Praxiteles.

Neolithic Settlements, Ritual, and Architecture

As glaciers retreated around 10,000 BCE, agriculture and settled communities developed. This Neolithic shift brought larger works, including monumental megalithic structures, and required greater social organization.

• Çatalhöyük, in present-day Turkey: A large settlement of mud-brick homes built close together. Roof hatches, rather than front doors, provided access. Wall paintings have been interpreted as maps or depictions of bulls, though these readings are uncertain. The lecture also discusses burials beneath house floors and plastered skulls that may have helped families remember the dead.
• Jericho: A settlement near fresh-water springs, with mud-brick houses, doors, and substantial walls. One plastered skull had shells set into its eye sockets. Researchers at MIT reconstructed its likely appearance. The lecture notes that the man’s head had been bound in infancy, possibly indicating special social status.
• Stonehenge, England: The structure used post-and-lintel construction. Its stones were joined with mortise-and-tenon fittings, a method compared to joining pieces of furniture. The arrangement is associated with cremation and with sunrise and sunset at the summer and winter solstices.
  • The large sarsen stones came from nearby areas, while the bluestones came from Wales. The lecture presents proposed transport methods—including boats and rolling stones on planks—as hypotheses rather than settled facts.
  • Nearby Woodhenge and Durrington Walls broadened scholars’ understanding of the site. Woodhenge’s wooden posts have decayed, leaving postholes. The lecture presents Durrington Walls as a settlement associated with the living and Stonehenge as a place associated with the dead.
  • Modern Druids hold a summer-solstice vigil at Stonehenge. The lecture notes that this is the occasion when visitors can approach the stones.

Featured Creators and Contributors

• Paleolithic artists and sculptors: The makers of the cave paintings, handprints, figures, and clay bison are unnamed.
• Werner Herzog: Director and actor who filmed Cave of Forgotten Dreams inside Chauvet Cave.
• Sandro Botticelli and Praxiteles: Artists whose works were shown for comparison with the Venus of Willendorf.
• MIT researchers: Reconstructed the Jericho skull and its likely facial appearance.
• National Geographic: Tested a proposed method for transporting Stonehenge’s stones.
• Modern Druids: Participants in the solstice vigil at Stonehenge.
• The lecturer: Not identified in the subtitles.