Amazing Cave Paintings from 32,000 - 9,000 BC!!

WOW! Those are gorgeous! Thanks you made my day! Thank you!
I love pictures of the horses, I wonder if those were the Hyracotherium horses from 50 million years ago?
The Mesohippus was 30 million years ago . The Merychippus was 20 million years ago. How old did they say these art paintings were? Equs is the modern horse. Surely they were Equs drawings. I wounder who came first man or the horse?

reply to post by kiwifoot


Top Job Kiwifoot,The paintings in Lascaux are awesome.
That second pic in your OP,of the horse type creature,are those arrows /spears near the front legs and stomach?
Looks like it to me,or are they plants whipped into the air as the horse runs-depicting motion!!! ?

And that fork like structure above the horses neck/head-is that a fork for catching horses-or an isometric representation of a stilt house?

I thought it looked a bit like a rectangular box house,with an attempt at perspective-see how the "stilts" are arranged....

Not sure-very interesting stuff.

WOWEE Kiwifoot!!! that virtual tour of Lascaux is stunning!

this whole subject is mesmerising it is both so much and not enough. That wall of hands at Altamira (was it ?) just mindboggling so beautiful!!!


great thread !!! Thank you!!!

S/F - such a cool thread.

The paintings are an amazing part of our past.

reply to post by Silcone Synapse


i'm just replying coz you had the pic of the horse.

that is probably a pregnant mare and don't forget, back then there were no quarter horses, thoroughbreds, palominos etc.

and to the lack of technique in the cave paintings, i don't know what to tell ya! lol.

wth are you thinking? like they had Michaelangelo to study? da vinci? Matisse? geeze!

this is really amazing ART!

just look at the hands, that is nothing but art. 30kya. or whenever!

awesome thread!
s+f

those images resonate within ourselves as we recognize ourselves, humans, as a whole humanity, that transcends space and time.
We see ourselves looking back and in return we see them, we see real and true art that transmits emotions and perceptions from other moments of the tide of time itself great post OP!

Interasting.

Back then if i was painting, i would be paiting things really important to me, like my food resources! That is also my best guess at what these are representing since i also see wheat.

looks like they didn't fish much.

Wow very interesting!
It's quite intriguing, i kinda see this as an example of how complex our minds have become since then. We can illustrate things we've never seen before which they probably couldn't even comprehend back then. And to do things without purpose like drawing paintings. This is what seperates us from every other species basically. Why do something if it's not going to benefit us nutritionally etc.

Originally posted by kiwifoot

Thanks everyone for your kind words of appreciation.

LIW, I hadn't noticed that before, but now you come to mention it, the lack of birds is kind of strange!!

I wonder if anyone noticed this image:

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/8b6c384c8c20.png[/atsimg]

It's of an owl looking back, it seems the owl has inspired, scared and intrigued us for many thousands of years!!

All the best, kiwi

An owl huh? And here I thought it was a tentacled alien...

I liked the one picture with a single hand print on the bottom left; it looked to me like the artist's signature. Great thread kiwifoot! Thanks!

do people really think these paintings are just a grocery store ads?

do you actually SEE some of these paintings, in a cave, 30kya?

can anyone climb into the mind that did this? such technique, lol, common!

these guys started this stuff and it's awesome. they invented frikin music too!

so, you all have cave men to thank for thrash death metal and lady gaga.

what i see is someone, ansel adams of the stone age or a spielberg.

capturing moments and conveying a story.

but think of this, were these collective paintings, like everyone did 1 or 2 figures or was it the one cave dude/gal
that was his job for the tribe.

sorry, just personally love this stuff. super-realism and abstract art have a boring edge for me.

Cool Thread.
Here are some left hand artist candidates. I'm still waiting to see if they ever published the cave paintings in the recently discovered cave in the Dominican. A thread by Chamberf=6.
www.abovetopsecret.com...

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/71bb2e14edbd.png[/atsimg]

reply to post by frugal


If any money exchanged hands for these "discoveries" I'm giving this a 99% chance of being forgeries.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

reply to post by kiwifoot


Again a terrific thread Kiwifoot.

I'm surprised you thought we ATS'ers wouldn't have gone for this, we LOVE this stuff man!

I too am constantly amazed at the skill these 'crude cave people' possessed. I guess this proves they were anything but!

I like the hand gallery too, but not for artistic ability or novelty - but for emotion.

It clearly demonstrates an emotional bond, between certain members of the people that contributed to it.
Look at the hand over hand examples...they're actually immortalizing in art on stone human emotion, and demonstrating that they cared for each other...that they formed emotional attachments and loved one another.

They are holding hands...one deliberately placed atop another, immortalized for thousands of years, to tell us, their descendants and kin, that they had deep feelings and understood the human heart just as we do today.

Really touching.

Thanks.

reply to post by Silcone Synapse

And that fork like structure above the horses neck/head-is that a fork for catching horses-or an isometric representation of a stilt house?

You know, since you mention it SilconeSynapse,

It does indeed resemble a stilt house, doesn't it. I hadn't thought of that when i saw it.

Not sure about the plant's near the stomach conveying motion, although it might be. I see the lifted rear leg and dipped down head and shoulders as being the motion indicator..i think they may represent arrows that missed the target, by way of explaining to other tribe members/hunters that these animals are swift when they run, and are difficult to hit with arrows and spears.

Could the 'stilt house' fork like structure above the horse, be a way of compensating for the horses speed when hunting it?

The hunters of the time, may have been illustrating that because these beasts run so fast, and are difficult to hit with arrows, they had devised a method of corralling them into a trap?

Maybe the fork like object above the horse is just such a trap, that consists of several spears, attached to a heavy weight, like a large log. Suspended from above, it's released to drop and impale the horse from above, once it is herded into tight area?

Who knows...maybe it shows a house, and a domesticated horse, thousands of years earlier than we thought.

reply to post by Jimjolnir


The owl is facing forward folks...you can see the line representing it's beak in the center, also what look to be a couple of round eyes, but they're very faint.

Did anyone else notice that most of the lower hands are of the kids (a lot smaller and chubby)?

Logical really, since they wouldn't be able to reach as high as the adults.

A lot of the time, they didn't use pipes to blow the pigments over their hands onto the wall...they just spattered it on wet, right from their lips. (picture a trumpet players' lip movements, making a 'brrrrrrrrrrrr' vibration)
They'd get a mouthful of red ocher pigment, mixed it with their saliva to form a liquid paint, and spat away!

Really amazing pics and the tour is very nice too!

Two points i are boggling me about them...

First is that i see only 2d-like paintings in that time and long after until anyone started to create 3d-like pics...

Second is, i once saw a video anywhere on the net about a professor claiming that this Lascaux paintings are in fact a depiction of the stars... Thats maybe why there are only big animals and no birds (exept the owl)...


Peace, love and light,
let u guide by higher i

Jim

Originally posted by Silcone Synapse
reply to post by kiwifoot

 

Top Job Kiwifoot,The paintings in Lascaux are awesome.
That second pic in your OP,of the horse type creature,are those arrows /spears near the front legs and stomach?
Looks like it to me,or are they plants whipped into the air as the horse runs-depicting motion!!! ?

And that fork like structure above the horses neck/head-is that a fork for catching horses-or an isometric representation of a stilt house?

I thought it looked a bit like a rectangular box house,with an attempt at perspective-see how the "stilts" are arranged....

Not sure-very interesting stuff.

edit on 17/9/2010 by Silcone Synapse because: Forgot picture!!

To me the thing above the horse looks like it was added at a later time by a much less skilled artist than the original, the lines just look very crude to me whilst the shading and form of the horse is well crafted. I also got the impression that the two objects at the front and side of the horse where plants, something like wheat.

Very good thread Kiwi, people tend to forget that humans have always been at the cutting edge of technology and culture, even if they look primitive by today's standards in their time they where the laying the foundations of what would some day become civilisation. It makes me wonder how prevalent these painting were, it takes special conditions for these painting to preserve through the ages as the op stated, so how many ancient Sistine Chapels and Mona Lisa's where there in pre-historic times?

Originally posted by spikey
reply to post by kiwifoot

 

It clearly demonstrates an emotional bond, between certain members of the people that contributed to it.
Look at the hand over hand examples...they're actually immortalizing in art on stone human emotion, and demonstrating that they cared for each other...that they formed emotional attachments and loved one another.

They are holding hands...one deliberately placed atop another, immortalized for thousands of years, to tell us, their descendants and kin, that they had deep feelings and understood the human heart just as we do today.

Really touching.

Thanks.

thats exactly what I felt when looking at that picture. it demonstrates unity, you can almost fell that this moment was a very happy moment on the cave for that community...

we always use forks to catch horses in never never land.


you won't believe what i can do with a soup spoon.


that is a depiction of a mare with foal.

the rest of the background is way open to youse guys imagination.

like houses on stilts, possible. no windows or doors? or color or any ref that it is what you say.

anyway no one will read this so............

so cool. its absolutly amazing the way these were done. I wonder what it is that they used to keep the images there for so long. The pic with the hands sent goosebumps down the spine. so very cool love the pics