Richard W. Wise, Author

by Richard W. Wise

Author: The Dawning: 31,000 BC

Copyright 2023

Far from just a burial site, Sunghir was a substantial village. By prehistorical standards, the area was "enormous." Active between 20-29,000 BP—later than Chauvet, earlier than Lascaux—two to three thousand people regularly visited the complex. How did it feed such a large population?

It was located along a mammoth migratory route (Lewis-Williams). A single kill supplied hundreds of pounds of meat sufficient to support a large population. (Don Hitchcock, Don's Maps). (Remains of 1613 specimens were identified at Dolni Vestonice (Wilczyński 2016) There is also evidence of specialized crafts and a division of labor.
 
Discoveries at Sunghir and Dolni Vestonice challenge the standard portrait of human prehistory as consisting of small wandering, leaderless, egalitarian bands of twenty-five to fifty individuals (Klima 2005). This model has now been shown to be true only a certain times and places. Find a renewable source of food, migratory routes, or fish-filled rivers, and people settled down. Were these groups leaderless? Were they egalitarian? And what about conflict? 
 
The brain's prefrontal cortex houses what are called executive functions, including reasoning, planning and communicating—a precondition for the creation of images. Thus, thanks in part to cave art, we know that the Homo Sapiens who peopled the late Paleolithic were just like us.
 
Some scholars have attempted to draw an artificial line between history, the period following the advent of writing, and what is termed prehistory. The latter has been portrayed as either a primitive Eden or hell on earth, depending upon whether one follows the writings of the 16th-century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes—remember: nasty, brutal and short—or the speculations on Natural Man by the 18th-century French philosophe Jean Jacques Rousseau.
 
As I stated in Part I, much of the study of history has been devoted to elitist, authoritarian regimes simply because they had the power to centralize wealth and coerce their citizens into constructing monuments that have survived into modern times. They also controlled what entered the written record.  

Stay Tuned: Part III Governing in the Upper Paleolithic.  
 

 
By Richard W. Wise
Author: The Dawning: 31,000 BC
 
Current headlines are screaming: The discovery of protowriting in European Paleolithic caves by a London-based furniture conservator, Ben Bacon, is the hottest thing in archeology.
 
Bacon, a long-term amateur archeologist working with three professionals, two from Durham University and one from University College, London, claims to have cracked the code around two specific sets of cave signs. The markings, found in caves throughout Europe, are a lunar calendar that likely tracked the reproduction cycles of the prey animals depicted in Ice Age cave paintings.
 
The system of dots together with the <Y> sign are among those earlier identified by Genevieve Von Petzinger as one of thirty-two ubiquitous signs found while crawling—along with her husband--through painted caves spread all over the European continent. My wife and I saw several of these signs at Font de Gaum, Lascaux and Chauvet during our June tour. Geometric symbols are associated with the phenomenal animal images at many others, including Lascaux, El Castillo, Niaux, Tito Bustillo, and Pech Merle.
 
That a system of dots can be deduced as calendar markings is not altogether revelatory. In his 1991 book, Archeologist Alexander Marchack made a case for markings of portable art—markings on bones—can be traced as far back as the Aurignacian Period (40-35,000 BP). This latest study acknowledges that such things are parts of Artificial or External Memory Systems (EMS) used by early Homo Sapiens.
 
To suggest that these dot sequences represented a numerical system and were meant to convey information about prey animals, such as mating, birthing, rutting and migration seasons, is something new.
 
The Calendar of Creation:
 
The authors of this latest study agree with Marchack that each dot represents not a single number but a single unit of calendrical time. But where should they begin? The authors suggest a meteorological calendar which begins with Late Spring, the beginning of the Season of Life when the ice on the rivers melts and the herd animals begin migrating to their breeding grounds. This information would be of great importance to the hunter/gatherers of the late Paleolithic, who depended on these animals for most of their diet.

Stay tuned!

by Richard W. Wise

Author: The Dawning: 31,000 BC

Recently, a carved deer bone (phalanx) of the giant species Megaloceros has been found at a Neanderthal excavation at Einhornhohle in the Harz Mountains. Dated stratigraphically and by Carbon 14 to 51,000 BP, the bone exhibits a cross-hatched slicing pattern or offset chevrons, a pattern roughly similar to the oldest "art" yet found, the celebrated engraved red ochre nodule unearthed at Blombos Cave, South Africa, and dated to 73,000 BP.
 
The deer bone appears to have no practical use. That, coupled with the rarity of this species, has led archeologists to conclude that it must have some symbolic meaning. Was this the result of a Neanderthal checking the edge of his newly knapped flint handaxe? Archeologists have the unsettling habit of labeling anything for which they can determine no use as a symbolic or votive object.
 
Whatever the cause, note that the archeological community has embraced the ochre nodule found at Blombos but not the Einhornhohle deer bone. John Shea, an archeologist from Stony Brook University, suggests the bone could have b as a sinker on a fishing line or a spool for thread, humm!

Heard the latest? Tiny daubs next to paintings of prey animals at Chauvet, Lascaux and elsewhere are identified as seasonal calendars. StayTuned!

by Richard W. Wise

Author: The Dawning: 31,000 BC

Copyright 2022 Read More 

by Richard W. Wise

copyright: 2022

Paleo artists did not limit themselves to drawing, painting and bas-relief; also produced three-dimensional sculpture. These include the famous "Venus" or Dolni figures. The oldest thus far, the Venus of Hohle Fels, dated to the Aurignacian Period (30-40,000 BP), was found in Germany.

These are sculptures of women. Many, though not all, are headless and naked with wide hips, bulging stomachs, legs and distinctly defined vulvas. This has led many experts to view them as votive or fertility objects or perhaps goddesses.

There are stylistic similarities, but they are not all the same. There are fat ones and skinny ones, compact and attenuated Venuses. Some are more, some less abstract. Some, particularly the French examples, are naked (naturally), but some, most notably those found in what is now Russia, are fully clothed. These Russian examples have been tagged: "Venuses in furs." The small statues range from Siberia to Northern Italy and are between 40,000-10,000 years old, attesting to an astonishing artistic continuity.
 
Like the work of Constantin Brancusi, Henry Moore, and Louise Bourgeois---artists strongly influenced by cave art---they demonstrate a very sophisticated ability to reduce form from complex to simple while retaining the essential and evocative. 

 
This artistic sensibility was not limited to Western Europe or to the female figure. A recent discovery of a 13,500-year-old bird figurine at Linjin in Henan Province demonstrates a similar ability to capture the essential. Though not a representation of the human form, the artist who created this Paleolithic bird reduced and captured what Constantin Brâncuși called: "not the outer form but the idea, the essence of things." For Brâncuși, the abstract is the more real because it captures that essence.

The female form is a recurring figure in Western art. The Venus figures represent a high-water mark in Prehistoric art.
 
Next: The Art of the Neanderthals
 

by Richard W. Wise

Author: The Dawning: 31,000 BC

copyright 2022

Of all the caves we visited, Grotte Cougnac won first prize for its natural beauty. In its broad chambers, slender stalactites drip from the high ceilings and translucent tubes cluster in masses like soda straws. Thin stalagmites rise from the floor—some stubby and phallic. Others have mated with stalactites to form elegantly shaped columns that remind us of a cathedral nave by Antoni Gaudi.
 
Dating back to the early Gravettian Period (33,000, some say 28,000-21,000 BP), its art contains the oldest art of the painted caves clustered around Les Eyzes de Tayak. Some may even be contemporary with the latest art created at Chauvet (31,000 BP). It should be noted that the periods discussed are specific to Central and Western Europe and are based on the evolution not of art but of tool-making technologies. 
 
The art throughout the caves is highly stylized, meaning that the style of the art in one cave adheres to conventions similar to those of other caves with renderings of the same period.
 
Each figure seems to begin with a gracefully drawn backline that defines the subject's ultimate shape. The outlines are often a single uninterrupted line. The elegance of line indicates a well-trained eye and hand. Drawing on cave walls, there was no way to erase or start over. The animals drawn are realistic, but these are icons. This is not true of Chauvet. The 35,000-year-old art is naturalistic; animals possess a singular individuality not present in the later art. Perhaps, it is the original which provided the basis for the stylization and uniformity which came later.  
 
The images, drawn in wood and bone charcoal and red ochre, include ibex, horses, and a beautifully rendered frieze of megaloceros—an ancient species of giant elk crowned with magnificent racks of antlers (see above). This image is among the oldest, with a Carbon 14 date between 30-24,000 BP. Showing a herd in motion, the frieze is reminiscent of some of the art at Chauvet, though not nearly so well executed. This period corresponded to the last glacial maximum when winter temperatures were at their lowest.
 
As early as 50,000 years ago, the cave was visited by Neanderthals, who sheltered in the entrance but probably did not explore the cave in depth. The caves were in use by Homo Sapiens for over 10,000 years.
 
The cave also boasts two rare anthropomorphic figures. One, drawn in charcoal, is of a crudely drawn man-like figure bent forward and pierced by what appears to be seven spears. The other, probably drawn by the same hand, is incomplete, beginning just below the shoulders with three spears, one rather uncomfortably piercing the figure between the buttocks. Dated to 25,000 years BP, these drawings are virtually identical to figures found at Pech-Merle and Lascaux.
 
 
Next: The Venus Figures, Part I. Stay tuned.

by Richard W. Wise,

Author: The Dawning: 31,000 BC

copyright: 2022

The walls at Bernifal and Lascaux and other caves are filled with engravings, including two engraved handprints not seen elsewhere. These are hard to photograph but show a mastery of line that could only have been obtained t much practice. The lines show a consistent flow, and the designs are repetitive in a given cave.  

This suggests a training method similar to the grueling process required of students of Suma-e painting and Japanese calligraphy. The apprentice practices making the same brush stroke until its execution becomes ingrained and almost automatic. It is a technique difficult to master with a supple brush and much harder with a mineral crayon or a flint burin.
 
Beautiful, precise, highly stylized engravings of animals are also found as portable art. At the museum at Les Eyzes, there are s engraved bones and a particularly famous engraving known as the licking bison rendered on mammoth ivory (above image).
 
On our first day in Les Eyzes, we visited Abri du Cap Blanc, an excavated sheltered overhang that was once open to the weather. The site has since been enclosed. Here we saw the magnificent horse sculptures.

These are bas-reliefs carved out of solid rock. The medium is limestone, a relatively soft sedimentary rock with a hardness of 2-3 on the MOHS Scale. The sculpture was chipped away using flint tools. Flint occurs in limestone and measures 7.0 on the MOHS scale. These are large horses and bovids—life-size sculptures—polished and py. The relief is more or less lifelike except for the distended body shape, which is characteristic of the art of the Magdalenian Period.
 
Like Colorito, a technique characteristic of the Baroque Period and the Impressionist juxtaposition of primary hues, Paleolithic art can be broken down into artistic/technical conventions which define periods. For example, in paintings of bison, the head is shown in profile, but the horns are executed in a two-thirds view with the shoulders facing toward the viewer. Also, at Lascaux, we see the so-called "Chinese Horses" with their unnaturally small heads. These conventions are characteristic of the Magdalenian Period (13-17,000 BP), during which the great majority of the art was produced. The subject matter also changes.
 
During the earlier Aurignacian Period (43-26,000 BP) at Chauvet, the depictions concentrated on predators, lions, and bears. In the Magdalenian, the focus was on grazing animals; horses, aurochs, ibex, and bison. Horses dominate at Lascaux.
 
Next: The Beauties of Grotte Cougnac. Stay tuned.

by Richard W. Wise

Copyright: 2022

At Bernifal, near the town of Les Eyzes, we got our biggest surprise. Our guide, Christine Desdemaines Hugon, trained the beam of her flashlight on the cave wall, and a beautifully drawn portrait of a Paleolithic man emerged. Human representations are rare—almost non-existent in French Paleo art. Unlike animal renderings, anthropomorphic figures, when they do appear, tend to be vaguely rendered, partial and indistinct. They are often hybrid figures like the Lion Man and the famous Sorcerer (La Grotte du Roc Saint Cirq). These images are best described as anthropomorphic and man-like, rather than as distinct images of human beings. 

This portrait is one of the unique images in Bernifal and all of the caves of Southern France. We were not allowed to take pictures. The image, downloaded from the internet, hardly does the portrait justice. The flashlight's beam revealed a distinct, realistic image of a man with a long oval, pale white face outlined in black, prominent eyes and eyebrows, nose and mouth with black hair worn in a topknot gazing out at us. 
 
Granted, our flashlight projected a white light measuring about 5500 kelvin. The artist would have been using the light of a direct flame at perhaps 1500 kelvin. Even so, unlike the image here, what we saw was white and very well-defined; the white color may have been due to calcite drippings that covered the portrait. The face would have been more poignant if seen against the natural gray background of the cave.
 
My immediate question: could it be a later drawing? No! The guide explained, the portrait is rendered not in charcoal but in Manganese dioxide, a chemical compound that cannot be dated directly. The calcite encrustation dates it as prehistoric.
 
To me, he resembled a Samurai warrior with Western eyes. Lit from the side, he sported a mustache. Who was he? Was this a self-portrait of the artist? He looks deceptively modern. He could be my neighbor. The artist, whoever he was, broke a taboo, but what sort of taboo? Human-like images are ubiquitous in Paleolithic art---though not so much in Southern France, where there is almost a complete lack. If were are talking about a realistic portraits, such as those at Chauvet, Lascaux, and Altamira, there, there are none.
 
Next: Prehistoric Engravers. Stay tuned.

by Richard W. Wise 

Like Chauvet, at Lascaux, most of the works are outlined in black. At Chauvet, the artists used charcoal. At Lascaux and many of the caves surrounding Les Eyzes de Tayac, artists usually used a crayon of Magnesium dioxide. It appears that the artist began with the line of the back.

What is amazing is how these elegant lines which so beautifully define the animals' shape were drawn with a single uninterrupted stroke. Using these techniques on cave walls it is not possible to erase and start over. At Lascaux, another technique was used. The outlines were made using a masking/blowing technique, an early form of spray painting.
 
The ubiquitous negative handprints found at both Chauvet and Lascaux are also found in caves throughout the world including Australia, Indonesia, and the American Southwest. The artist either fills his mouth with powdered charcoal or ochre and using his hand---or perhaps that of another---as a stencil blows the powder onto the wall or worked with a primitive blowpipe. Many of these prints appear to have been created by women. Handprints can be found at both Chauvet and Lascaux with 15,000 years between them. 
 
The lyrical elegance and mastery of line remind me of Matisse or the Suma-e artists of Japan. How many times must this stroke have been drawn, and meticulously practiced to reach this level of perfection? Was it practiced in sand or with a graver on flat pieces of shale or perhaps on a deerskin stretched across a frame as was done by native Americans in the Southwest?
 

The drawings at Lascaux were created using, primarily, a range of ochres (iron oxides) Drawings or paintings in red ochre are found all over the world. Red ochre was also smeared on the bodies of the dead in both Neanderthal and Cro Magnon burials. The hue can be quite saturated. Red is one of the first colors to be recognized and named in primitive cultures. Perhaps—surprise, surprise— the color of blood had symbolic meaning.

Blood red ochre could be created by heating yellow ochre to approximately1,000 C. It passes through yellowish brown to purple, blood red, and finally black. The palate was quite sophisticated. Other colors such as, umber and burnt umber were also used.

Heating technology was also used to create glues and to improve the working characteristics of flint tools.
 
Next: The Portrait at Bernifal. CLICK HERE

 
By Richard W. Wise
©2022

 Did I say seven? More like ten days in Southern France devoted to cave art. From Vallon Pont d'Arc to Les Eyzes de Tayak, we've visited Chauvet, Bernifal, Lascaux, Font de Gaume, Cougnac, Rouffignac and Abri du Cap Blanc. The first cave, Chauvet, one of the most important, is also the oldest dating 33-36,000 BP. The caves clustered around Les Eyzes are all from the Magdalenian Period 24-17,000 BP. Our travels covered about five hundred miles.
 
The paintings at Chauvet are true marvels. Out The art is about predators not the grazing animals typical of the caves at Les Eyzes. Cave lions, mammoth, cave bears and wholly rhinoceroses make up 65% of the art.
 
A brace of lions, visible only to the withers—heads outstretched—stalking the primeval taiga. Horses—each an individual—whiney and neigh. Below them, a pair of Wooly Rhinos meet horn-to-horn. Another group of stacked Rhino, the first six back lines only, or is it a single multi-legged proto-futurist animal, shown in multiple poses, shaking his horned head?
 
Most of what is seen at Chauvet are charcoal drawings. Much easier to date than later works where the artists used a mineral, Magnesium dioxide to draw the black outlines. The age of the oldest drawings was recalibrated in 2020 to 36,500 BP. 
 
The images portrayed are sophisticated. They have a freshness and originality lacking in the later works in Lascaux and Altamira There is some evidence of stylization, but it is limited. Is it any wonder that its discovery in 1994 threw the preconceived linear evolution of art into a cocked hat?  There is evidence that many groups visited Chauvet over the millennia prior to the landslide that sealed it 22,000 years ago. Perhaps, Chauvet acted as an inspiration to later painters.
 
Could Chauvet have been a beginning, the creative spark that resulted in a school of painting that lasted more than 20,000 years? And, what does it say about the cultural evolution of European Homo Sapiens? Stylized art is, after all, degenerate art. It takes creativity and turns it into uniformity. It is also an indicator of a maturing, settled culture. 
 
Archaeologically, the Upper Paleolithic of Southwestern France is divided into five broad successive periods; Aurignacian (∼39,500–34,000 BP), Gravettian (∼34,000–26,100 BP), Solutrean (∼26,100–24,600 BP), Magdalenian (∼24,600–15,500 BP) and Azilian (∼15,500–11,500 BP). BP means "Before present" which is figured from the year 1950. The problem is coming up with a basis for these divisions, if divisions they are. All we have is a pile of bones in one hand and a pile of flint in the other. In some cases; we have images, painting, engraving, drawing and sculpture which is often ignored in archeologists  demographic evaluation of cultures in these successive periods.
 
Next: Spectacular Lascaux: CLICK HERE