Lascaux and Altamira: the climax of Ice Age cave painting
- Date
- c. 22,000–14,000 years ago
- Category
- Culture, arts & philosophy
- Region
- Western Europe (France and Spain)
- Era
- Prehistory
- Significance
During the Magdalenian and late Solutrean periods, cave painting in western Europe reached an extraordinary peak.
At Lascaux in southwestern France, dated to roughly 17,000-22,000 years ago, more than 600 paintings and nearly 1,500 engravings cover the walls, including the great Hall of the Bulls with an aurochs over five metres long, the largest animal figure known in cave art. At Altamira in northern Spain, the famous polychrome ceiling of bison, painted in shades of red and black and using the natural bulges of the rock to give the animals volume, dates largely to a similar span. These decorated caves, often deep underground and far from daily living areas, suggest ritual or ceremonial use rather than mere decoration. Altamira's authenticity was long disbelieved when first published in 1880; its eventual acceptance, and the later discovery of Lascaux in 1940, transformed understanding of the artistic and cognitive sophistication of Ice Age Europeans.
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Related culture, arts & philosophy events
- Behavioural modernity and major Out-of-Africa dispersalc. 70,000–50,000 years ago
- Göbekli Tepe – monumental architecture by hunter-gatherersc. 9,600–8,000 BCE
- Upper Paleolithic art and symbolic explosionc. 40,000+ years ago
- World's earliest figurative and narrative cave art on Sulawesic. 51,000 – 45,500 years ago
- Chauvet Cave: early masterworks of figurative cave artc. 36,500 years ago
- Earliest Indus Script Signs Appear at Harappac. 3300 BCE
Further reading
The wider story
The Story of Art
The best-selling art history ever written, from cave paintings to the modern age.
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