Ice Age Cave Painting: Chauvet and Lascaux

Some of the oldest known images were painted deep inside caves during the last Ice Age. At Chauvet in southern France, artists drew lions, horses, rhinoceroses and mammoths roughly 36,000 years ago, using charcoal and ochre and even shaping images around the bumps in the rock to suggest movement. Lascaux, painted about 17,000 years ago, holds hundreds of animal figures. Because these artists left no writing, their purpose is debated.

Some researchers link the images to hunting rituals, others to shamanic beliefs, storytelling or marking places of gathering. What is clear is that the people who made them had planning, skill and shared symbols. The paintings challenge the old idea that 'civilization' and art began only with cities, and they remind historians that interpreting evidence without written records requires caution.