Dr. V.K.Maheshwari, M.A(Socio, Phil) B.Sc. M. Ed, Ph.D
Former Principal, K.L.D.A.V.(P.G) College, Roorkee, India
The past is a stepping stone, not a millstone-Robert Plant
All over the earth seekers are digging into the earth: some for gold, some for silver, some for iron, some for coal; many of them for knowledge. What strange busyness of men exhuming paleolithic tools from the banks of the Somme, studying with strained necks the vivid paintings on the ceilings of prehistoric caves, unearthing antique skulls at Chou Kou Tien,revealing the buried cities of Mohenjo-daro or Yucatan, carrying debris in basket-caravans out of curse-ridden Egyptian tombs, lifting out of the dust the palaces of Minos and Priam, uncovering the ruins of Persepolis, burrowing into the soil of Africa for some remnant of Carthage, recapturing from the jungle the majestic temples of Angkor! In 1839 JacquesBoucher de Perthes found the first Stone Age flints at Abbeville, in France;
The Stone Age is named after the main technological tool developed at that time. It ended with the advent of the Bronze Age and Iron Age.The Stone Age is divided in three distinct periods: the Paleolithic Period or Old Stone Age (30,000 BC – 10,000 BC), the Mesolithic Period or Middle Stone Age (10,000 BC – 8,000 BC), and the Neolithic Period or New Stone Age (8,000 BC – 3,000 BC).
It is natural that a stone in the fist should be the first tool; many an animal could have taught that to man. So the coup-de-pomgz rock sharp at one end, round at the other to fit the palm of the hand became for primeval man hammer, axe, chisel, scraper, knife and saw; even to this day the word hammer means, etymologically, a stone.
Few examples of stone age tools are: Blade Core-This artifact was used to provide stone blades. Blade cores provided a portable source of stone or obsidian for manufacturing different kinds of tools by flaking off pieces from the core.End Scraper-This artifact was used for scraping fur from animal hides. Once the hide was removed from an animal, an end scraper could take the hair off the skin’s outer layer and remove the fatty tissue from its underside. End scrapers were sometimes hafted, or attached to a wooden handle, but could also be handheld.
Burin-This artifact was used for carving bone, antler, or wood. Burins exhibit a feature called a burin spall—a sharp, angled point formed when a small flake is struck obliquely from the edge of a larger stone flake. These tools could have been used with or without a wooden handle.
Awl-This artifact was used for shredding plant fibers. Stone Age peoples may also have sliced animal hides to make clothing using awls. These tools could be made from stone or bone and were highly sharpened for maximum efficiency.
Antler Harpoon-This artifact was used for hunting large marine animals. Experts believe antler harpoons were used in tandem with wooden launchers known as atlatls to help the harpoon penetrate prey with more force.
Clovis Point-This artifact was used for killing mammoths and other megafauna. Clovis points are leaf-shaped and have a wide groove, or flute, on both sides of the base for fitting into short wooden or bone spear shafts. The largest spear point ever found, measuring nine inches long, was a Clovis point made of chalcedony, a kind of quartz.
Bone Flute-This artifact was used for playing music.Made of bone, this wind instrument dates to around 14,000 years ago in France. Hunters may have carried such flute-like instruments in their mobile tool kits or been buried with them, perhaps for the afterlife.
Needle-This artifact was used for stitching hides.Stone Age technology included delicate sewing needles made of bone with punched eye holes. They were probably used in tandem with thread fashioned from plant fibers or animal sinew
Bone Point-This tool was used for launching at animals during hunting. Bone projectile points were flexible, light, general-purpose weapons for hunting large land animals. To be as lethal as possible, their tips were chiseled to exquisite sharpness.
13 Gradually these specific tools were differentiated out of the one homogeneous form: holes were bored to attach a handle; teeth were inserted to make a saw, branches were tipped with the coup-de-poing to make a pick, an arrow or a spear.
The scraper-stone that had the shape of a shell became a shovel or a hoe; the rough-surfaced stone became a file; the stone in a sling became a weapon of war that would survive even classical antiquity. Given bone, wood and ivory as well as stone, and paleolithic man made himself a varied assortment of weapons and tools: polishers, mortars, axes, planes, scrapers, drills, lamps, knives, chisels, choppers, lances, anvils, etchers, daggers, fish-hooks, harpoons, wedges, awls, pins, and doubtless many more. Every day he stumbled upon new knowledge, and sometimes he had the wit to develop his chance discoveries into purposeful inventions.
But the great achievement was fire. Previously, the first use of heat treatment was thought to have been in Europe 25,000 years ago. The technique was not believed to have been invented until long after the ancestors of modern humans had left Africa and settled in Europe and Asia. Knowing how to use fire may have helped the early humans who left Africa 50,000 to 60,000 years ago to cope with colder conditions in Europe.
Darwin has pointed out how the hot lava of volcanoes might have taught men the art of fire; Prometheus established it by igniting a narthex stalk in the burning crater of a volcano on the isle of Lcmnos.” The illumination of the heat treatment process shows that these early modern humans commanded fire in a nuanced and sophisticated manner.
Early modern humans at 72,000 years ago, and perhaps as early as 164,000 years ago in coastal South Africa, were using carefully controlled hearths in a complex process to heat stone and change its properties, the process known as heat treatment.’
Among Neanderthal remains we find bits of charcoal and charred bones; man-made fire, then, is at least 40,000 years old. ” Cro-Magnon man ground stone bowls to hold the grease that he burned to give him light: the lamp,. Presumably it was fire that enabled man to meet the threat of cold from the advancing ice; fire that left him free to sleep on the earth at night, since animals dreaded the marvel as much as primitive men worshiped it; fire that conquered the dark and began that lessening of fear which is one of the golden threads in the golden web of history. Fire that created the old and honorable art of cooking, extending the diet of man to a thousand foods inedible before; fire that led at last to the fusing of metals, and the only real advance in technology from Cro-Magnon days to the Industrial Revolution.”
The art of the Stone Age represents the first accomplishments in human creativity, preceding the invention of writing .Art of this period illustrates and responds to the daily activities and evolution of early communities, from nomad hunters and gatherers to sedentary agrarian societies in need of permanent shelters.
Strange to relate and as if to illustrate Gautier’s lines on robust art outlasting emperors and states our clearest relics of paleolithic man are fragments of his art. Nearly hundred years ago Senor Marcelino de Sautuola came up- on a large cave on his estate at Altamira, in northern Spain. For thousands of years the entrance had been hermetically sealed by fallen rocks naturally cemented with stalagmite deposits. Blasts for new construction accidentally opened the entrance. Three years later Sautuola explored the cave, and noticed some curious markings on the walls. One day his little daughter accompanied him. Not compelled, like her father, to stoop as she walked through the cave, she could look up and observe the ceiling. There she saw, in vague outline, the painting of a great bison, magnificently colored and drawn. Many other drawings were found on closer examination of the ceiling and the walls. When, in 1880, Sautuola published his report on these observations, archaeologists greeted him with genial skepticism. Some did him the honor of going to inspect the drawings, only to pronounce them the forgery of a hoaxer. For thirty years this quite reasonable incredulity persisted. Then the discovery of other drawings in caves generally conceded to be prehistoric (from their contents of unpolished flint tools, and polished ivory and bone) confirmed Sautuola’s judgment; but Sautuola now was dead. Geologists came to Altamira and testified, with the unanimity of hindsight, that the stalagmite coating on many of the drawings was a paleolithic deposit.” General opinion now places these Altamira drawings and the greater portion of extant pre- historic art in the Magdalenian culture, some 1 6,000 B.C.” Paintings slightly later in time, but still of the Old Stone Age, have been found in many caves of France.
Most often the subjects of these drawings are animals reindeers, mammoths, horses, boars, bears, etc.; these, presumably, were dietetic luxuries, and therefore favourite objects of the chase. Sometimes the animals are transfixed with arrows; these, in the view of Frazer and Reinach, were intended as magic images that would bring the animal under the power, and into the stomach, of the artist or the hunter.” Conceivably they were just plain art, drawn with the pure joy of aesthetic creation; the crudest representation should have sufficed the purposes of magic, whereas these paintings are often of such delicacy, power and skill as to suggest the unhappy thought that art, in this field at least, has not advanced much in the long course of human history. Here is life, action, nobility, conveyed overwhelmingly with one brave line or two; here a single stroke creates a living, charging beast.
Painting is a sophisticated art, presuming many centuries of mental and technical development. If we may accept current theory (which it is always a perilous thing to do), painting developed from statuary, by a passage from carving in the round to bas-relief and thence to mere outline and coloring; painting is sculpture minus a dimension. The intermediate prehistoric art is well represented by an astonishingly vivid bas-relief of an archer (or a spear- man) on the Aurignacian cliffs at Laussel in France. In a cave in Ariegc, France, Louis Begouen discovered, among other Magdalenian relics, several ornamental handles carved out of reindeer antlers; one of these is of mature and excellent workmanship, as if the art had already generations of tradition and development behind it. Throughout the prehistoric Mediterranean- Egypt, Crete, Italy, France and Spain countless figures of fat little women are found, which indicate either a worship of motherhood or an African conception of beauty. The Paleolithic or Old Stone Age existed from approximately 30,000 BCE until 10,000 BCE, and produced the first accomplishments in human creativity. Archaeological discoveries across Europe and Asia include over two hundred caves with spectacular paintings, drawings, and sculptures that are among the earliest undisputed examples of representational art-making. Sculptural work from the Paleolithic consists mainly of figurines, beads, and some decorative utilitarian objects constructed with stone, bone, ivory, clay, and wood. During prehistoric times, caves were places of dwelling as well as possible spaces for ritual and communal gathering. Unsurprisingly, caves were the locations of many archaeological discoveries owing to their secluded locations and protection from the elements.
Venus figurines is an umbrella term for a number of prehistoric statuettes of women that have been found mostly in Europe, but also in Asia and Siberia, dating from the Upper Paleolithic. These figures are all quite small, between 4 and 25 cm tall, and carved mainly in steatite, limestone, bone, or ivory. These sculptures are collectively described as “Venus” figurines in reference to the Roman goddess of beauty, as early historians assumed they represented an ideal of beauty from the time.
Venus figures are characterized by shared stylistic features, such as an oval , large belly, wide-set thighs, large breasts, and the typical absence of arms and feet. Hundreds of these sculptures have been found both in open-air settlements and caves.For example the Venus of Hohle Fels, a 6 cm figure of a woman carved from a mammoth’s tusk, was discovered in Germany’s Hohle Fels cave in 2008 and represents one of the earliest found sculptures of this type . Additionally, the Venus of Willendorf is a particularly famous example of the Venus figure . While initially thought to be symbols of fertility, or of a fertility goddess, the true significance of the Venus figure remains obscure, as does much of prehistoric art. The Venus of Willendorf is a particularly famous example of the Venus figure.The Venus of Hohle Fels, a 6 cm figure of a woman carved from a mammoth’s tusk, was discovered in Germany’s Hohle Fels cave in 2008 and represents one of the earliest found sculptures of this type.
Mask of La Roche-Cotard-Also known as the “Mousterian Protofigurine,” the Mask of La Roche-Cotard is an artifact from the Paleolithic period that was discovered in the entrance of a cave named La Roche-Cotard, on the banks of the Loire River in France. Constructed using flint and bone, the stone is believed to represent the upper part of a face, while the bone has been interpreted as eyes. While some archaeologists question whether this artifact does indeed represent a rendered face, it is typically regarded as an example of Paleolithic figurative artistic expression.
Blombos Cave-Discoveries of engraved stones and beads in the Blombos Caves of South Africa has led some archaeologists to believe that early Homo Sapiens were capable of abstraction and the production of symbolic art. Made from ochre, the stones are engraved withabstract patterns, while the beads are made from Nassarius shells . While they are simpler than prehistoric cave paintings found in Europe, some scholars believe these engraved stones represent the earliest known artworks, dating from c. 75,000 years ago.
Nassarius shell beads from the Blombos Cave-Discoveries of engraved stones and beads in the Blombos Caves of South Africa has led some archaeologists to believe that early Homo Sapiens were capable of abstraction and the production of symbolic art.
Stone statues of a wild horse, a reindeer and a mammoth have been unearthed in Czechoslovakia, among remains uncertainly ascribed to 30,000 B.C.
The whole interpretation of history as progress falters when we consider that these statues, bas-reliefs and paintings, numerous though they are, may be but an infinitesimal fraction of the art that expressed or adorned the life of primeval man. What remains is found in caves, where the elements were in some measure kept at bay; it does not follow that pre- historic men were artists only when they were in caves. They may have carved as sedulously and ubiquitously as the Japanese, and may have fashioned statuary as abundantly as the Greeks; they may have painted not only the rocks in their caverns, but textiles, wood, everythingnot excepting themselves. They may have created masterpieces far superior to the fragments that survive. In one grotto a tube was discovered, made from the bones of a reindeer, and filled with pigment; in another a stone palette Awas picked up still thick with red ochre paint despite the transit of two hundred centuries. Apparently the arts were highly developed and widely practised eighteen thousand years ago. Perhaps there was a class of professional artists among paleolithic men; perhaps there were Bohemians starving in the less respectable caves, denouncing the commercial bourgeoisie, plotting the death of academies, and forging antiques.
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