Marked Chauvet Cave, France

SubjectIn outline · lessons being written

Ice Age art in Europe

People in Ice Age Europe painted horses, bison and lions deep in caves, carved figures in ivory and made flutes from bird bone. Why they did it is still argued over.

Date
About 42,000 to 12,000 years agoII · Our species and the Old Stone Age
Place
Chauvet Cave, France · Lascaux, France · Altamira, Spain · Creswell Crags, EnglandEurope
Laid out as
A theme across timeOne idea followed through the eras it crosses.
Lessons
6 planned, none written yet

The lessons we plan

Titles may change as they are written

  1. IThe Lion Man of Hohlenstein-Stadel
  2. IIThe first flutes
  3. IIIChauvet
  4. IVLascaux and the boys who found it
  5. VAltamira and the doubted discovery
  6. VIWhy paint in the dark?

Still to come

The people and objects these lessons will cover

People

  • Marcel Ravidat
  • María Sanz de Sautuola
  • Jean-Marie Chauvet

Objects

  • The Lion Man
  • The Hohle Fels flute
  • The Venus of Willendorf

Where it sits

All of human history, era by era

Early human ancestryOur species and the Old Stone AgeFarming and the New Stone AgeFirst cities and the Bronze AgeThe Iron Age and growing statesThe classical worldAfter the empiresMedieval networks and empiresOceans crossedRevolutions and the first factoriesIndustry, empire and world warThe world since 1945

44,000 years ago to 14,000 years ago. Each era is drawn the same width, so the earliest are squeezed: era II alone is over 300,000 years.

Nearby in time and place

This page is an outline. The summary above is a starting point; each lesson, when it is written, will give its sources, its pictures and where historians disagree. Spotted a mistake?