Primitive art, origins and stages of development. Primitive art

28.06.2019

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Src = "https://present5.com/presentation/3/53897798_184277145.pdf-img/53897798_184277145.pdf-1.jpg" alt = "(! LANG:> Primitive art. Development stages and their brief description.">!}

Src = "https://present5.com/presentation/3/53897798_184277145.pdf-img/53897798_184277145.pdf-2.jpg" alt = "(! LANG:> Periodization. Stone Age: Paleolithic 40 -12 thousand BC BC Mesolithic"> Периодизация. Каменный век: Палеолит 40 -12 тыс. до н. э. Мезолит 12 -8 тыс. до н. э. Неолит 10 -4 тыс. до н. э. Бронзовый век: 2 тыс до н. э. Железный век: с 1 тыс до н. э.!}

Src = "https://present5.com/presentation/3/53897798_184277145.pdf-img/53897798_184277145.pdf-3.jpg" alt = "(! LANG:> Painting Primitive man"> Живопись При создании наскальной живописи первобытный человек использовал естественные красители и окиси металлов, которые он либо применял в чистом виде, либо смешивал с водой или животным жиром. Эти краски он наносил на камень рукой или кисточками из трубчатых костей с пучками волосков диких зверей на конце, а порой выдувал через трубчатую кость цветной порошок на влажную стену пещеры. Краской не только обводили контур, но закрашивали все изображение. Для выполнения наскальных изображений методом глубокого прореза художнику приходилось пользоваться грубыми режущими инструментами. Массивные каменные резцы были найдены на стоянке Ле Рок де Сер. Для рисунков среднего и позднего палеолита характерна уже более тонкая проработка контура, который передан несколькими неглубокими линиями. В такой же технике выполнены рисунки с росписью, гравюры на кости, бивнях, рогах или каменных плитках.!}

Src = "https://present5.com/presentation/3/53897798_184277145.pdf-img/53897798_184277145.pdf-4.jpg" alt = "(! LANG:> Sculpture"> Скульптура В глубокой древности для искусства человек использовал подручные материалы - камень, дерево, кость. Много позже, а именно в эпоху земледелия, он открыл для себя первый искусственный материал - огнеупорную глину - и стал активно применять ее для изготовления посуды и скульптуры.!}

Src = "https://present5.com/presentation/3/53897798_184277145.pdf-img/53897798_184277145.pdf-5.jpg" alt = "(! LANG:> Paleolithic cultural eras: Aurignacian era (Late Paleolithic, France (cave Aurignac))"> Культурные эпохи палеолита: Ориньякская эпоха (поздний палеолит, Франция(пещера Ориньяк)) Эпоха Солютре Внешний мир пользуется большим Эпоха Мадлен вниманием, чем человкек. Духовные силы охотника направлены на то, чтобы постичь Свидерская эпоха. законы природы. Символическая форма, условный характер изображения. Характерной особенностью искусства на самом раннем этапе был синкретизм. Росписи и гравюры на скалах, скульптуры из камня, глины, дерева, рисунки на сосудах посвящены исключительно сценам охоты на промысловых животных. Главным объектом творчества палеолитического, мезолитического и неолитического времени были звери.!}

Src = "https://present5.com/presentation/3/53897798_184277145.pdf-img/53897798_184277145.pdf-7.jpg" alt = "(! LANG:> Female female head from a Brasempui stone figurine and"> Женские Женская головка из фигурки из Брасемпуи камня и кости с гипертрофиров анными формами тела и схематизирован ными головами. Культ матери- прародит ельницы. Сходство находок между отдаленными областями(Франции, Италии, Австрии, Чехии, России)!}

Src = "https://present5.com/presentation/3/53897798_184277145.pdf-img/53897798_184277145.pdf-8.jpg" alt = "(! LANG:> Female Figures. Fig. 28.1.1.1.2. Paleolithic"> Женские фигурки. Рис. 28. 1. 1. 2. Палеолитические фигурки славянской богини Макоши, слева направо: 1 - Макошь из Костёнок, Россия, 42 -е тыс. до н. э. ; 2 - Макошь из Гагарине Россия, 35 - 25 -е тыс. до н. э. ; 3, 4 -Макоши из Триполья, Украина, 5 - 4 -е тыс. до н. э. ; 5 - Макошь из Выхватинцев, Молдавия, 3 -е тыс. до н. э. ; 6 - Макошь из «Греции» , Греция, 6 - 4, 5 - е тыс. до н. э. ; 7 - Макошь из Самарры, Шумер (Ирак), 5 - 4, 5 -е тыс. до н. э. ; 8 - Макошь из Халафа, Сирия, 5 -е тыс. до н. э. ; 9 - Макошь бадарийской культуры, Египет, 5 -е тыс. до н. э. ; 10 - Макошь Эль- Обейдской культуры, Ирак, 6 - 4 -е тыс. до н. э. ; 11 - Макошь из Намазга Тепе, Туркмения, 4, 5 - 4 -е тыс. до н. э.!}

Src = "https://present5.com/presentation/3/53897798_184277145.pdf-img/53897798_184277145.pdf-9.jpg" alt = "(! LANG:> Wounded bison. Picturesque"> Раненый бизон. Живописное изображение в Альтамирской пещере Ревущий бизон. Живописное изображение в Альтамирской пещере.!}

Src = "https://present5.com/presentation/3/53897798_184277145.pdf-img/53897798_184277145.pdf-10.jpg" alt = "(! LANG:> Picturesque images on the ceiling of the Altamira Cave (Spain, Santander province). General view, Upper Paleolithic, Madelenskoe"> Живописные изображения на потолке Альтамирской пещеры (Испания, провинция Сантандер). Общий вид. Верхний палеолит, Мадленское время Пасущийся северный олень. Живописное изображение в пещере Фон де Гом (Франция, департамент Дордонь). Верхний палеолит, Мадленское время.!}

Src = "https://present5.com/presentation/3/53897798_184277145.pdf-img/53897798_184277145.pdf-11.jpg" alt = "(! LANG:> Painting in Lasko Cave Two buffaloes. Horse.">!}

Src = "https://present5.com/presentation/3/53897798_184277145.pdf-img/53897798_184277145.pdf-12.jpg" alt = "(! LANG:> Shulgan-tash cave">!}

Src = "https://present5.com/presentation/3/53897798_184277145.pdf-img/53897798_184277145.pdf-13.jpg" alt = "(! LANG:> Mesolithic and Neolithic. From appropriation of finished products of nature primitive"> Мезолит и неолит. От присвоения готовых продуктов природы первобытный человек постепенно переходит к более сложным формам труда, наряду с охотой и рыболовством начинает заниматься земледелием и скотоводством. В новом каменном веке появился первый искусственный материал, изобретенный человеком, я- огнеупорная глина. Прежде люди использовали для своих нужд то, что давала природа, - камень, дерево, кость. Земледельцы гораздо реже, чем охотники, изображали животных, зато с увлечением украшали поверхность глиняных сосудов. В эпоху неолита и бронзовый век подлинный расцвет пережил орнамент, появились изображения, передающие более сложные и отвлеченные понятия. Сформировались многие виды декоративно-прикладного искусства - керамика, обработка металла. Появились луки, стрелы, глиняная посуда.!}

Src = "https://present5.com/presentation/3/53897798_184277145.pdf-img/53897798_184277145.pdf-14.jpg" alt = "(! LANG:> Mesolithic scene of the Battle of Valtorate in"> Мезолит Сцена сражения Валторат в Испании Ритуальные танцы. Азербайджан. Охота на страусов. Пещера в Южной Африке Сцена из охоты на оленей. Альпера. Испания.!}

Src = "https://present5.com/presentation/3/53897798_184277145.pdf-img/53897798_184277145.pdf-15.jpg" alt = "(! LANG:> Mesolithic. Plastic. Female figurines.">!}

Src = "https://present5.com/presentation/3/53897798_184277145.pdf-img/53897798_184277145.pdf-16.jpg" alt = "(! LANG:> Petroglyphs on a rock in Norway">!}

Src = "https://present5.com/presentation/3/53897798_184277145.pdf-img/53897798_184277145.pdf-17.jpg" alt = "(! LANG:> Bronze Age: Few petroglyphs, images disappear, settlements spread and"> Эпоха бронзы: Мало петроглифов, исчезают изображения, распространяются поселения и погребения(курганы) - ямная культура, надгробия- «каменные бабы» , мегалиты(мегос - огромный, литос -камень) Мегалитическая архитектура - менгиры, дольмены, кромлехи, трилиты, тулюмусы (без захоронений) Появление религиозных представлений, понятие о главенстве во вселенной.!}

Src = "https://present5.com/presentation/3/53897798_184277145.pdf-img/53897798_184277145.pdf-18.jpg" alt = "(! LANG:> Age of Bronze. Megalithic structures."> Эпоха Бронзы. Мегалитические сооружения. Аллея менгиров в Карнаке (Бретань). Начало эпохи бронзы. Менгир. Алтай. Дольмен в Крюкюно (Бретань). Начало Эпохи бронзы. Стонхендж близ Солсбери (южная Англия). Эпоха бронзы. Начало 2 тыс. до н. э!}

Src = "https://present5.com/presentation/3/53897798_184277145.pdf-img/53897798_184277145.pdf-19.jpg" alt = "(! LANG:> Iron Age: Scythians Siberia - Asian"> Век железа: Скифы Сибирь – азиатская Европа – скифская культура европейская скифская культура Золото = огонь, солнце, царская власть, вечная жизнь!}

Src = "https://present5.com/presentation/3/53897798_184277145.pdf-img/53897798_184277145.pdf-20.jpg" alt = "(! LANG:> Hryvnia (neck decoration) Age of Iron. Scythians. Plaque. Vessel with"> Гривна(шейное украшение) Век железа. Скифы. Бляшка. Сосуд со сценой охоты. Гребень.!}

Src = "https://present5.com/presentation/3/53897798_184277145.pdf-img/53897798_184277145.pdf-21.jpg" alt = "(! LANG:> Musical art: Similar stages can be traced when studying"> Музыкальное искусство: Подобные этапы можно проследить и при изучении музыкального пласта первобытного искусства. Музыкальное начало не было отделено от движения, жестов, возгласов, мимики. Музыкальный элемент «натуральной пантомимы» включал имитацию звуков природы - звукоподражательные мотивы; искусственную интонационную форму - мотивы с зафиксированным звуковысотным положением тона; интонационное творчество - двух и трехзвучные мотивы. В одном из домов Мезинской стоянки был обнаружен древнейший музыкальный инструмент, сделанный из костей мамонта. Он предназначался для воспроизведения шумовых или ритмических звуков. При раскопках стоянки Молодова на правом берегу Днестра в Черновицкой области археолог А. П. Черныш нашел на глубине 2, 2 м от поверхности в культурном слое середины позднего палеолита флейту из рога северного оленя длиной 21 см с искусственно проделанными отверстиями. При изучении жилища из знаменитой Мезинской стоянки позднего палеолита (в районе Чернигова) были обнаружены расписанные орнаментом кости, молоток из рога северного оленя и колотушки из бивней мамонта. Предполагают, что «возраст» этого набора музыкальных инструментов 20 тыс. лет!}

Src = "https://present5.com/presentation/3/53897798_184277145.pdf-img/53897798_184277145.pdf-22.jpg" alt = "(! LANG:> Conclusion. Basic arts: graphics (drawings and"> Вывод. Основные виды искусства: графика (рисунки и силуэты); живопись (изображения в цвете, выполненные минеральными красками); скульптуры (фигуры, высеченные из камня или вылепленные из глины); декоративное искусство (резьба по камню и кости); рельефы и барельефы. музыка - подражание звукам природы.!}

Primitive (or, in other words, primitive) art territorially covers all continents, except Antarctica, and in time - the entire epoch of human existence, having survived among some peoples living in remote corners of the planet to the present day.

Most of the oldest paintings are found in Europe (from Spain to the Urals).

It was well preserved on the walls of the caves - the entrances were completely heaped up thousands of years ago, the same temperature and humidity were maintained there.

Not only wall paintings have survived, but also other evidence of human activity - clear traces of the bare feet of adults and children on the damp floor of some caves.

The reasons for the origin of creative activity and the functions of primitive art Human need for beauty and creativity.

Beliefs of the time. The man portrayed those whom he venerated. People of that time believed in magic: they believed that with the help of paintings and other images, one could influence nature or the outcome of the hunt. It was believed, for example, that you need to hit a drawn animal with an arrow or a spear in order to ensure the success of a real hunt.

Periodization

Now science is changing its mind about the age of the earth and the time frame is changing, but we will study by the generally accepted names of the periods.
1. Stone Age
1.1 Ancient Stone Age - Paleolithic. ... up to 10 thousand BC
1.2 Middle Stone Age - Mesolithic. 10 - 6 thousand BC
1.3 New Stone Age - Neolithic. From 6th to 2nd millennium BC
2. The Bronze Age. 2 millennium BC
3. The era of iron. 1 millennium BC

Paleolithic

The tools were made of stone; hence the name of the era - the Stone Age.
1. Ancient or Lower Paleolithic. up to 150 thousand BC
2. Middle Paleolithic. 150 - 35 thousand BC
3. Upper or late Paleolithic. 35 - 10 thousand BC
3.1 Aurignac-Solutrean period. 35 - 20 thousand BC
3.2. Madeleine period. 20 - 10 thousand BC The period received this name from the name of the La Madeleine cave, where murals related to this time were found.

The earliest works of primitive art date back to the late Paleolithic. 35 - 10 thousand BC
Scientists are inclined to believe that naturalistic art and the depiction of schematic signs and geometric figures arose at the same time.
Pasta drawings. Imprints of a human hand and a messy interweaving of wavy lines pressed in wet clay by the fingers of the same hand.

The first drawings of the Paleolithic period (ancient Stone Age, 35-10 thousand BC) were discovered at the end of the 19th century. by the Spanish amateur archaeologist Count Marcelino de Sautuola, three kilometers from his family estate, in the Altamira cave.

It happened like this:
“The archaeologist decided to explore a cave in Spain and took his little daughter with him. Suddenly she shouted: "Bulls, bulls!" My father laughed, but when he raised his head, he saw huge painted figures of bison on the ceiling of the cave. Some of the buffalo were depicted standing still, others rushing with bent horns at the enemy. At first, scientists did not believe that primitive people could create such works of art. Only 20 years later, numerous works of primitive art were discovered elsewhere and the authenticity of the cave painting was recognized. "

Paleolithic painting

Altamira cave. Spain.
Late Paleolithic (Madeleine era 20 - 10 thousand years BC).
On the vault of Altamira's cave chamber, a whole herd of large, closely spaced bison is depicted.

Bison panel. Located on the ceiling of the cave. Wonderful polychrome images contain black and all shades of ocher, rich colors, superimposed somewhere densely and monotonously, and somewhere with halftones and transitions from one color to another. A thick paint layer up to several cm. In total, 23 figures are depicted on the vault, if you do not take into account those of which only the contours have survived.

Fragment. Buffalo. Altamira cave. Spain. Late Paleolithic. The caves were lit with lamps and reproduced from memory. Not primitivism, but the highest degree of stylization. When the cave was opened, it was believed that this was an imitation of a hunt - the magical meaning of the image. But today there are versions that the goal was art. The beast was necessary for man, but he was terrible and elusive.

Fragment. Bull. Altamira. Spain. Late Paleolithic.
Beautifully brown shades. The tense stop of the beast. They used the natural relief of the stone, depicted on the bulge of the wall.

Fragment. Bison. Altamira. Spain. Late Paleolithic.
Transition to polychrome art, darker outline.

Font de Gaume cave. France

Late Paleolithic.
Characterized by silhouette images, deliberate distortion, exaggeration of proportions. On the walls and vaults of the small halls of the Font de Gaume cave, there are at least about 80 drawings, mostly bison, two indisputable figures of mammoths and even a wolf.

Deer grazing. Font de Gaume. France. Late Paleolithic.
Perspective view of the horns. Deer at this time (the end of the Madeleine era) drove out other animals.

Fragment. Buffalo. Font de Gaume. France. Late Paleolithic.
The hump and crest on the head are emphasized. Overlapping one image with another is a polypsest. Detailed study. A decorative solution for the tail. The image of the houses.

Wolf. Font de Gaume. France. Late Paleolithic.

Nio's cave. France

Late Paleolithic.
Round hall with drawings. There are no images of mammoths and other animals of the glacial fauna in the cave.

Horse. Nio. France. Late Paleolithic.
Depicted already with 4 legs. The silhouette is outlined in black, the inside is retouched in yellow. Pony type horse character.

Stone ram. Nio. France. Late Paleolithic. Partially contour image, with a skin drawn from above.

Deer. Nio. France. Late Paleolithic.

Buffalo. Nio. Nio. France. Late Paleolithic.
Most of the images are bison. Some of them are shown wounded, arrows in black and red.

Buffalo. Nio. France. Late Paleolithic.

Lasko cave

It so happened that it was children, and quite by accident, who found the most interesting cave paintings in Europe:
“In September 1940, near the town of Montignac, in the South-West of France, four high school students set off on an archaeological expedition they had conceived. In place of a tree that had long been uprooted, there was a gaping hole in the ground that aroused their curiosity. It was rumored that this was the entrance to a dungeon leading to a nearby medieval castle.
Inside was even a smaller hole. One of the guys threw a stone at it and, from the sound of the fall, concluded that the depth was decent. He widened the hole, crawled inside, nearly fell, lit a flashlight, gasped, and called out to others. From the walls of the cave in which they found themselves, some huge animals were looking at them, breathing with such confident power, at times it seemed ready to go into a rage that they felt creepy. And at the same time, the power of these animal images was so majestic and convincing that it seemed to them that they were in some kind of magic kingdom. "

Lasko cave. France.
Late Paleolithic (Madeleine era, 18-15 thousand years BC).
They call it the primitive Sistine Chapel. Consists of several large rooms: rotunda; main gallery; passage; apse.
Colorful images on the limestone white surface of the cave.
The proportions are greatly exaggerated: large necks and abdomens.
Contour and silhouette drawings. Crisp images without layers. A large number of male and female signs (rectangle and many dots).

Hunting scene. Lasko. France. Late Paleolithic.
Genre image. A bull killed by a spear butted a man with a bird's head. Nearby on a stick is a bird - maybe his soul.

Buffalo. Lasko. France. Late Paleolithic.

Horse. Lasko. France. Late Paleolithic.

Mammoths and horses. Kapova cave. Ural.
Late Paleolithic.

KAPOVA CAVE- to the South. m Ural, on the river. White. Formed in limestones and dolomites. The corridors and grottoes are located on two floors. The total length is over 2 km. On the walls - Late Paleolithic pictorial images of mammoths, rhinos

Paleolithic sculpture

Small-scale art or mobile art (small plastic)
An integral part of the art of the Paleolithic era are objects that are commonly called "small plastic".
These are three types of objects:
1. Figurines and other volumetric items carved from soft stone or other materials (horn, mammoth tusk).
2. Flattened objects with engravings and paintings.
3. Reliefs in caves, grottoes and under natural awnings.
The relief was knocked out with a deep outline or the background around the image was cut off.

Relief

One of the first finds, called small plastic, was a bone plate from the Shaffaut grotto with images of two fallow deer or deer:

Deer swimming across the river. Fragment. Bone carving. France. Late Paleolithic (Madeleine period).

Everyone knows the wonderful French writer Prosper Mérimée, the author of the fascinating novel Chronicle of the Reign of Charles IX, Carmen and other romantic novellas, but few people know that he served as an inspector for the protection of historical monuments. It was he who donated this disc in 1833 to the Cluny Historical Museum, which was just being organized in the center of Paris. Now it is kept in the Museum of National Antiquities (Saint-Germain en Laye).
Later, a cultural layer of the Upper Paleolithic era was discovered in the Shaffaut grotto. But then, just as it was with the painting of the Altamira cave, and with other pictorial monuments of the Paleolithic era, no one could believe that this art is older than the ancient Egyptian. Therefore, such engravings were considered examples of Celtic art (V-IV centuries BC). Only at the end of the 19th century, again, like cave painting, they were recognized as the oldest after they were found in the Paleolithic cultural layer.

The statuettes of women are very interesting. Most of these figurines are small in size: from 4 to 17 cm. They were made of stone or mammoth tusks. Their most notable distinguishing feature is exaggerated "stoutness", they depict women with overweight figures.

"Venus with a goblet". Bas-relief. France. Upper (late) Paleolithic.
Goddess of the Ice Age. The canon of the image - the figure is inscribed in a rhombus, and the stomach and chest are in a circle.

Sculpture- mobile art.
Almost everyone who has studied Paleolithic female figurines, with various differences in details, explains them as cult objects, amulets, idols, etc., reflecting the idea of motherhood and fertility.

"Willendorf Venus". Limestone. Willendorf, Lower Austria. Late Paleolithic.
Compact composition, no facial features.

"The Lady in the Hood from Brassempui." France. Late Paleolithic. Mammoth bone.
Facial features and hairstyle have been worked out.

In Siberia, in the Baikal region, a whole series of original figurines of a completely different stylistic appearance was found. Along with the same as in Europe, overweight figures of naked women, there are statuettes of slender, elongated proportions and, unlike in Europe, they are depicted dressed in deaf, most likely fur clothes, similar to "overalls".
These are finds at the Buret sites on the Angara and Malta rivers.

conclusions
Rock painting. Peculiarities of Paleolithic painting art are realism, expression, plasticity, rhythm.
Small plastic.
The depiction of animals has the same features as in painting (realism, expression, plasticity, rhythm).
Paleolithic female figurines are cult objects, amulets, idols, etc., they reflect the idea of motherhood and fertility.

Mesolithic

(Middle Stone Age) 10 - 6 thousand BC

After the melting of the glaciers, the usual fauna disappeared. Nature is becoming more malleable to humans. People are becoming nomads.
With a change in lifestyle, a person's view of the world becomes broader. He is not interested in a single animal or an accidental finding of cereals, but in the active activity of people, thanks to which they find whole herds of animals, and fields or forests rich in fruits.
This is how the art of multi-figured composition was born in the Mesolithic, in which it was no longer an animal, but a person who plays a dominant role.
A change in the arts:
the main characters of the image are not a separate beast, but people in some kind of action.
The task is not in a believable, accurate depiction of individual figures, but in the transfer of action, movement.
Multi-figure hunts are often depicted, scenes of collecting honey, cult dances appear.
The character of the image changes - instead of being realistic and polychrome, it becomes schematic and silhouette. Local colors are used - red or black.

A honey collector from a hive surrounded by a swarm of bees. Spain. Mesolithic.

Almost everywhere, where planar or volumetric images of the Upper Paleolithic era were found, there seems to be a pause in the artistic activity of people of the subsequent Mesolithic era. Maybe this period is still poorly understood, maybe the images taken not in caves, but in the open air, were washed away over time by rains and snow. Perhaps, among the petroglyphs, which are very difficult to accurately date, there are those related to this time, but we do not know how to recognize them yet. It is indicative that objects of small plastic art are extremely rare during excavations of Mesolithic settlements.

Of the Mesolithic monuments, literally a few can be named: Stone Tomb in Ukraine, Kobystan in Azerbaijan, Zaraut-Sai in Uzbekistan, Shakhty in Tajikistan and Bhimpetka in India.

In addition to rock paintings, petroglyphs appear in the Mesolithic era.
Petroglyphs are carved, carved or scratched rock paintings.
When carving a picture, ancient artists knocked down the upper, darker part of the rock with a sharp tool, and therefore the images stand out noticeably against the background of the rock.

In the south of Ukraine, in the steppe, there is a rocky hill made of sandstone rocks. As a result of strong weathering, several grottoes and sheds have formed on its slopes. Numerous carved and scratched images have been known for a long time in these grottoes and on other planes of the hill. In most cases, they are difficult to read. Sometimes images of animals - bulls, goats - are guessed. Scientists attribute these images of bulls to the Mesolithic era.

Stone grave. South of Ukraine. General view and petroglyphs. Mesolithic.

To the south of Baku, between the southeastern slope of the Greater Caucasus Range and the Caspian coast, there is a small plain of Gobustan (a country of ravines) with elevations in the form of mesas, composed of limestone and other sedimentary rocks. There are many petroglyphs of different times on the rocks of these mountains. Most of them were discovered in 1939. Large (more than 1 m) images of female and male figures, made with deep carved lines, received the greatest interest and fame.
There are many images of animals: bulls, predators and even reptiles and insects.

Kobystan (Gobustan). Azerbaijan (territory of the former USSR). Mesolithic.

Grotto Zaraut-Kamar
In the mountains of Uzbekistan, at an altitude of about 2000 m above sea level, there is a monument widely known not only among archaeological specialists - the Zaraut-Kamar grotto. Painted images were discovered in 1939 by a local hunter I.F.Lamaev.
The painting in the grotto is made with ocher of different shades (from red-brown to lilac) and consists of four groups of images, in which anthropomorphic figures and bulls participate.

Here is the group that most researchers see bull hunting. Among the anthropomorphic figures that surrounded the bull, i.e. There are two types of "hunters": figures in clothes expanding from top to bottom, without bows, and "tailed" figures with raised and drawn bows. This scene can be interpreted as a real hunt for disguised hunters, and as a kind of myth.

The painting in the Shakhty grotto is probably the oldest in Central Asia.
"What does the word Shakhty mean, - writes VA Ranov, - I do not know. Perhaps it comes from the Pamir word" shakhty ", which means rock."

In the northern part of Central India, huge cliffs with many caves, grottoes and sheds stretch along the river valleys. A lot of rock carvings have been preserved in these natural shelters. Among them, the location of Bhimbetka (Bhimpetka) stands out. Apparently, these picturesque images belong to the Mesolithic. True, one should not forget about the uneven development of cultures in different regions. The Mesolithic of India may be 2-3 millennia older than in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

Some scenes of driven hunts with archers in the paintings of the Spanish and African cycles are, as it were, the embodiment of the movement itself, brought to the limit, concentrated in a stormy whirlwind.

Neolithic

(New Stone Age) from 6 to 2 thousand BC

Neolithic- New Stone Age, the last stage of the Stone Age.
Periodization... The entry into the Neolithic is timed to the transition of culture from appropriating (hunters and gatherers) to producing (agriculture and / or cattle breeding) type of economy. This transition is called the Neolithic Revolution. The end of the Neolithic period dates back to the time of the appearance of metal tools and weapons, that is, the beginning of the Copper, Bronze or Iron Age.
Different cultures entered this period of development at different times. In the Middle East, the Neolithic began about 9.5 thousand years ago. BC NS. In Denmark, the Neolithic dates back to the 18th century. BC, and among the indigenous population of New Zealand - the Maori - the Neolithic existed as early as the 18th century. AD: Before the arrival of Europeans, the Maori used polished stone axes. Some peoples of America and Oceania have not yet fully passed from the Stone Age to the Iron Age.

The Neolithic, like other periods of the primitive era, is not a specific chronological period in the history of mankind as a whole, but characterizes only the cultural characteristics of certain peoples.

Achievements and activities
1. New features of people's social life:
- The transition from matriarchy to patriarchy.
- At the end of the era, in some places (Western Asia, Egypt, India) a new formation of class society took shape, that is, social stratification began, the transition from the clan-communal system to a class society.
- At this time, cities begin to be built. Jericho is considered one of the most ancient cities.
- Some cities were well fortified, which indicates the existence of organized wars at that time.
- Armies and professional soldiers began to appear.
- It is quite possible to say that the beginning of the formation of ancient civilizations is connected with the Neolithic era.

2. The division of labor began, the formation of technologies:
- The main thing is simple gathering and hunting as the main sources of food are gradually being replaced by agriculture and cattle breeding.
The Neolithic is called the "Age of Polished Stone". In this era, stone tools were not only chipped off, but already sawn out, polished, drilled, sharpened.
- Among the most important tools in the Neolithic is the ax, previously unknown.
spinning and weaving are developing.

Images of animals begin to appear in the design of household utensils.

Ax in the form of a moose head. Polished stone. Neolithic. Historical Museum. Stockholm.

Wooden bucket from the Gorbunovsky peat bog near Nizhny Tagil. Neolithic. State Historical Museum.

For the Neolithic forest zone, fishing is becoming one of the leading types of economy. Active fishing contributed to the creation of certain reserves, which, combined with hunting for animals, made it possible to live in one place all year round.
The transition to a sedentary lifestyle led to the emergence of ceramics.
The emergence of pottery is one of the main features of the Neolithic era.

The village of Chatal-Guyuk (Eastern Turkey) is one of the places where the most ancient examples of ceramics were found.

Cup from Ledce (Czech Republic). Clay. Bell goblet culture. Eneolithic (Copper-Stone Age).

Monuments of Neolithic painting and petroglyphs are extremely numerous and scattered over vast territories.
Their accumulations are found almost everywhere in Africa, eastern Spain, on the territory of the former USSR - in Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, on Lake Onega, near the White Sea and in Siberia.
The rock art of the Neolithic is similar to the Mesolithic, but the plot becomes more varied.

"Hunters". Rock painting. Neolithic (?). Southern Rhodesia.

For about three hundred years, the attention of scientists was drawn to the rock known as the "Tomsk Pisanitsa".
"Scribes" are images painted with mineral paint or carved on a smooth surface of a wall in Siberia.
Back in 1675, one of the brave Russian travelers, whose name, unfortunately, remained unknown, wrote:
"Not reached the prison (Verkhnetomsky prison) on the edge of Tom lies a large and high stone, and on it are written animals, and cattle, and birds, and all sorts of similarities ..."
A real scientific interest in this monument arose already in the 18th century, when, by decree of Peter I, an expedition was sent to Siberia to study its history and geography. As a result of the expedition, the first images of the Tomsk scribble were published in Europe by the Swedish captain Stralenberg, who participated in the trip. These images were not an exact copy of the Tomsk scribble, but conveyed only the most general outlines of the rocks and the placement of drawings on it, but their value lies in the fact that you can see drawings on them that have not survived to this day.

Images of the Tomsk scribble made by the Swedish boy K. Shulman, who traveled with Stralenberg in Siberia.

For hunters, the main source of livelihood was deer and elk. Gradually, these animals began to acquire mythical features - the elk was the "master of the taiga" along with the bear.
The image of the moose belongs to the main role in the Tomsk Pisanitsa: the figures are repeated many times.
The proportions and shapes of the animal's body are absolutely true: its long massive body, hump on the back, heavy, large head, characteristic protrusion on the forehead, swollen upper lip, protruding nostrils, thin legs with cloven hooves.
Some of the drawings show transverse stripes on the neck and body of elk.

On the border between the Sahara and Fezzan, on the territory of Algeria, in a mountainous area called Tassili-Ajer, there are rows of bare rocks. Now this land is dried up by the wind of the desert, scorched by the sun and almost nothing grows in it. However, earlier in the Sahara meadows were green ...

- The sharpness and accuracy of the drawing, grace and grace.
- Harmonious combination of shapes and tones, the beauty of people and animals, depicted with a good knowledge of anatomy.
- The swiftness of gestures, movements.

The small plastic arts of the Neolithic, as well as painting, acquire new subjects.

"The Man Playing the Lute." Marble (from Keros, Cyclades, Greece). Neolithic. National Archaeological Museum. Athens.

The schematism inherent in Neolithic painting, which replaced Paleolithic realism, penetrated into small plasticity.

Sketchy image of a woman. Cave relief. Neolithic. Croisard. Department of the Marne. France.

Relief with a symbolic image from Castelluccio (Sicily). Limestone. OK. 1800-1400 BC National Archaeological Museum. Syracuse.

conclusions

Rock painting of the Mesolithic and Neolithic
It is not always possible to draw an exact line between them.
But this art is very different from the typical Paleolithic:
- Realism, which accurately captures the image of the beast as a target, as a cherished goal, is replaced by a broader view of the world, the image of multi-figure compositions.
- There is a striving for harmonious generalization, stylization and, most importantly, for the transmission of movement, for dynamism.
- In the Paleolithic there was a monumentality and inviolability of the image. Here - liveliness, free fantasy.
- A striving for grace appears in the images of a person (for example, if we compare the Paleolithic "Venuses" and the Mesolithic image of a woman collecting honey, or the Neolithic Bushman dancers).

Small plastic:
- New plots appear.
- Greater craftsmanship and mastery of craft, material.

Achievements

Paleolithic
- Lower Paleolithic
>> taming fire, stone tools
- Middle Paleolithic
>> exit from Africa
- Upper Paleolithic
>> sling

Mesolithic
- microliths, onions, canoes

Neolithic
- Early Neolithic
>> agriculture, cattle breeding
- Late Neolithic
>> ceramics

Eneolithic (Copper Age)
- metallurgy, horse, wheel

Bronze Age

The Bronze Age is characterized by the leading role of bronze products, which was associated with the improvement in the processing of metals such as copper and tin, obtained from ore deposits, and the subsequent production of bronze from them.
The Bronze Age succeeded the Copper Age and preceded the Iron Age. In general, the chronological framework of the Bronze Age: 35/33 - 13/11 centuries. BC e., but in different cultures they differ.
Art is becoming more diverse, spreading geographically.

Bronze was much easier to process than stone, and could be molded and polished. Therefore, in the Bronze Age, all kinds of household items were made, richly decorated with ornaments and of high artistic value. Ornamental decorations consisted mostly of circles, spirals, wavy lines and similar motifs. Particular attention was paid to jewelry - they were large and immediately striking.

Megalithic architecture

In the 3rd - 2nd millennium BC. original, huge structures of stone blocks appeared. This ancient architecture is called megalithic.

The term "megalith" comes from the Greek words "megas" - "large"; and "lithos" - "stone".

Megalithic architecture owes its appearance to primitive beliefs. Megalithic architecture is usually divided into several types:
1. Menhir is a single upright stone, more than two meters high.
On the Brittany peninsula in France, fields of the so-called. menhirs. In the language of the Celts, the later inhabitants of the peninsula, the name of these stone pillars several meters high means "long stone".
2. Trilith is a structure consisting of two vertically placed stones and covered with a third.
3. Dolmen is a structure, the walls of which are made up of huge stone slabs and covered with a roof of the same monolithic stone block.
Initially, dolmens were used for burials.
Trilite can be called the simplest dolmen.
Numerous menhirs, triliths and dolmens were located in places that were considered sacred.
4. Cromlech is a group of menhirs and triliths.

Stone grave. South of Ukraine. Anthropomorphic menhirs. Bronze Age.

Stonehenge. Cromlech. England. The Bronze Age. 3 - 2 thousand BC Its diameter is 90 m, it consists of boulders, each of which weighs approx. 25 t. It is curious that the mountains from where these stones were brought are located 280 km from Stonehenge.
It consists of triliths arranged in a circle, inside a horseshoe of trilites, in the middle - blue stones, and in the very center - a heel stone (on the day of the summer solstice, the star is exactly above it). It is believed that Stonehenge was a temple dedicated to the sun.

Age of Iron (Iron Age)

1 millennium BC

In the steppes of Eastern Europe and Asia, cattle-breeding tribes created the so-called animal style at the end of the Bronze Age and the beginning of the Iron Age.

Plaque "Deer". 6th century BC Gold. Hermitage Museum. 35.1x22.5 cm. From the mound in the Kuban region. A relief plate was found attached to a round iron shield in the chief's burial. An example of zoomorphic art ("animal style"). Deer hooves are made in the form of a "big-billed bird".
There is nothing accidental, unnecessary - a complete, thoughtful composition. Everything in the figure is conditional and extremely truthful, realistic.
The sense of monumentality is achieved not by size, but by the generalization of the form.

Panther. Badge, shield decoration. From a burial mound near the village of Kelermesskaya. Gold. Hermitage Museum.
The age of iron.
Served as decoration for the shield. The tail and legs are decorated with the figures of curled predators.

Age of iron

The age of iron. The balance between realism and stylization is broken in favor of stylization.

Cultural ties with Ancient Greece, the countries of the Ancient East and China contributed to the emergence of new plots, images and visual means in the artistic culture of the tribes of southern Eurasia.

The scenes of the battle between the barbarians and the Greeks are depicted. Found in the Chertomlyk mound, near Nikopol.

Zaporozhye region Hermitage Museum.

conclusions

Scythian art - "animal style". Striking sharpness and intensity of images. Generalization, monumentality. Stylization and realism.

Primitive art, despite its outward simplicity and unpretentiousness, is of great importance in the history of mankind as a whole. The development of its various types continued for millennia, and in some regions of the planet - for example, Australia, Oceania, some of America - it existed in the twentieth century, changing its name to "traditional art".

art

The most ancient monuments of art of the primitive world belong to the ancient Stone Age - the Paleolithic (approximately 40 thousand years BC). These were mainly rock paintings on the ceilings and walls of caves, in underground grottoes and galleries in Europe, North Africa and Early drawings were extremely primitive and displayed only what a person saw in his daily life: animals, prints of human hands smeared in paint, and so on. Earthen paints, ocher, black manganese, white lime were used for painting. As the art of the primitive period developed, the drawings became multi-colored, and the plots became more complex.

Thread

In addition, wood and bones developed intensively, people learned to make full-fledged figurines. Most often, animals were again depicted: bears, lions, mammoths, snakes and birds. Making such figurines, people tried to recreate the silhouette, texture of wool, etc. as accurately as possible. It is believed that the figurines served our ancestors as amulets and protected them from evil spirits.

Architecture

After the Ice Age, the so-called Neolithic Revolution took place. An increasing number of tribes chose a sedentary lifestyle and needed a permanent, reliable home. Depending on the habitat of a particular people, many new types of houses appeared - on stilts, from dried bricks, etc.

Ceramics

The most important place in the history of art is occupied by ceramics. For the first time they also began to be made in the Neolithic era. People learned to use an accessible and easy-to-process material - clay - long before that, in the Paleolithic, but they began to make dishes and other products from it a little later. Gradually, more and more new forms appeared (jugs, bowls, bowls and others), almost every object was decorated with the help of drawn or carved ornaments. Trypillian ceramics can be considered a striking example of art. Painting on various products of this people reflected reality in all its diversity.

Age of Bronze

Considering the forms of primitive art, attention should be paid to which marked the beginning of a completely new era in the history of human development. It was during this period that (menhirs, dolmens, cromlechs) appeared, which, according to historians, carried a religious implication. As a rule, megaliths were located near burial sites.

Decorations

Throughout all the stages, primitive people tried to decorate themselves and their clothes. Decorations were made from all the materials at hand: shells, bones of prey, stone, clay. Over time, having learned how to process bronze, iron and other metals, including precious ones, people acquired skillfully made jewelry, which to this day amaze us with their beauty and elegance.

Art is of paramount importance, because it is with its appearance that the strongest leap in evolution is often compared, which forever separated man from the beast.

The peculiarities of the study of the primitive culture, which originated in the most ancient period of history together with Homo sapiens, are complicated by the lack of written sources and an insufficient base of archaeological data. Therefore, different sciences resort to the reconstruction of certain episodes of the history of this period, cultural and historical analogies with the existing types of early stages of cultural development, most often Australian aborigines, tribes of Central Africa, etc.

What was the characterization of the culture of primitive peoples?

The closest ties with nature, direct dependence on it. For the culture of primitive society, it was characteristic that human activities associated with gathering, hunting, were woven into natural processes, a person did not distinguish himself from nature, and therefore no spiritual production existed. The complete dependence of man on nature, extremely poor knowledge, fear of the unknown - all this inevitably led to the fact that the consciousness of primitive man from his first steps was not strictly logical, but emotionally associative, fantastic.

Adaptation to the life of the surrounding nature was accompanied by the emergence of faith in the supernatural forces of nature. Apparently, there was an opinion that the life of a person and his kind depends on the life of an animal or plant, which were revered either as the ancestors of the genus, or as its guardians, totems. Cultural and creative processes were organically woven into the processes of obtaining livelihoods. A feature of this culture is connected with this - primitive syncretism, i.e. its indivisibility into separate forms. By virtue of the strong unity of all types of activity, primitive culture is a syncretic cultural complex, where all types of cultural activities are associated with art and express themselves through art.

The conversion of primitive people to a new kind of activity for them - art - is one of the greatest events in the history of mankind.

The functions of primitive art are knowledge, self-affirmation of a person, systematization of the picture of the world, witchcraft, the formation of aesthetic feeling. At the same time, the social function is closely intertwined with the magical-religious. Various tools, weapons, vessels are decorated with images of magical and social significance.

What prompted a person to depict certain objects? Was body painting the first step towards creating images, or did the person guess the familiar silhouette of the animal in the random outline of the stone and, by trimming it, made it more similar? Or maybe the shadow of an animal or a person served as the basis for the drawing, and the hand or foot print precedes the sculpture?

Ancient people's beliefs were pagan , based on polytheism. The main religious cults and rituals were universally associated with religious art forms. It should be noted that the goal of primitive art was not aesthetic pleasure, but the solution of practical problems. But the absence of pure art objects does not mean indifference to decorative elements. The latter, as geometric signs, ornaments, became an expression of a sense of rhythm, symmetry, and regular form.

Primitive art reflected the first ideas of man about the world around him, thanks to him knowledge and skills were preserved and transmitted, people communicated with each other. In the spiritual culture of the primitive world, art began to play the same universal role that a sharpened stone played in labor.

In the primitive era, all types of fine art were born: graphics (drawings, silhouettes), painting (colored images made with mineral paints), sculpture (figures made of stone, clay). Decorative arts appeared - stone carving, bones, reliefs.

The art of the primitive era served as the basis for the further development of world artistic creativity. The culture of Ancient Egypt, Sumer, Iran, India, China arose on the basis of everything that was created by primitive predecessors.

Until recently, scholars held two views on the history of primitive art. Some experts considered the most ancient cave naturalistic painting and sculpture, others - schematic signs and geometric figures. Now the majority of researchers are of the opinion that both forms appeared at approximately the same time. For example, among the most ancient images on the walls of the caves of the Paleolithic era are the imprints of a human hand, and the chaotic interweaving of wavy lines pressed in the wet clay by the fingers of the same hand.

How and why did the visual arts begin? An exact and simple answer to this question is impossible, the time of creation of the first works of art is very relative. It did not begin at a strictly defined historical moment, but gradually grew out of human activity, was formed and modified together with the person who created it.

For several millennia, primitive art experienced a technical evolution: from finger painting on clay and handprints to multicolored painting; from scratches and engraving - to a bas-relief; from fetishizing a rock, a stone with the outline of an animal - to sculpture.

One of the reasons for the emergence of art is considered the human need for the beauty and joy of creativity, the other - the beliefs of that time. Legends are associated with beautiful monuments of the Stone Age - painted with paints, as well as images engraved on stone, which covered the walls and ceilings of underground caves - cave paintings.

In the Montespan Cave in France, archaeologists have found a statue of a clay bear with spear marks. Probably, primitive people associated animals with their images: they believed that by "killing" them, they would ensure their success in the forthcoming hunt. In such finds, there is a connection between the most ancient religious beliefs and artistic activities. People of that time believed in magic: that with the help of paintings and other images, you can influence nature. It was believed, for example, that you need to hit a drawn animal with an arrow or a spear in order to ensure the success of a real hunt.

The emergence of art meant a huge step forward in the development of mankind, contributed to the strengthening of social ties within the primitive community, the formation of the spiritual world of man, his initial aesthetic ideas.

And yet, primitive art still remains a mystery. And the reasons for its origin give rise to many hypotheses. Here is some of them:

1) The appearance of images on stone and sculptures made of clay was preceded by body painting.
2) Art appeared by chance, that is, a person, without pursuing a specific goal, simply ran his finger over the sand or wet clay.
3) Art appeared as a result of the established balance of forces in the struggle for existence (awareness of one's own security, the emergence of collective hunting, the existence of large economic collectives and the presence of large food supplies). As a result, some individuals “free up” time for professional creative work.
4) Henri Breuil suggested a connection between the development of cave art and hunting for large animals. Hunting developed imagination and skill, "enriched memory with vivid, deep and tenacious impressions."
5) The emergence of art is directly related to religious beliefs (totemism, fetishism, magic, animism). It is no coincidence that many primitive images are found in hard-to-reach areas of caves.
6) The first works of the Paleolithic era and pictographic signs form a single whole (ideograms-signs that have a certain meaning, but are not associated with a specific word). Perhaps the birth of art coincided with the development of writing and speech.
7) Art of the early period can be perceived as "nothing more than the marks of animals made by a human means." Only in the epoch that followed the Upper Paleolithic did the images (or ideograms) fill with meaning. Images and concepts appeared much later than the first drawings and sculptures.
8) Art played the role of a kind of inhibition mechanism, that is, it carried a physiological load. Certain images had the ability to pacify excessive ardor or negative reactions associated with a system of inhibitions. Its close connection with initiation rites is not ruled out.

The earliest stages in the development of primitive culture, when art first appears, belong to the Paleolithic, and art appeared only in the Late (or Upper) Paleolithic. Later stages in the development of primitive culture date back to the Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age), Neolithic (New Stone Age) and the time of the spread of the first metal tools (Copper-Bronze Age).

Here is what primitive cultures left as a legacy to future generations:

- wall and rock painting;
- sculptural images of animals and humans;
- many amulets, jewelry, ritual items;
- painted pebbles - churing, clay plates, as naive ideas about the human soul and much, much more.

Primitive art, that is, the art of the era of the primitive communal system, developed over a very long time, and in some parts of the world - in Australia and Oceania, in many regions of Africa and America - it existed until modern times. In Europe and Asia, its origins date back to the Ice Age, when much of Europe was covered with ice and where southern France and Spain are now found tundra. In the 4th - 1st millennia BC. the primitive communal system, first in northern Africa and Western Asia, and then in southern and eastern Asia and southern Europe, was gradually replaced by slaveholding.

The earliest stages in the development of primitive culture, when art first appears, belong to the Paleolithic, and art appeared only in the Late (or Upper) Paleolithic, in the Aurignacian-Solutrean time, that is, 40 - 20 millennia BC. It reached a great prosperity in the Madeleine time (20 - 12 millennia BC. Later stages of the development of primitive culture date back to the Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age), Neolithic (New Stone Age) and by the time of the spread of the first metal tools (Copper-Bronze Age ).

Examples of the first works of primitive art are the schematic outline drawings of animal heads on limestone slabs found in the caves of La Ferrassy (France).

These ancient images are extremely primitive and conventional. But in them, no doubt, one can see the beginnings of those ideas in the minds of primitive people that were associated with hunting and hunting magic.

With the advent of settlement, continuing to use rock sheds, grottoes and caves for habitation, people began to arrange long-term settlements - parking lots, which consisted of several dwellings. It was in this kind of dwellings, dating back to the Aurignacian-Solutrean time, that small (5-10 cm) sculptural figurines depicting women carved from bone, horn or soft stone were found. Most of the figurines found depict a nude female figure standing; they clearly show the desire of the primitive artist to convey the features of a mother-woman (the chest, a huge belly, wide hips are emphasized).

Relatively correctly conveying the general proportions of the figure, primitive sculptors usually depicted the hands of these figurines as thin, small, most often folded on the chest or stomach, they did not depict facial features at all, although they rather carefully conveyed the details of the hairstyle and tattoos.

Good examples of such figurines were found in Western Europe (figurines from Willendorf in Austria, from Menton and Lespug in southern France, etc.), and in the Soviet Union - in the Paleolithic sites of the V villages of Kostenki and Gagarino on the Don, Avdeevo near Kursk, etc. The figurines of eastern Siberia from the sites of Malta and Buret are made more schematically, referring to the transitional Solutreian-Madeleine time.

Judging by the fact that figurines of this kind were found inside the dwelling, they were of great importance in the life of primitive people. They also testify to the great social role that women played during the period of matriarchy.

Small and very simplified figurines of animals carved from soft stone or ivory - a mammoth, a cave bear, a cave lion and drawings of animals made in one-color contour line on the walls of a number of caves in France and Spain. The images are carved on the stone or drawn on raw clay. Both in sculpture and painting during this period only the most important features of animals are transmitted: the general shape of the body and head, the most noticeable external signs.

On the basis of such initial, primitive experiences, skill gradually developed, which was clearly manifested in the art of the Madeleine time.

Primitive artists mastered the technique of processing bones and horns, invented more perfect means of conveying the forms of the surrounding reality (mainly the animal world). Madeleine art expressed a deeper understanding and perception of life. Remarkable wall paintings from this time have been found from the 80s to the 90s. 19th century in caves in southern France (Fon de Gaume, Lascaux, Montignac, Combarelle, Three Brothers Cave, Nio, etc.) and northern Spain (Al Tamira Cave). It is possible that the contour drawings of animals, although more primitive in nature, were found in Siberia on the banks of the Lena near the village of Shishkino, to the Paleolithic. Along with painting, usually executed in red, yellow and black, among the works of Madeleine art there are drawings carved on stone, bone and horn, bas-relief images, and sometimes a round sculpture. Plants were rarely depicted.

The image of the beast in the work of primitive people of the Madeleine time, in comparison with the previous period, acquired much more concrete and vital features. Primitive art has now come to a clear understanding of the structure and shape of the body, to the ability to correctly convey not only proportions, but also the movement of animals, fast running, strong turns and angles.

Remarkable liveliness and great persuasiveness in the transfer of movement are distinguished, for example, by the drawing scratched into the bone, found in the grotto of Lorte (France), which depicts deer crossing the river. The artist conveyed the movement with great observation, managed to express a sense of alertness in the deer's head turned back. The river is designated by him conventionally, only by the image of salmon swimming between the legs of deer.

Perfectly convey the character of animals, the originality of their habits, expressiveness of movements and such first-class monuments as engraved stone drawings of a bison and a deer from the Haute Lodge (France), a mammoth and a bear from the Combarelle Cave and many others.

The greatest artistic perfection among the monuments of art of the Madeleine time is distinguished by the famous cave paintings of France and Spain.

The most ancient here are the contour drawings depicting the profile of the animal in red or black paint. Following the contour drawing, the shading of the body surface appeared with separate lines that convey wool. In the future, the figures began to be completely painted over with one paint, with attempts at volumetric modeling. The pinnacle of Paleolithic painting is the images of animals, made with two or three colors with varying degrees of tonal saturation. In these large (about 1.5 m) - figures, protrusions and irregularities of rocks are often used.

In the paintings of the caves of Madeleine Time, there are mainly single images of animals. They are very truthful, but most often they have nothing to do with one another. The viewer's point of view was also not taken into account, and the individual images were in the most unexpected positions in relation to the horizontal level.

But already in the previous time, as the reliefs from Lossel testify to this, primitive people tried to convey some of the most important scenes of their lives by means of pictorial means. These rudiments of more complex solutions were further developed in the time of Madeleine. On pieces of bone and horn, on stones, images appear not only of individual animals, but sometimes of a whole herd. People in the Madeleine paintings are not depicted, except in the rarest cases (people disguised as animals for ritual dance or hunting).

Along with the development of paintings and drawings on bone and stone in the Madeleine period, there was a further development of sculpture from stone, bone and clay, and also, possibly, from wood. And in sculpture, depicting animals, primitive people achieved great skill.

One of the remarkable examples of sculpture of the Madeleine period is the bone-head of a horse found in the Mae d'Azil (France) cave. The proportions of a short horse's head are built with great truth, the impulsive movement is clearly felt, the notches are perfectly used to transfer wool.

The images of bison, bears, lions and horses, discovered in the depths of the caves of the northern Pyrenees (caves Tyuc d'Oduber and Montespan), are also extremely interesting. sculpted, and attached real heads (the figure of a bear cub from the Montespan Cave).

Along with the round sculpture, images of animals in relief were also performed at this time. An example is the sculptural frieze of individual stones on the site of the Le Roque refuge (France). The figures of horses, bison, goats, a man with a mask on his head, carved on stones, apparently, as well as similar pictorial and graphic images, were created for the sake of the success of hunting wild animals.

A new stage in the development of primitive art, reflecting profound changes in human ideas about the surrounding reality, is associated with the Mesolithic, Neolithic and Eneolithic (Copper Age) periods. From the appropriation of the finished products of nature, primitive society at this time passes to more complex forms of labor.

Along with hunting and fishing, which continued to retain their importance, especially for forest and relatively cold countries in terms of climate, agriculture and cattle breeding began to acquire more and more importance. It is quite natural that now, when man has begun to remake nature for his own purposes, he has entered into a much more complex relationship with the life around him.

This time is associated with the invention of bows and arrows, then - earthenware, as well as the emergence of new types and improvements in the technique of making stone tools. Later, along with the dominant stone tools, separate objects made of metal (mainly copper) appeared.

At this time, a person mastered more and more various building materials, learned, applying to different conditions, to build new types of dwellings. The improvement of the construction business prepared the formation of architecture as an art.

In the northern and middle forest zone of Europe, along with the settlements that continued to exist from dugouts, settlements began to arise, built on a flooring of poles on the shores of lakes. As a rule, the settlements of this era in the forest belt (settlements) did not have defensive fortifications. On the lakes and swamps of central Europe, as well as in the Urals, there were so-called pile settlements, representing groups of huts of fishing tribes, built on a log platform resting on piles driven into the bottom of a lake or swamp (for example, a pile village near Robenhausen in Switzerland or Gorbunovsky peat bog in the Urals). The walls of rectangular huts were also usually made of logs or wicker twigs with clay plastering. The pile settlements were connected to the coast by bridges or with the help of boats and rafts.

Along the middle and lower reaches of the Dnieper, along the Dniester and in western Ukraine in the 3rd - 2nd millennia BC. the so-called Trypillian culture, characteristic of the Eneolithic period, was widespread. The main occupations of the population here were agriculture and cattle breeding. A feature of the layout of the Trypillian settlements (tribal settlements) was the arrangement of houses in concentric circles or ovals. The entrances faced the center of the settlement, where there was an open space that served as a corral for cattle (a settlement near the village of Khalepye, near Kiev, etc.). Rectangular houses with floors of clay tiles had rectangular doors and round windows, as can be seen from the surviving clay models of Tripolye dwellings; the walls were made of wicker, coated with clay, and decorated with paintings inside; in the middle there was sometimes a cruciform altar made of clay, decorated with ornaments.

From a very early time, among the agricultural and cattle breeding tribes in Western and Central Asia, Transcaucasia, Iran began to build structures from sun-dried bricks (raw bricks). Hills formed from the remains of clay buildings (Anau hill in Central Asia, Shresh-blur in Armenia, etc.), rectangular or round according to their plan, have reached us.

Great changes during this period also took place in the visual arts. Gradually complicating ideas of a person about the nature around him forced him to look for explanations for the connection between phenomena. The immediate brightness of the perception of the Paleolithic time was lost, but at the same time, the primitive man of this new era learned to more deeply perceive reality in its interconnections and diversity. In art, the schematization of images and, at the same time, narrative complexity is growing, leading to attempts to convey an action, an event. Examples of new art are the overwhelmingly one-color (black or white) rock paintings in Valtort in Spain, in northern and southern Africa, the recently discovered schematic scenes of hunting in Uzbekistan (in the Zaraut-sai gorge), and also found in many places of drawings carved on the rocks, known as petroglyphs (stone writing). Along with the depiction of animals in the art of this time, the depiction of people in scenes of hunting or military clashes began to play an increasingly significant role. The activities of people, the collective of ancient hunters are now becoming the central theme of art. New tasks also demanded new forms of artistic solution - a more developed composition, subject subordination of individual figures, some still rather primitive methods of rendering space.

Many so-called petroglyphs have been found on the rocks in Karelia, along the shores of the White Sea and Lake Onega. In a very conditional form, they tell about the hunting of the ancient inhabitants of the North for a variety of animals and birds. Karelian petroglyphs belong to different eras; the most ancient of them, invisibly, date back to the 2nd millennium BC. Although the technique of carving on hard stone left its mark on the character of these drawings, usually giving only very schematic silhouettes of people, animals and objects, it seems that the goal of the artists of that time was only an extremely simplified transmission of some of the most common features. In most cases, individual figures are combined into complex compositions, and this compositional complexity distinguishes petroglyphs from artistic creations of the Paleolithic.

A very important new phenomenon in the art of the period under review was the widespread development of ornamentation. In the geometric patterns covering earthen vessels and other objects, the skills of building a rhythmic ordered ornamental composition were born and formed, and at the same time a special area of artistic activity arose - applied art. Separate archaeological finds, as well as ethnographic data, allow us to assert that labor played a decisive role in the origin of the ornament. There are grounds for the assumption that some types and types of ornamentation were basically associated with a conditional schematic transmission of the phenomena of reality. At the same time, the ornament on some types of clay vessels appeared initially as traces of weaving coated with clay. Subsequently, this natural ornament was replaced by an artificially applied one, and a certain action was attributed to it (for example, it was believed that it gives strength to the made vessel).

Tripolye vessels can serve as an example of ornamented ceramics. Here you can find a wide variety of shapes: large and wide flat-bottomed jugs with a narrow neck, deep bowls, double vessels, similar in shape to binoculars. There are vessels with scratched and one-color ornaments made with black or red paint. The most widespread and artistically interesting are products with multicolored painting in white, black and red paint. The ornament covers the entire surface here with parallel colored stripes, a double spiral that runs around the entire vessel, concentric circles, etc. Sometimes, together with the ornament, one also encounters highly schematized images of people and various animals or fantastic creatures.

One might think that the ornaments of the Trypillian vessels were associated with agricultural and cattle-breeding labor, perhaps with the veneration of the sun and water as forces that help the success of this labor. This is also confirmed by the fact that multicolored ornaments on vessels (the so-called painted ceramics) similar to the Trypillian ones were found among the agricultural tribes of that time in a wide area from the Mediterranean, Western Asia and Iran up to China (see the corresponding chapters for this).

In the Trypillian settlements, clay figurines of people and animals were widespread, widely found in other places (in Asia Minor, Transcaucasia, Iran, etc.). Among the Trypillian finds, schematized female figurines prevail, which were found in almost every dwelling. Sculpted from clay, sometimes covered with painting, the figurines depict a standing or seated nude female figure with loose hair and a humped nose. In contrast to the Paleolithic, the Trypillian figurines convey the proportions and shapes of the body much more conventionally. These figurines were possibly associated with the cult of the earth goddess.

The culture of hunters and fishermen inhabiting the Urals and Siberia clearly differed from the Tripolye culture of farmers. In the Gorbunovsky peat bog in the Urals, in the thickness of the peat, the remains of a pile structure of the late 2nd - early 1st millennium BC were found, which was, apparently, some kind of cult center. Peat has pretty well preserved the figures of anthropomorphic idols carved from wood and the remains of the gifts they brought: wooden and earthenware, weapons, tools, etc.

Wooden vessels and spoons in the form of swans, geese, and marsh hens are especially expressive and life-like. In the bend of the neck, in the laconic but surprisingly faithful reproduction of the head and beak, in the shape of the vessel itself, which reproduces the body of a bird, the carver-artist managed with great grace to show the characteristic features of each of the birds. Along with these monuments of outstanding vitality in their life, in the Ural peat bogs, slightly inferior wooden heads of an elk and a bear were found, which probably served as handles of tools, as well as figurines of an elk. These images of animals and birds differ from Paleolithic monuments and, on the contrary, are close to a number of Neolithic monuments (such as, for example, polished stone axes with animal heads) not only by the simplicity of the form, which preserves the truthfulness of life, but also by the organic connection of the sculpture with an object that has a utilitarian purpose. ...

The last stage in the history of primitive society is characterized by a number of new phenomena in art. The further development of production, the introduction of new forms of economy and new metal instruments of labor slowly but profoundly changed the attitude of man to the surrounding reality.

The main social unit at this time was the tribe, which united several clans. The main branch of the economy for a number of tribes first becomes domestication, and then breeding and caring for livestock.

Humanity has come to the last stage in the development of the primitive communal system, to the patriarchal-clan society. The loom, and especially the metal tools (tools made of copper, bronze, and, finally, iron), which became widespread in connection with the invention of ore smelting, acquired great importance among the new tools of labor. The variety and improvement of production led to the fact that all production processes could no longer, as before, be carried out by one person and required a certain specialization.

When in the valleys of large rivers - Nile, Euphrates and Tigris, Indus, Yellow River - in 4 - 3 millennia BC. the first slave-owning states arose, then the social and cultural life of these states became a source of the strongest impact on neighboring tribes that still lived in the conditions of the primitive communal system. This introduced special features into the culture and art of the tribes that existed simultaneously with the state formations of a class society.

Towards the end of the existence of primitive society, a new, previously unprecedented type of architectural structures appeared - fortresses. The walls were made of huge, roughly hewn blocks of stone. Cyclopean fortresses have survived in many places in Europe (France, Sardinia, the Iberian and Balkan peninsulas, etc.); as well as in Transcaucasia. In the middle, forest zone of Europe from the second half of the 1st millennium BC. settlements spread - “fortified settlements”, fortified with earthen ramparts, log fences and ditches.

Along with defensive structures at the later stages of the development of primitive society, structures of a completely different kind were widely developed, the so-called megalithic (that is, built of huge stones) buildings - menhirs, dolmens, cromlechs. Entire alleys of vertically standing large stones - menhirs - are found in the Transcaucasus and Western Europe along the Mediterranean and Atlantic coastlines (for example, the famous mezgir alley near Karnak in Brittany). Dolmens are widespread in Western Europe, North Africa, Iran, India, Crimea and the Caucasus; they are tombs built of huge stones standing upright, covered on top with one or two stone slabs. Structures of this nature are sometimes found inside burial mounds - for example, a dolmen in a mound near the village of Novosvobodnaya (in the Kuban), which has two chambers - one for burial, the other, apparently, for religious ceremonies.

The most complex megalithic structures are cromlechs. Examples of this type of structure are the Avebury and Stonehenge Sanctuaries in southern England. At Stonehenge, a central platform with a large stone slab (perhaps serving as an altar) is surrounded by four concentric rows of vertically placed stones. The inner ring (in the form of an open oval) and the third from the middle consisted of relatively small menhirs. The second and fourth, outer, circles are formed by rows of evenly spaced giant boulders. Thirty stone pillars of the outer circle (of which sixteen are still standing) are connected by horizontally lying stone beams; in the same way, ten huge, carefully hewn stones of the second from the middle circle, which rises 7 m above the surrounding plain to the north of the city of Salisbury, are connected in pairs. The rungs (weighing almost 7 tons) were raised up with the help of earthen embankments, traces of which have been preserved. The unusually large size of the structure, the bringing from afar of huge blocks of blue stone (for the outer fence of the Stonehenge), the orientation towards the summer solstice, the traces of sacrifices - all indicate that this building was given great importance. Most likely it was the sanctuary of the sun. The architectural form of Stonehenge contains a thoughtful solution to a complex spatial problem. Here there is a clear layout, the role of the bearing and the carried parts clearly stands out and is defined. Stonehenge, like other megalithic structures, undoubtedly already had the goal of an artistic impact on the audience, forcing them to bow down and revere such an impressive and solemn presentation of the grandiose grandeur of the solar cult.

Megalithic buildings were erected by the labor of the entire primitive community. However, their construction undoubtedly required a rather complex social organization. Some other architectural monuments of the Bronze Age testify to the approaching collapse of the once united primitive society, such as, for example, special burial structures - large chambers, arranged in the burial mounds of tribal leaders. The oldest monuments of this kind are the so-called royal tombs of Egypt in Negada (4th millennium BC). The later burials of tribal leaders include, for example, the Maikop kurgan in the northern Caucasus (late 3rd - early 2nd millennium BC); the bottom of his cell, more than 1.5 m deep in the ground, was paved with pebbles and covered with mats, and the walls were lined with wood.

Less significant during this period were the successes of sculpture. Actually, menhirs - upright single stones - were not so much architectural structures as distant predecessors of later monuments of monumental sculpture. Found in many parts of the world, such monuments, in all likelihood, were associated with the cult of the dead or with the cult of ancestors. Roughly carved stone menhir-like statues, very schematically depicting a man, mostly a woman, are common in France and some other countries of Western Europe, in the Crimea, etc.

Artistic crafts were further developed during this period. Among the items found in the burial in the Maikop mound, the decorations of the funeral or ceremonial canopy made of gold stand out.

Bronze knives with sculpted figures of animals on the handle, found in the Gorky region, in the Urals, in southern Siberia, and in China, are remarkable examples of the artistic craft of this period. The figures, and sometimes only the heads of animals on these knives, for all their simplicity, appear expressive and lively.

In Western Europe, late forms of primitive art lingered for a long time. Such, for example, are the monuments of the so-called Hallstadt period (10th - 5th centuries BC): clay vessels covered with geometric ornamental painting, with small schematic sculptural figures of people, horses, birds. The art of primitive society in the late period of its development came close to the development of a plot composition, reflecting mythological ideas and the real life of people.

But the real development of art became possible only in a class, slave-owning society. At different times, the process of disintegration of primitive communal relations among a significant part of the tribes and peoples of southern Europe, Asia, and northern Africa led to the formation of a number of states. In the more northern regions of Europe and Asia, the primitive communal system remained for many centuries, but the social relations and culture of such tribes (Scythians, Sarmatians, Gauls, Germans, Slavs) were strongly influenced by the culture of slave-owning societies.