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A horned boar (40,000 B.C.E.) exemplifies the primal power of natural forces and Humanity's vulnerability to their conflict, depicting a large boar-like creature as a person running away from it in fear. The painting highlights power dynamics and mythological themes, as the boar's color is deep red and larger than the person, conveying a sense of danger. Additionally, the person running away from it represents the human consequences of messing with nature or animals. -
Paleolithic art (40,000-10,000 BCE) was characterized by the use of chiaroscuro, polychromy, schematic, figures, and decorated objects. Emerging from the Paleolithic age, it was celebrated as the earliest art of the Stone Age. However, humans at that time had stone, wood, and bone tools, as well as other organic materials, in approximately 200 caves with paintings, drawings, and sculptures that reflected their religious beliefs or representational image-making practices.
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The Venus of Willendorf (25,000 B.C.E.) exemplifies fertility and femininity, portraying a woman as a small statue that has no feet or arms, with large breasts, a prominent stomach, and thighs. Additionally, it lacks a face, as it covered by hair, similar to a pattern. It depicts a femininity and fertility theme of the importance of womenhood during the Paleolithic age, as it focuses on the female reproductive and regenerative features. -
The Apollo 11 cave stone (25,500 B.C.E.) is significant because it is one of the oldest dated artworks in Paleolithic art. As the stone was made of grey-brown quartzite, a compact granular rock, it depicts a part-human and part-animal creature. It has a feline body with human hind legs and possibly antelope horns, as the image itself was painted in pigment using ochre charcoal. -
Hall of Bulls Lescaux II (16,000 B.C.E.) is a replica of the original Lescaux cave, utilizing pigments and a technique of blowing through a hollow bone, and employing modern technology. It depicts various types of animals, including horses, bison, stags, and other Ice Age-era creatures, as well as artwork featuring a man with a bird-like head on the cave's walls and ceilings, possibly hinting at shamanistic practices. -
The use of trilithons, henges, passage graves, and megalithic structures characterized neolithic art (10,000-3000 B.C.E). Emerging from the Neolithic age, it was well known as the last part of the Stone Age due to the development of humans' cultural and behavioral characteristics. Which allowed people to produce female and animal statues, engrave, and elaborate on pottery decoration, as well as build places like passage tombs or megalithic monuments that reflected their shamanistic beliefs.
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The Jericho skull (7200 B.C.E.) exemplifies the artistic portraiture and funerary practices of the Neolithic period. Portraying the skull was a powerful way to keep the memory of their loved one alive. As the plaster mold was made from the cranium packed with soil, a thick layer of plaster was applied and molded over the froth of the skull to help build up and recreate facial features, such as the cheeks, nose, lips, and a Marine shell to serve as eyes, giving a lifelike appearance. -
The seated women of Catalhoyuk (c. 6000 B.C.E.) exemplify the spiritual and social roles of women, as well as their fertility. Portray the woman as a robust, nude female figure made of baked clay, sitting on a throne-like chair with the armrests depicted as the heads of two lionesses. Because, like the Venus of Willendorf, it represents the mother goddess and also respects older women within Neolithic society. -
Newgrange (3200 B.C.E.) exemplifies the sophisticated Neolithic culture, as it is a large circular structure constructed of 200,000 tons of stone, featuring an inner stone passage and chamber with massive stone slabs, many of which are intricately carved with complex spirals and zigzags, and a celestial alignment that allows sunlight to illuminate the chamber. Symbolic meaning of the connection between the earth and heaven. -
Stonehenge (3000 B.C.E.) exemplifies a megalithic structure that features an outer ring of upright sarsen stone, some of which were topped with a horizontal lintel, and an inner ring with a smaller arrangement of bluestone, as well as a central horseshoe of large trilithons and two vertical sarsens capped by a lintel. As a place for essential moments for rituals and ceremonies to honor the dead, or a funeral, it is also used for an astronomical event to keep track of the season