Every picture tells us something, and some pictures' meanings are more obvious than others. What does this image tell us?

Paleolithic EraCave Paintings

Your Cave Painting

In ten minutes, sketch a personal “cave painting.”

What information would you convey visually through a cave painting to people 500-1000 years from now?

This is all people will have about your life.

First Peoples

95% of human history, the means of life was gathering and hunting. (Paleolithic)

Homo sapiens emerged in eastern and southern Africa 250,000 years ago. (Map page 14)

Between 100,000 -60,000 years ago people beginning to migrate out of Africa.

Adapted to nearly every environment on earth.

Best evidence of early European settlements comes from southern France and northern Spain.

Lascaux Caves

Discovered by four teenagers in 1940, the Lascaux caves in southern France contains some 2,000 images dating perhaps 17,000 years ago.

We will explore this cave using an iterative website.

Cave Paintings

In pairs, explore the cave and answer the following questions:

1. What are the cave paintings trying to say?

2. Why do you think that there were so many animals and not so people in the paintings?

3. What can the painting tell us about about other aspects of life of cave dwellers or Paleolithic people?

4. How did they make these pictures if there were no stores to buy pain and brushes or tools for carving?

5. What colors are prominent in the paintings, and what natural sources might provide these pigments if they didn't’t have crayons or markers?

Discussion

What other challenges did cave people encounter in painting on cave walls and ceilings?

How did the overcome these challenges?

Lightings? How did these instruments look like?

When all we have are these cave paintings to write the history of these people, what kind of problems do we face when interpreting this type of evidence?