13 October 2014, 13:31

Rock art of Horseshoe Canyon, Utah, USA.

Such ancient historical monuments are not concentrated somewhere in one place, but are scattered throughout the planet. Petroglyphs were not found at the same time; sometimes the discoveries of different drawings are separated by significant periods of time.

At times, on the same rocks, scientists find drawings from different millennia. There are similarities between a variety of rock paintings, so it seems as if in ancient times there was a single ancestral culture and universal knowledge associated with it. Thus, many of the figures in the drawings have the same features, although their authors knew nothing about each other - they were separated by an enormous distance and time. However, the similarity in the images is systematic: in particular, the heads of the gods always emit light. Even though rock paintings have been studied for about 200 years, they still remain a mystery.

It is believed that the first images of mysterious creatures were rock paintings on Mount Hunan, China (picture above). They are about 47,000 years old. These drawings allegedly depict early contacts with unknown beings, possibly visitors from extraterrestrial civilizations.

These drawings were found on the territory National Park called Sera Da Capivara in Brazil. Experts claim that the paintings were created about twenty-nine thousand years ago:

Interesting cave paintings dating back over 10,000 years were recently discovered in the state of Chhattisgarh, India:

This cave painting dates back to approximately 10,000 BC and is located in Val Camonica, Italy. The drawn figures look like two creatures wearing protective suits, and their heads emit light. They hold strange devices in their hands:

The next example is the rock carving of a luminous man, which is located 18 km west of the city of Navoi (Uzbekistan). At the same time, a shining figure sits on a throne, and the figures standing near it wear something similar to protective masks on their faces. The kneeling man in the lower part of the picture does not have such a device - he is at a considerable distance from the luminous figure and, apparently, does not need such protection.

Tassilin Adjer (River Plateau) is the largest rock art site in the Sahara. The plateau is located in the southeastern part of Algeria. The oldest petroglyphs of Tassil-Adjer date back to the 7th millennium BC. And the latest - the 7th century AD. Drawings on the plateau were first noticed in 1909:

An image dating to approximately 600 BC, from Tassilin-Adjer. The drawing shows a creature with different eyes, a strange petal hairstyle and a shapeless figure. More than a hundred similar “gods” were found in caves:

These frescoes, found in the Sahara Desert, depict a humanoid creature in a spacesuit. Frescoes are 5 thousand years old:

Australia is isolated from other continents. However, on the Kimberley Plateau (northwest Australia) there are entire galleries of petroglyphs. And here all the same motifs are present: gods with similar faces and with a halo of rays around their heads. The drawings were first discovered in 1891:

These are images of Vandina, the goddess of the sky, in a halo of shining rays.

Rock art at Puerta del Canyon, Argentina:

Sego Canyon, Utah, USA. The most ancient petroglyphs appeared here more than 8,000 years ago:

"Skala-newspaper" there, in Utah:

"Alien", Arizona, USA:

California, USA:

Alien image. Kalbak-Tash, Altai, Russia:

"Sun Man" from the Karakol Valley, Altai:

Another of the many petroglyphs of the Italian Val Camonica valley in the Southern Alps:

Rock paintings of Gobustan, Azerbaijan. Scientists date the oldest drawings to the Mesolithic era (about 10 thousand years ago:

Ancient rock paintings in Niger:

Onega petroglyphs at Cape Besov Nos, Russia. The most famous of the Onega petroglyphs is Bes, its length is two and a half meters. Image crosses deep crack, dividing it exactly into two halves. A “gap” into another, otherworldly world. Within a kilometer radius of Bes, satellite navigation often fails. The clock also behaves unpredictably: it can run forward, it can stop. Scientists can only guess what this anomaly is connected with. Ancient figure cut Orthodox cross. Most likely, it was hollowed out on top of the demonic image by the monks of the Murom Monastery in the 15th–16th centuries. To neutralize the devil's power:

Petroglyphs of Tamgaly, Kazakhstan. Rock paintings abound in a variety of subjects, and the most common of them depict divine sun-headed creatures:

White Shaman Rock in the Lower Canyon, Texas. According to experts, the age of this seven-meter image is more than four thousand years. The White Shaman is believed to be hiding the secrets of an ancient vanished cult:

Rock paintings of giant people from South Africa:

Mexico. Veracruz, Las Palmas: cave paintings depicting creatures in spacesuits:

Rock paintings in the valley of the Pegtymel River, Chukotka, Russia:

The twin gods fight with battle axes. One of the petroglyphs found in Tanumschede, western Sweden (the drawings are painted red in the modern period):

Among the petroglyphs on the Litsleby rock massif, a giant (2.3 m tall) image of a god with a spear (possibly Odin) dominates:

Sarmysh-say gorge, Uzbekistan. Numerous ancient rock paintings of people in strange clothes were found in the gorge, some of which can be interpreted as images of “ancient astronauts”:

Rock paintings of the Hopi Indians in Arizona, USA, depicting certain creatures - kachina. The Hopi considered these mysterious kachinas to be their heavenly teachers:

In addition, there are many ancient rock carvings, either solar symbols or some objects resembling aircraft.

Rock paintings from San Antonio Cave, Texas, USA.

This ancient cave painting, discovered in Australia, depicts something very similar to a space alien ship. At the same time, the image may well mean something quite understandable.

Something resembling a rocket taking off. Kalbysh Tash, Altai.

Petroglyph depicting a UFO. Bolivia.

UFO from a cave in Chhattisgarh, India

Petroglyphs of Lake Onega depict cosmic, solar and moon signs: circles and semicircles with outgoing lines-rays, in which modern man both the radar and the spacesuit will clearly see. Moreover - TV.

Rock art, Arizona, USA

Petroglyphs of Panama

California, USA

Guanche rock paintings, Canary Islands

Ancient images of the mystical symbol of the spiral are found throughout the world. These cave paintings were once created by Indians in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, USA.

Rock art, Nevada, USA

One of the drawings discovered in a cave on the island of Youth, off the coast of Cuba. In it you can find great resemblance with the building solar system, where there is an image of eight planets with their largest satellites.

These petroglyphs are located in Pakistan, in the Indus River Valley:

Once upon a time, a highly developed Indian civilization existed in these places. It was from her that these ancient images carved on stones remained. Take a closer look - don't you think these are mysterious vimanas - flying chariots from ancient Indian myths?

Prehistoric rock art is the most abundant evidence available of humanity's first steps in the fields of art, knowledge and culture. It is found in most countries of the world, from the tropics to the Arctic, and in a wide variety of different places- from deep caves to mountain heights.

Several tens of millions of rock paintings and artistic motifs have already been discovered, and more are being discovered every year. This solid, enduring, cumulative monument of the past is clear evidence that our distant ancestors developed complex social systems.

Some common false claims about the origins of art had to be rejected at their very beginning. Art, as such, did not arise suddenly; it developed gradually with the enrichment of human experience. By the time the famous cave art appeared in France and Spain, it is believed that artistic traditions were already fairly developed, at least in South Africa, Lebanon, Eastern Europe, India and Australia, and no doubt in many other regions that have yet to be adequately explored.

When did people first decide to generalize reality? This is an interesting question for art historians and archaeologists, but it also has broad interest given that the idea of ​​cultural primacy has an influence on the formation of ideas about racial, ethnic and national value, even on fantasy. For example, the claim that art originated in the caves of Western Europe encourages the creation of myths about European cultural superiority. Secondly, the origins of art should be considered closely related to the emergence of other purely human qualities: the ability to create abstract ideas and symbols, to communicate in top level, develop self-image. Apart from prehistoric art, we have no real evidence from which to conclude the existence of such abilities.

BEGINNINGS OF ART

Artistic creativity was considered an example of “impractical” behavior, that is, behavior that seemed to have no practical purpose. The oldest clear archaeological evidence of this is the use of ocher or red iron ore (hematite), a red mineral dye removed and used by people several hundred thousand years ago. These ancient people also collected crystals and patterned fossils, colorful and unusually shaped gravel. They began to distinguish between ordinary, everyday objects and unusual, exotic ones. Apparently they developed ideas about a world in which objects could be classified into different classes. Evidence first appears in South Africa, then in Asia and finally in Europe.

The oldest known cave painting was made in India two or three hundred thousand years ago. It consists of cup-shaped depressions and a sinuous line, chiseled into the sandstone of the cave. Around the same time, on various kinds of portable objects (bone, teeth, tusks and stones) found at sites primitive man, simple linear signs were made. Sets of clustered carved lines first appear in the central and Eastern Europe, they acquire a certain improvement, which makes it possible to recognize individual motifs: scribbles, crosses, arcs and sets of parallel lines.

This period, which archaeologists call the Middle Paleolithic (somewhere between 35,000 and 150,000 years ago), was decisive for the development of mental and cognitive abilities person. This was also the time when people acquired seafaring skills and groups of colonists could make journeys of up to 180 km. Regular sea navigation obviously required improvement of the communication system, that is, language.

People of this era also mined ocher and flint in several world regions. They started building big ones shared houses from the bones and put stone walls inside the caves. And most importantly, they created art. In Australia, some examples of rock art were born 60,000 years ago, that is, during the era of human settlement of the continent. In hundreds of places there are objects believed to be of older origin than the art of Western Europe. But during this era, rock art also appeared in Europe. The oldest example of it that is known to us is a system of nineteen cup-like signs in a cave in France, carved on a stone slab, covering the site of a child’s burial.

Almost the most interesting aspect This era is the cultural unanimity that reigned in the then world in all regions of settlement. Despite the differences in tools, undoubtedly due to differences in environment, cultural behavior was surprisingly resilient. The use of ocher and the expressively uniform set of geometric markings indicate the existence of a universal artistic language among archaic homo sapiens, including European Neanderthals and others known to us from fossil remains.

Figured images (sculptures) arranged in a circle first appeared in Israel (about 250-300 thousand years ago), in the form of modified natural forms, then in Siberia and central Europe (about 30-35 thousand years ago), and only then in Western Europe. Approximately 30,000 years ago, rock art became enriched with complex incisions made with fingers on soft surface caves in Australia and Europe, and stenciled images of palms in France. Two-dimensional images of objects began to appear. The oldest examples, created approximately 32,000 years ago, come from France, followed by South African paintings (Namibia).

About 20,000 years ago (very recently in terms of human history) significant differences begin to form between cultures. Late Paleolithic people in Western Europe began fine traditions in both the sculptural and graphic arts of ritual and decorative consumption. Some 15,000 years ago, this tradition led to such famous masterpieces as the paintings in the caves of Altamira (Spain) and Lescaut (France), as well as thousands of elaborately carved figurines from stone, tusk, bone, clay and other materials. This was the time of the finest multicolored works of cave art, drawn or embossed by a certain hand of master craftsmen. However, the development of graphic traditions in other regions was not easy.

In Asia, forms of geometric art, developing, formed very perfect systems, some reminiscent of official records, others - mnemonic emblems, original texts designed to refresh the memory.

Beginning around the end of the Ice Age, about 10,000 years ago, rock art gradually expanded beyond the caves. This was not dictated by the search for new best places, as (there is almost no doubt here) the survival of rock art through selection. Rock art is well preserved in the permanent conditions of deep limestone caves, but not on rock surfaces, which are more open to destruction. So, the unquestioned spread of rock art at the end of the Ice Age does not indicate an increase in artistic production, but rather the crossing of the threshold of what ensured good preservation.

On every continent beyond Antarctica, rock art now shows diversity artistic styles and cultures, the progressive growth of the ethnic diversity of humanity on all continents, as well as the development of major religions. Even the last one historical stage the development of mass migrations, colonization and religious expansion - thoroughly reflected in rock art.

DATING

There are two main forms of rock art, petroglyphs (carving) and pictors (painting). Petroglyphic motifs were created by carving, gouging, chasing or grinding rock surfaces. In pictographs, additional substances, usually paint, were applied to the rock surface. This difference is very important; it determines approaches to dating.

The methodology for scientific dating of rock art has only been developed within the last fifteen years. Therefore, it is still at the stage of its “childhood”, and the dating of almost all of the world’s rock art remains in poor condition. This, however, does not mean that we have no idea about his age: there are often all kinds of landmarks that allow us to determine the approximate or at least probable age. Sometimes you are lucky enough to determine the age of a rock painting quite accurately, especially when the paint contains organic substances or microscopic inclusions that allow dating due to the radioactive carbon isotope present in them. Careful evaluation of the results of such an analysis can determine the date quite accurately. On the other hand, dating petroglyphs remains extremely difficult.

Modern methods rely on determining the age of mineral deposits that may have been deposited on rock art. But they only allow you to determine the minimum age. One way is to analyze the microscopic organic matter embedded in such mineral deposits; laser technology can be successfully used here. Today, only one method is suitable for determining the age of the petroglyphs themselves. It is based on the fact that the mineral crystals, chipped when gouging out petroglyphs, initially had sharp edges, which became blunt and rounded over time. By determining the rate of such processes on nearby surfaces whose age is known, the age of the petroglyphs can be calculated.

Several archaeological methods can also help the dating matter a little. If, for example, the rock surface is covered with archaeological layers of mud whose age can be determined, they can be used to determine the minimum age of petroglyphs. They often resort to comparison of stylistic manners in order to determine the chronological framework of rock art, although not very successfully.

Much more reliable methods studies of rock art, which often resemble forensic techniques. For example, the components of paint can tell how it was made, what tools and admixtures were used, where the dyes were taken from, and the like. Human blood, which was used as a bonding agent in ice age, discovered in Australian rock art. Australian researchers also discovered up to forty layers of paint superimposed on each other in different places, indicating constant redrawing of the same surface over a long period of time. Like the pages of a book, these layers convey to us the history of the use of surfaces by artists of many generations. The study of such layers is just beginning and can lead to a real revolution in views.

Pollen found on brush fibers in the paint of cave paintings indicates what crops were grown by the ancient artists' contemporaries. In some French caves, characteristic paint recipes were determined from their chemical composition. Using charcoal dyes, often used for drawings, even the type of wood burned into charcoal was determined.

Rock art research has become a separate scientific discipline, and already uses many other disciplines, from geology to semiotics, from ethnology to cybernetics. His methodology involves expressiveness using electronic images of colors of very damaged, almost completely faded drawings; a wide range of specialized description methods; microscopic studies of traces left by tools and scanty sediments.

VULNERABLE MONUMENTS

Methods for preserving prehistoric monuments are also being developed and increasingly used. Copies of rock art are made (fragments of an object or even the entire object) to prevent damage to the originals. Yet many of the world's prehistoric sites are in constant danger. Acid rain dissolves the protective mineral layers that cover many petroglyphs. All the rapid flows of tourists, urban sprawl, industrial and mining development, even unskilled research contribute to the dirty work of shortening the age of invaluable artistic treasures.

Interesting and picturesque messages from the past - drawings on the walls of caves, which are up to 40 thousand years old - fascinate modern people with their brevity.

What were they for the people of ancient times? If they served only to decorate the walls, then why were they performed in remote corners of caves, in places where, most likely, they did not live?

The oldest of the found drawings were made about 40 thousand years ago, others are several tens of thousands of years younger. It is interesting that in different parts of the world the images on the walls of caves are very similar - in those days people depicted mainly ungulates and other animals that were common in their area.

The image of hands was also popular: community members put their palms to the wall and outlined them. Such pictures are truly inspiring: by pressing your palm against such an image, a person can feel as if he has formed a bridge between modern civilization and antiquity!

Below we bring to your attention interesting images made on the walls of caves by ancient people from different parts of the world.

Pettaker Lime Cave, Indonesia

Pettaker Cave 12 kilometers from the town of Maros. At the entrance to the cave, there are white and red outlines of hands on the ceiling - 26 images in total. The age of the drawings is about 35 thousand years. Photo: Cahyo Ramadhani/wikipedia.org

Chauvet Cave, south of France

The images, which are about 32-34 thousand years old, are placed on the walls of a limestone cave near the city of Valon-pont-d'Arc. In total, in the cave, which was discovered only in 1994, there are 300 drawings that amaze with their picturesqueness.

One of the most famous images from the Chauvet Cave. Photo: JEFF PACHOUD/AFP/Getty Images

Photo: JEFF PACHOUD/AFP/Getty Images

Photo: JEFF PACHOUD/AFP/Getty Images

Photo: JEFF PACHOUD/AFP/Getty Images

Photo: JEFF PACHOUD/AFP/Getty Images

El Castillo Cave, Spain

El Castillo contains some of the oldest examples of cave painting in the world. The age of the images is at least 40,800 years.

Photo: cuevas.culturadecantabria.com

Covalanas Cave, Spain

The unique Kovalanas cave was inhabited by people less than 45 thousand years ago!

Photo: cuevas.culturadecantabria.com

Photo: cuevas.culturadecantabria.com

The walls of the caves located near Covalanas and El Castillo are also decorated with numerous paintings made by people thousands of years ago. However, these caves are not so famous. Among them are Las Monedas, El Pendo, Chufin, Hornos de la Pena, Culalvera.

Lascaux Cave, France

The Lascaux cave complex in southwestern France was accidentally discovered in 1940 by a local resident, an 18-year-old boy named Marcel Ravid. Huge number The paintings on the walls, which are surprisingly well preserved, give this cave complex the right to claim the title of one of the largest galleries ancient world. The age of the images is about 17.3 thousand years.

Traditionally, rock paintings are called petroglyphs, this is the name given to all images on stone from ancient times (Paleolithic) right up to the Middle Ages, both primitive cave rock carvings and later ones, for example, on specially set stones, megaliths or “wild” rocks.

Such monuments are not concentrated somewhere in one place, but are widely scattered across the face of our planet. They were found in Kazakhstan (Tamgaly), in Karelia, in Spain (Altamira cave), in France (Fond-de-Gaume, Montespan caves, etc.), in Siberia, on the Don (Kostenki), in Italy, England, Germany, in Algeria, where gigantic multicolor paintings of the Tassilin-Ajjer mountain plateau in the Sahara, among the desert sands, were recently discovered and created a sensation throughout the world.

Despite the fact that cave paintings have been studied for about 200 years, they still remain a mystery.

Rock paintings of the Hopi Indians in Arizona, USA, depicting certain kachina creatures. The Indians considered them their heavenly teachers.

According to the generally accepted theory of evolution, primitive man remained a primitive hunter-gatherer for many tens of thousands of years. And then he suddenly had a real insight, and he began to draw and carve mysterious symbols and images on the walls of his caves, rocks and mountain crevices.

Famous Onega petroglyphs.

Oswald O. Tobisch, a man of generous and varied talents, spent 30 years studying more than 6,000 cave paintings, trying to reconstruct some logical system that unites them. When you get acquainted with the conclusions of his research and numerous comparative tables, literally takes your breath away. Tobish traces the similarities of a variety of rock paintings, so that it seems as if in ancient times there was a single proto-culture and universal knowledge associated with it.

Spain. Rock art. 11th century BC

Of course, millions and millions of cave paintings did not appear at the same time; very often (but not always) they are separated by many millennia. In other cases, drawings were created on the same rocks over several millennia.

Africa. Rock painting. VIII - IV centuries BC

And yet, it is a striking fact that many rock paintings in the most different parts the lights appeared almost simultaneously. Everywhere, be it Toro Muerto (Peru), where tens of thousands of rock paintings have been found, Val Carmonica (Italy), the vicinity of the Karakoram Highway (Pakistan), the Colorado Plateau (USA), the Paraibo region (Brazil) or southern Japan, - almost identical symbols and figures were found everywhere. Of course, I cannot help but note that each individual place has its own, strictly localized types of images that cannot be found anywhere else, but this in no way clears up the mystery of the striking similarity of the remaining drawings.

Australia. XII - IV century BC

If you consider all these images with all their attributes and symbols, you get the amazing impression that the sound of the same trumpet suddenly rang out across all continents: “Remember: the gods are those who are surrounded by rays!” These “gods” are in most cases depicted as much larger than other little men. Their heads are almost always surrounded or crowned with a halo or halo, as if shining rays are emanating from them. Besides, ordinary people always depicted at a respectful distance from the “gods”; they kneel before them, prostrate themselves on the ground, or raise their hands to them.

Italy. Rock painting. XIII - VIII centuries BC

Oswald Tobisch, a rock art specialist who has traveled all over the world, with his tireless efforts has come even closer to solving this ancient mystery: “Perhaps this striking similarity in the images of deities is explained by “internationalism”, incredible by our standards today, and the humanity of that era, quite perhaps still remained in the powerful force field of the “primordial revelation” of the one and all-powerful Creator?

Dogu's space suit. The world's oldest depiction of a spacesuit.
Death Valley, USA.
Peru. Rock painting. XII - IV century BC

Rock paintings of the Hopi Indians in Arizona, USA

Australia

Rock paintings near Lake Onega. Incomprehensible images that some philosophers interpret as flying machines.

Australia
Petroglyphs from the vicinity of the village of Karakol, Ongudai district
Hunting scenes, where anthropomorphic creatures (people or spirits?) with bows, spears and sticks hunt animals, and dogs (or wolves?) help them, appear 5-6 thousand years ago - that’s when this petroglyph was created.
on a rock in Japan 7 thousand years ago
Algerian Sahara, Tassili massif (tinted rock paintings). The era of round heads. Reach 8 meters. Stone Age drawings

Similar examples of the creativity of ancient peoples can be found all over the world. In Altai there are rock portraits of humanoid creatures in spacesuits, created 4 - 5 thousand years ago. In Central America - starting " spaceships" They are depicted on some Mayan tombs dating back about 1,300 years. In Japan, bronze figurines from the 4th century BC are found dressed in helmets and overalls. In the mountains of Tibet there are “flying saucers” drawn 3000 years ago. Entire galleries of monsters with antennas on their heads, tentacles instead of arms and mysterious weapons are “exhibited” for us, our descendants, to see in caves, on plateaus and in the mountains in Peru, the Sahara, Zimbabwe, Australia, France, Italy.
Huge figures and small people next to them.

The history textbook says that primitive man wanted to somehow express himself and realize his primitive creativity with what was at hand. This is how rock paintings appeared on rocks in deep caves.

But just how primitive were our ancestors? And was everything really as simple a few thousand years ago as we imagine? The drawings from primitive art collected in this article may make you think about something.

Which drawing is the oldest? It should probably be drawn on an old, worn-out piece of papyrus, which is now kept in some museum under certain circumstances. temperature conditions. But time will not be kind to such a drawing even under the most optimal storage conditions - after several thousand years it will inevitably turn into dust. But destroy rock albeit over several tens of thousands of years - a difficult task even for the all-consuming time. Perhaps in those distant times, when man had just begun to live on Earth and huddled in unbuilt with my own hands houses, and in the caves and grottoes created by nature, he found time not only to get food for himself and keep the fire going, but also to create?

Indeed, cave paintings dating back several tens of thousands of years BC can be found in some caves scattered across different parts of the planet. There, in a dark and cold confined space, the paint retains its properties for a long time. Interestingly, the first cave paintings were found in 1879 - relatively recently by historical standards - when archaeologist Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola, walking with his daughter, wandered into the cave and saw numerous drawings decorating its roof. Scientists around the world didn't believe the amazing discovery at first, but studies of other caves around the world confirmed that some of them actually served as shelters for ancient man and contain traces of his presence, including drawings.

To determine their age, archaeologists radiocarbon date the particles of paint that were used to paint the images. After analyzing hundreds of drawings, experts saw that rock art existed ten, twenty, and thirty thousand years ago.

This is interesting: “arranging” the found drawings into chronological order, experts saw how rock art changed over time. Starting with simple two-dimensional images, artists of the distant past improved their skills, first adding more detail to their creations, and then shadows and volume.

But the most interesting thing, of course, is the age of the rock paintings. The use of modern scanners when exploring caves reveals to us even those rock paintings that are already indistinguishable to the human eye. The record of the antiquity of the found image is constantly updated. How deeply were we able to penetrate into the past by exploring the cold stone walls of caves and grottoes? To date, the cave boasts the oldest rock paintings El Castillo, located in Spain. It is believed that the most ancient rock paintings were discovered in this cave. One of them - the depiction of a human palm by spraying paint on a hand leaning against a wall - is of particular interest.

The oldest drawing to date, age ~ 40,800 years. El Castillo Cave, Spain.

Since traditional radiocarbon dating would give too wide a scatter in the readings, to more accurately determine the age of the images, scientists used the method of radioactive decay of uranium, measuring the amount of decay products in the stalactites formed over thousands of years on top of the picture. It turned out that the age of the rock paintings is about 40,800 years, making them the most ancient on Earth among those discovered so far. It is quite possible that they were not even drawn by homo sapience, but by a Neanderthal.

But El Castillo Cave has a worthy competitor: caves on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. To determine the age of the local drawings, scientists examined the age of the calcium deposits that formed on top of them. It turned out that calcium deposits appeared no less 40,000 years ago, which means that the rock paintings cannot be younger. Unfortunately, it is not possible to more accurately determine the age of the ancient artist’s creations. But we know one thing for sure: in the future, humanity will face even more ancient and amazing discoveries.

Illustration: image of a bison in a cave in Altamira, Spain. About 20,000 years old

If you find an error, please highlight a piece of text and click Ctrl+Enter.