Cave or rock paintings are paintings painted on cave or rock walls and ceilings, usually dating to prehistoric times.

Rock paintings have been made since the Upper Paleolithic, 40,000 years ago.

They have been found in Europe, Africa, Australia and Southeast Asia.

It is widely believed that the paintings are the work of respected elders or shamans.

The most common themes in European cave paintings are large wild animals, such as bison, horses, aurochs, and deer, and tracings of human hands [which was said to be the signature of the artist who painted it] as well as abstract patterns..

For more information about the topic Cave painting, read the full article at Wikipedia.org, or see the following related articles:

Lascaux — Lascaux is a complex of caves in southwestern France famous for its cave paintings. The original caves are located near the village of Montignac, in ...  > read more

Stone Age — The Stone Age is a broad prehistoric time period during which humans widely used stone for toolmaking. Stone tools were made from a variety of ...  > read more

Stalagmite — A stalagmite is a type of speleothem that rises from the floor of a limestone cave due to the dripping of mineralized solutions and the deposition of ...  > read more

Petroglyph — Petroglyphs are images incised in rock, usually by prehistoric, especially Neolithic, peoples. They were an important form of pre-writing symbols, ...  > read more

Related Stories

Music Went With Cave Art In Prehistoric Caves (July 5, 2008) — Thousands of years later, we can view stone-age art on cave walls, but we can't listen to the stone-age music that would have accompanied many of the pictures. Researchers report that the most ...  > read more

Shedding Light On The Darkening Of Ancient Pompeii's Paintings (November 1, 2006) — Artists in ancient Pompeii painted the town red 2,000 years ago with a brilliant crimson pigment that dominated many of the doomed city's wall paintings. Now scientists in Europe report why those ...  > read more

New Technology For Dating Ancient Rock Paintings (March 16, 2009) — A new dating method finally is allowing archaeologists to incorporate rock paintings -- some of the most mysterious and personalized remnants of ancient cultures -- into the tapestry of evidence used ...  > read more

World Famous Rock Paintings Three-times Older Than Previously Thought (February 9, 2004) — Some of the world's finest rock paintings are more than three times older than previously believed, according to researchers from British and Australian universities who used the latest ...  > read more

Rock Art Marks Transformations In Traditional Peruvian Societies (August 6, 2008) — Peru is one of the Latin American countries, like Argentina and Brazil, where rock art is thought to have developed throughout a period stretching from 10,000 BC to 1500 AD. The wealth and diversity ...  > read more

Search ScienceDaily

Protecting Miners