Prehistoric Art


Today we examined prehistoric cave paintings from France and Spain. These paintings are the first known examples of art created by humans. They are beautiful. The students worked in groups to analyze the paintings. I loved their ideas:

Sylvie, Evan, Lindsay and Tabitha: The Stone Age people painted animals instead of humans because they were using the walls of the caves as a place to make hunting plans. They might also have wanted to honor the animals by painting pictures of them, because the animals provided their food and clothing.

Ally, Celia Belle, Gabriel and Zach: We like the three-dimensional way that they painted the animals. For example, the backs of the rhinos look like they overlap each other.

Maxwell, Jack C., Maya, Coco and William: We noticed that there are rain clouds and lightning in this painting.

Hunter, Bowen, Channing and Tilly: The artists might have included the mountains, clouds, and lightning in order to help the hunters remember where they found certain animals.




Thomas, Hudson, Nia, Vaya and Artie: It's surprising that the deer are running towards the hunters. The artist might have included this detail because the animals were trying to stampede the hunters.

Priya, Charlotte, Asher and Nolan: The animals might have been their gods -- and they drew them as a way to honor them.


The website that I showed during class today provides a virtual tour of the famous caves in Lascaux, France.  The site is here.

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