Study: Prehistoric Ancestors Made Art by Using Firelight

There used to be a period when mankind had not yet invented written language. Various art forms were used as a practical means of communicating with neighboring cultures throughout this period.

Prehistoric objects and art made throughout the Stone Age, Paleolithic, and Neolithic eras are referred to as prehistoric artifacts and art.

Recent research has discovered that stones etched with artistic motifs approximately 15,000 years ago contained patterns of heat damage, suggesting that they were cut near to the flickering light of a fire.

Art using firelight

(Photo : PHILIPPE LOPEZ/AFP via Getty Images))

An investigation of 50 carved stones discovered in France showed that our forefathers most likely created complex artwork by firelight.

According to the current study, the stones were engraved with artistic motifs about 15,000 years ago and featured patterns of heat damage that implied they were cut near to the flickering light of a fire, as cited by ScienceDaily.

Researchers from the Universities of York and Durham examined a collection of engraved stones known as plaquettes, which is currently housed at the British Museum.

They were most likely created using stone tools by the Magdalenian people, an early hunter-gatherer society that existed between 23,000 and 14,000 years ago.

Patterns of pink overheating all around the margins of several of the stones were discovered by the researchers, indicating that they've been put near a fire.

Having followed their discovery, the researchers started experimenting with mimicking the stones themselves, employing 3D models and virtual reality operating systems to reconstruct the plaquettes as primitive artists would see them under fireside light levels, and also with the fresh white lines sculptors would have made hundreds of years ago when they first reduced into the rock.

Dr. Andy Needham of the University of York's Department of Archaeology and Co-Director of the York Experimental Archaeology Research Centre, the study's lead author, stated, "It had initially been presumed that the heat damage noticeable on certain plaquettes was likely to have been caused by mistake, but experimental studies with scale model plaquettes demonstrate the loss was more coherent with just being intentionally relation to the performance to a fire."

They may conceive of art as being done on a blank canvas in daylight or with a fixed light source in the contemporary day, but they now know that 15,000 years ago, humans were producing art around a fire at night, with flickering forms and shadows.

Also Read: Prehistoric Art Inspired by the 'Supernatural'

Prehistoric art in different eras

Prehistoric art may be described as art made by individuals during a time when no form of written language had yet been invented.

The epoch at which various societies throughout human history began creating their distinct language systems differs substantially by geography.

Prehistoric painters documented their everyday experiences in materials that have survived millennia of rigorous exposure to changing environmental conditions, providing us with rich insights into what life was like in the early days of our species before the emergence of written communication.

The inscribed shell was thought to date from the late Lower Paleolithic, but the weight of evidence pointed towards the Middle Paleolithic as having the greatest instances of art being used for expressive purposes rather than being merely functional in use.

Other possible early examples may be discovered in South Africa's Blombos Cave and Morocco's Venus of Tan-Tan.

The designs discovered on the sides of the Blombos caves have been dated to roughly 73, 000 years old and thus are regarded to be the earliest instances of human-made art.

In 2018, experts uncovered what is claimed to be the oldest known artwork portraying the human figure in a cave on the island of Borneo, as per Art in Context.

Those are also roughly 40, 000 years old, with the Venus of Hohle Fels being a well-known example of ancient art history from this period.

Another source of Upper Paleolithic art includes cave paintings from roughly 40, 000 to 10,000 years ago, the sculpture The Venus of Willendorf, and various animal carvings, such as the Wolverine pendant of Les Eyzies, which represents a wolf etched into a bone.