Upper Paleolithic Art and Human Expression
6.2 A Revolution of Intellect: The Meaning of Upper Paleolithic Art
Evocative imagined scenes emphasize the power and mystery of Upper Paleolithic art: two cave painters in a dark passage, an oil lamp casting dancing shadows, a young woman creating a negative handprint by blowing pigment through a hollow reed, leaving a signature image of her hand on the rock wall (approx. 20,000 years old). A tall man conjures the vision of a wild horse and the hunters’ kill, painting with memory, pigment, and binder. The scene exemplifies how memory, imitation, memory, and magic intertwine in art.
Symbolic expression as a uniquely human ability:
Humans convert ideas into images that we can recognize and understand; we also feel compelled to do so.
Symbols (abstract or realistic) include stick-figure animals, Michelangelo-like murals, tally marks, geometric patterns, and cave-wall engravings.
The capacity to create and read symbols is presented as defining the human mind.
The Earliest Art: Australia and Africa
Dated artifacts from ~40{,}000 years ago indicate symbol use and art production outside Europe.
Sulawesi, Indonesia: oldest painted art in the world, found in seven caves with paintings of animals (anon/anoa; a wild pig also called a “barbirusa”) and 12 painted hand stencils.
Uranium-series dating of deposits formed after painting places the art earlier than the deposit: oldest depiction of an animal in Sulawesi caves dated to ~45{,}000 years ago.
Hunter-hybrid imagery in Sulawesi caves suggests early humans depicted scenes of pursuit and danger, potentially reflecting strategies or mythic thinking about hunting.
Sulawesi also shows a hunting scene with human-animal hybrids (spear-wielding figures pursuing wild pigs and similar prey).
Hand stencils may reflect a practice akin to signing one’s presence, a universal human impulse across cultures.
The European Upper Paleolithic and global reach of art
Europe’s Late Paleolithic art is especially well known due to cave locations, preservation in caves, and abundant finds.
Parietal (cave) art and mobiliary (carved, engraved, or inscribed objects) show realistic and representational depictions of animals and landscapes.
Notable sites include Chauvet, Lascaux, Altamira, Les Combarelles, Niaux, Les Trois-Frères, Pech-Merle, Fonte de Gaume, with large numbers of cave paintings of horses, mammoths, rhinoceroses, reindeer, and bovids.
Southwestern Europe contains well over 350 caves with Paleolithic artwork; many more cave sites exist.
The “Chinese Horse” from Lascaux and other major works reveal remarkable artistic skill and variety, allowing us to glimpse Upper Paleolithic life through their eyes.
Dating cave paintings: challenges and methods
Dating paintings is difficult because pigment itself may not be datable; when organic binders (charcoal, animal fat) are used, radiocarbon dating can be applied but requires sampling that can damage the artwork.
A workaround in northwestern Spain used calcite deposits (flowstone) that overlie paintings to provide minimum age limits via uranium-series dating (Pike et al. 2012).
Key dating results:
El Castillo Cave red disk painting: just over 40{,}000 years old (minimum age).
Sulawesi hand stencils: around the same age as El Castillo’s dating (~40{,}000 years).
Altamira club-shaped designs: calcite dating to nearly 36{,}000 years ago.
Chauvet Cave: radiocarbon dating suggests two temporally distinct occupations: roughly 37{,}000 to 33{,}500 years ago and 31{,}000 to 28{,}000 years ago, with painting likely spanning both periods.
Chauvet’s preservation was aided by a rockfall sealing the cave entrance at the end of the second occupation.
Chauvet’s artworks are celebrated for their beauty and complexity.
Upper Paleolithic art and self-representation
Humans depicted themselves (and others) in varying degrees of detail: one early incised human image at Cussac Cave; numerous animal renderings and a human outline.
Patricia Rice and Ann Paterson (1985, 1986) quantified animal depictions by sex and activity:
More than rac{3}{4} of human images are of men, often shown singly in active poses (running, walking, throwing).
Females are depicted more often at rest and in proximity to other females.
These patterns have been used to propose possible male/female roles in Paleolithic societies, though the sample size limits firm conclusions.
The art panels and composition
Caves host multiple panels with overlapping images; few paintings form a single, cohesive tableau.
The placement of carnivores versus herbivores is non-random: carnivores are frequently in less accessible parts of caves, while herbivores appear in proportion to their dietary significance in habitation sites.
Figurines and the “Venus” images
Hohle Fels Cave yields the oldest known human figurine depiction (female form) dating to ≥35{,}000 years ago, carved from woolly mammoth ivory and about 60 ext{ mm} tall.
The Venus figurine type (e.g., Venus of Willendorf) typically shows broad hips, large breasts, and rounded bellies; some lack heads.
Most Venus figurines are dated between 27{,}000 and 20{,}000} years ago, often interpreted as fertility symbols, depictions of pregnancy, or medical conditions.
Variation among figurines is substantial: not all are “typical” in shape; some are slender, some show different ages and states of fertility.
Additional figurines from Hohle Fels (33{,}000–30{,}000 years ago) include a graceful waterfowl and a horse head; other carvings include bears, lions, and mammoths.
Chimera sculptures and petroglyphs
“Chimera” sculptures combine human and animal features, reflecting spiritual or mythological beliefs.
Lion Man (Hohlenstein-Stadel): a humanoid figure with a lion’s head; this and similar carvings imply a sophisticated symbolic and possibly religious worldview.
The meanings are unclear, but these works point to an animistic or spiritual dimension in Upper Paleolithic thought.
The Sound of Music: music in the deep past
Music appears to be a human universal; evidence suggests a cultural repertoire extending back at least 40{,}000 years.
Oldest instruments are flutes from Geissenklösterle Cave in Germany dating to >40{,}000 years ago (Higham et al. 2012).
Hohle Fels Cave yielded bone and ivory flutes: a larger bone flute from a vulture with five finger holes; a smaller one from a swan with three holes; ivory flutes also reported.
Fragmented evidence of additional flutes suggests a developing musical tradition among anatomically modern humans; there is no convincing evidence for music production or appreciation among Neanderthals.
Synthesis: why the Upper Paleolithic art matters
The art demonstrates complex cognitive abilities: memory, imagination, symbolic thought, and perhaps ritual or spiritual practices.
It reveals a nuanced understanding of the world, encounters with animals, and the human tendency to encode knowledge, beliefs, and identity in portable and durable forms.
The art offers a window into daily life, social structure, and worldviews, bridging the distant past with contemporary human cognition.
6.3 What Does the Art of the Upper Paleolithic Mean?
Reservations about interpretation exist; multiple hypotheses attempt to explain why art was produced and what it signified.
Art for art’s sake vs. deeper cultural meaning
Some scholars view Upper Paleolithic art as beauty for its own sake and as an expression of human creativity and power (art for art’s sake).
Sympathetic magic hypothesis
Patricia Rice and Ann Paterson (1985, 1986) attempted to quantify the idea that depicting trapped or speared prey ensured real-world hunting success.
They found correlations between the species depicted in cave art and the faunal assemblages at habitation sites: smaller, non-aggressive prey (reindeer, red deer) were depicted in proportion to their dietary importance, while animals capable of producing large quantities of meat (often larger, impressive, or dangerous animals) were also depicted more often than their actual dietary occurrences might predict.
Neuropsychological approach
J. D. Lewis-Williams and T. A. Dowson (1988) proposed that certain geometric forms arise from altered states of consciousness and are universal across cultures:
Dots, wavy lines, zigzags, crosshatching/grids, concentric circles/U-shaped lines, parallel lines
These patterns appear in cave art and in ethnographic records of shamans who induce trance-like visions through fasting, fasting, darkness, isolation, sleep deprivation, or hallucinogens.
The argument links geometric forms to the optic system and to cross-cultural trance experiences rather than to specific cultural meanings.
The accuracy of naturalistic depictions
Upper Paleolithic artists often produced accurate representations of animals, suggesting careful observation and knowledge of anatomy and behavior.
Examples include the woolly mammoth anatomy and fat deposits (e.g., a fat neck hump not evident on skeletons) and the steppe bison depiction predating its extinction around 11{,}000 years ago.
Later depictions often reflect ecological knowledge: after the steppe bison’s decline, representations shift to resemble the European bison.
Implications for interpretation
The art likely served multiple purposes: record-keeping, ritual, social cohesion, memory transmission, training of hunters, and symbolic communication.
Because the exact meanings remain elusive, researchers emphasize cross-cultural patterns, observation accuracy, and broader cognitive capabilities rather than single definitive explanations.
6.4 The Importance of Living Long: The Grandmother Effect
Personal context and broader hypothesis
Grandparents, especially grandmothers, can influence the survival and reproductive success of descendants.
Empirical support from historical populations
Finnish and Canadian mortality statistics (18th–19th centuries) show that the presence of a grandmother in the household increased the number of children born to her offspring and improved their grandchildren’s survival rates (Lahdenpera et al. 2004).
Tracing back to the deep past
Caspari and Lee (2004) examined ancient hominin teeth, including Australopithecus, Homo erectus, Neandertals, and modern Homo sapiens from the European Upper Paleolithic.
They found a significant longevity increase around 30{,}000 years ago in the lineage leading to modern humans, reflected in a shift in population age structure: a larger fraction of older adults relative to younger adults.
Implications for culture and memory
Grandparents likely served as a living library, transmitting cultural memories and knowledge across generations.
The grandmother effect may have contributed to social structures that support learning, caregiving, and the diversification of knowledge across generations.
6.5 Handprints
El Morro and the idea of “I was here”
El Morro National Monument (New Mexico) features a cliff face with a long history of markings by travelers: a place called A’ts’ina by the Zuni, meaning “The Place of Writing on the Rock.”
Over centuries, approximately 2,000 people etched or painted their names and marks on the cliff face, serving as a durable memorial of presence for future travelers.
Handprints as a global memory practice
Sulawesi hand stencils date to about 40{,}000 years ago, reflecting an early and widespread practice of marking one’s presence with a painted hand.
Similar hand prints appear in Native American rock art in the American Southwest, suggesting a universal impulse to leave a personal mark across diverse times and places.
The significance of the motif
Handprints symbolize human presence and memory, offering a personal, enduring signature across generations.
Figure references
Figure 6.19 displays handprints in southern Utah (example of global prevalence of this motif).
Figures and Sites (brief references for context)
Figure 6.10: Upper Paleolithic/Late Stone Age sites across Australia, Europe, Asia, and Africa.
Sulawesi artwork: earliest animal depictions and hand stencils; dating and interpretations discussed in the text (Aubert et al. 2014, 2019, 2021).
Figure 6.11: Hand stencils and anoa depiction at Sulawesi sites; dating commentary.
Australian petroglyphs: oval shape at Wharton Hill (>36{,}000 years) and Panaramitee North (~43{,}000 B.P.).
Africa: Apollo 11 Cave, Namibia, with painted/engraved animals dated to around 30{,}000 B.P.
Europe: Chauvet, Lascaux, Altamira, and other sites as exemplars of parietal and mobiliary art; Chauvet’s two occupation periods and remarkable conservations.
Venus figurines: Hohle Fels (35,000+ years) and Venus of Willendorf (well-known exemplar) illustrating a range of body forms and age portrayals.
Lion Man: Hohlenstein-Stadel, a possible early symbolic figure blending human and lion features.
The Sound of Music: flutes from Geissenklösterle and Hohle Fels dated to around 40{,}000 years ago; Neanderthals not evidenced as bringing music into their cultural repertoire.
Connections, Implications, and Real-World Relevance
Intellectual revolution in symbol use marks a turning point in human cognitive evolution: the ability to imagine, represent, and share ideas through symbol systems.
The global distribution of early art (Europe, Australia, Africa, Indonesia) underscores convergent development of symbolic expression in diverse human populations.
Dating challenges highlight the importance of methodological triangulation (radiocarbon dating vs. uranium-series dating via flowstone) to establish minimum/maximum ages while preserving art objects.
The accuracy of naturalistic depictions demonstrates advanced observational skills and ecological knowledge among Upper Paleolithic artists.
Theoretical debates (art for art’s sake, sympathetic magic, neuropsychology, trance imagery) illustrate how multidisciplinary approaches (anthropology, psychology, archaeology) contribute to interpreting ancient art.
The Grandmother Effect provides a long-term perspective on how social structure, intergenerational care, and memory transmission may have shaped human evolution and cultural continuity.
Handprints and other signatures across the globe emphasize a fundamental human desire to be remembered and to communicate presence across generations.
Key Terms and Concepts (glossary)
Symbolic expression: human capacity to create and interpret symbols that convey complex ideas.
Parietal art: cave paintings on walls and ceilings.
Mobiliary art: portable, carved, engraved, or inscribed artifacts (bone, ivory, antler).
Flowstone dating: dating method using calcite deposits that cover artwork to establish minimum ages via uranium-series dating.
Uranium-series dating: dating approach used to determine ages of calcium carbonate deposits.
Ventral/venous depictions: representative animal imagery and the potential for gendered depictions.
Venus figurines: prehistoric female figurines emphasizing fertility and body form.
Lion Man: chimera sculpture combining human body with lion head, representing symbolic/spiritual motifs.
Grandmother effect: hypothesis that post-reproductive females contribute to descendants’ survival and reproduction, with deep evolutionary roots.
Connections to Earlier Lectures (recap)
Earlier chapters introduced hominin evolution, anatomy, and social behavior; 6.2–6.5 tie symbolic culture to evolutionary advancements in cognition, memory, and social structure.
The art discussed complements archaeological records (faunal remains, habitation sites) to build a fuller picture of life during the Upper Paleolithic.
The material bridges animal behavior, memory, myth, and technology—highlighting how early humans used art to encode knowledge, beliefs, and social identity.
Practical and Ethical Considerations
Dating and conservation: radiocarbon dating and flowstone/uranium-series dating are powerful but require careful handling to avoid damaging precious artworks.
Interpretation limits: multiple plausible readings exist for ancient art; researchers must avoid overinterpretation and acknowledge uncertainties.
Public engagement: cave art exemplifies humanity’s shared heritage and the need to balance access with preservation (the Chauvet case and related exhibitions).