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Th e earliest dated European art forms are paintings from caves in southern France. Th ese paintings date from 32,000 to 30,000 b.c.e., during the last great ice age. Other seemingly related paintings in caves from France and Spain date as re- cently as 15,000 b.c.e. Th e world of these ancient artists was very diff erent from the modern one. All of Scandinavia and much of northern Europe were covered by a giant glacier that was so heavy it pressed Scandinavia down below sea level. Most of Britain was covered by a glacier, and it was connected by land to the rest of Europe.

Th e people who lived in this environment were scat- tered in small groups. Th ey were hunter-gatherers, mean- ing that they lived from hunting wild animals and gathering wild edible plants. Th eir cave paintings depict bison, deer, rhinoceroses, mammoths, and horses—the creatures they hunted. Th ese animals are depicted in profi le (from the side). Th is format allowed the artist to show all parts of the animal: head, body, tail, and all four legs. Th roughout the era of ice age paintings, artists took pains to be sure that all parts of animals showed. Even dead animals were shown in profi le, lying on the ground as if seen from directly above. Th e animals are depicted not only with precision but also with a vibrant sense of life, showing a mature artistic style that indicates that people began painting far earlier than the earliest paintings yet discovered.

Th ese cave paintings are found deep underground. To get to them sometimes requires crawling around stalagmites and stalactites (spikelike mineral deposits) or large fallen stones and through narrow passages. Th e artists illuminated their caves with stone lamps fi lled with fl aming animal fat, and they brought meals with them so that they could spend hours at their work. To reach high surfaces of rock walls or ceilings, they built wooden scaff olds, cutting holes high in the rock to insert branches to hold up the scaff olding. Th ey used stones to smooth out the rock surface for their paintings, though they oft en tried to include the natural bumps and cracks in the rock surface in their compositions. For certain parts of their pictures, they used fl int to fi rst carve lines into the rock. For instance, the bristling hair of bison would be cut fi rst and then fi lled with colored pigment. Th e artists mixed pigment with animal fat for painting, or they put pigment into their mouths and blew it onto the rock.

Ice age painters’ practice of working very deep inside caverns has led to much speculation by archaeologists and historians. Because a great deal of art has been inspired by re- ligious beliefs, many archaeologists believe that creating the paintings deep in the ground represented access to a super- natural world: Even tens of thousands of years later, Greeks and Romans believed that caves led from the world of the liv- ing to the world of the dead. Many ancient peoples believed

that art had a transforming power—that the act of painting made whatever was depicted actually happen. Th us, paintings that show hunting are thought to have been created to make a successful hunt become reality. In some of the caves, paint- ings of animals show signs of having been struck repeatedly, as if by the points of spears, suggesting a ritual in which the hunt is made real by attacking the paintings.

On the other hand, the paintings may have had other purposes, and the paintings deep in caverns may have been the only ones found because they were out of the way of ero- sion by nature and humans. Paintings on rocks outside caves and paintings near the entrances of caves could have been de- stroyed by wind, rain, and vandalism. Th ose that have been found are fragile; even exhaled human breath damages them, so others may have existed in profusion only to be worn away over 15,000 to 30,000 years. Th e paintings could have served as lists of game available in a region or as part of initiation rites for young people, like many works by the San (or Bush- men) in southern Africa.

Th e paintings of human beings in the caves also are puz- zling to archaeologists. Among the brilliantly detailed animal fi gures are ones of men who are graceless stick fi gures. On occasion they appear to be hunting; on other occasions they may be dancing. In the Lascaux Cave in France is a paint- ing from 15,000 to 13,000 b.c.e. of an apparently wounded or dead man, placed between a rhinoceros and a disemboweled bison. He seems to be wearing a mask of a bird. Th e only way to know he is male is from his prominent penis. Why are the men portrayed so badly, while the animals are portrayed so beautifully? Th e answer is as yet unknown.

Th e problem becomes more complicated when the por- traits of women are considered. Many small stone carvings of women from the same era as the early paintings have been found. Th ey have been dubbed Venuses by archaeologists, in humorous reference to the Roman goddess of love and beau- ty. Th e Venus of Willendorf from Austria, dating from 28,000 to 23,000 b.c.e., is the most famous of these fi gures. She is

carved from limestone and is only a little more than four inches high. Her stomach, breasts, and thighs are huge, but her arms are small, with her hands resting atop her breasts. Her head is covered by a cap or elaborately curled hair, so that her face does not show. Th is sculpture may be a fertility symbol, with the breasts and stomach representing a woman’s ability to create new life.

Th ere are other depictions of women, and many, like the Venus of Willendorf, are artistically superior to the depic- tions of men. In the Musée d’Aquitaine in Bordeaux, France, is a relief carving (with the fi gure projecting out from a fl at background) of a woman from 23,000 to 20,000 b.c.e. She is about 18 inches tall and is depicted from the front. Like the Venus of Willendorf, her face is obscured by what may be locks of hair, and her breasts, stomach, and thighs are large. Unlike the Venus of Willendorf, she has well-proportioned arms. In her right hand she holds aloft a bison’s horn. She is better detailed than the depictions of men from her era. Th ese Venuses suggest that their sculptors may have been from a matriarchal society or perhaps that women controlled the re- ligious practices.

In addition to creating the earliest-known paintings and rock sculptures, the ice age peoples of Europe appear to have created the earliest clay sculpture. In a cave at Ariège, France, are two clay bison, modeled in relief. Th ey each are about two feet in length and date from about 12,000 b.c.e. Like their painted counterparts, they are in profi le and in the same graceful style.

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By about 9000 b.c.e. Europe was warming, and the glacier over Britain had disappeared; Scandinavia, however, was still under a glacier, and Britain was still attached by land to the rest of Europe. Mammoths and rhinoceroses no longer lived in Europe, and reindeer had moved northward, followed by the ancestors of the Lapps, who eventually would populate northern Finland. Some of the major cultural groups that

Bird bone engraved with animal heads, Late Magdalenian, dating to about 10,500 c.e., from the cave of Courbet, Penne-Tarn, France (© Th e Trustees of the British Museum)

would fi gure in the later history of European art had begun to form, each belonging to two major language groups: the West Mediterraneans in the Iberian Peninsula, where Spain and Portugal are today, and the Indo-Europeans, who began somewhere north of the Black Sea or southeast of the Baltic Sea and migrated eastward and westward, occupying all of central and northern Europe as well as much of Asia.

Both the West Mediterranean peoples and the Indo- European peoples were inheritors of the artistic legacy of ice age Europe, but the direct line of development of art is easier to see in Iberia. Th ere are not as many paintings and other art works known from 9,000 to 4,000 b.c.e. as from earlier, perhaps because a matriarchal religious system changed or perhaps because Europeans had other preoccupations, spending their energies using new tools such as stone saws and working at new technologies such as dugout canoes. With the loss of some of their largest prey, people may have had to spend more time hunting than earlier, thus dimin- ishing the time they had to create art. Perhaps the spread- ing out of the European population over new lands revealed by the retreating glaciers diminished the sort of interplay among groups that would have stimulated new ideas in art. Th ere were only about 75,000 people in all of Europe.

Still, in Spain are rock paintings that incorporate new detail in the portrayals of men. Th e most famous is a rock painting in Castellón, Spain, sometimes called the Marching Warriors, though they could be dancing. Th ey have noses, lips, and beards, and the leader wears a feathered headdress. Th ey carry spears and bows. Th e painting dates from 7,000 to 4,000 b.c.e. Much has been made of the resemblance be- tween this painting and the rock paintings of the Sahara of the same era, and it is possible that some of the Saharan painters and the West Mediterraneans were part of a single cultural group.

In about 6500 b.c.e. people in the Balkans and Greece began practicing agriculture. Some historians view this event as the beginning of an invasion of Europe by people from the Near East, who eventually conquered the areas through cen- tral Europe to northern Europe, replacing the people already there. A more likely possibility is that the idea of agriculture spread through Europe. Even though they were still living primarily by hunting and gathering, Europeans were already a mostly settled people who lived in small villages. Th e spread of agriculture brought with it new trade routes, and with those trade routes came an exchange in artistic ideas.

For instance, in what is now Hungary, in the 5000s to 4000s b.c.e., people made ceramic stamp pendants that could emboss symbols and images in clay, an idea that probably came from Syria. Th e symbols, consisting of lines and curves, may have served as charms. Th ey also sculpted ceramic hu- man and animal fi gures and what may be phallic symbols. None of these sculptures is unbroken, making it hard to tell how detailed they may have been. A sign that people were adopting a more sedentary way of life, staying in one loca- tion, comes from clay models found in Bulgaria, dating from

5,000 to 2,000 b.c.e. Th ese depict household furniture such as chairs and couches. Th eir purpose is unknown, but they may represent a tradition of toy making.

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By 4000 b.c.e. the Indo-Europeans occupied most of central and eastern Europe, northern Europe, southern Scandinavia, and most of Britain, which was no longer attached by land to the rest of Europe. Th e West Mediterraneans still occupied Iberia and some of southern France. Th is era saw special cre- ativity in the manufacture of household wares. For instance, a pot from the 3000s b.c.e., found in Hungary, looks like two bowls placed lip to lip and fused, with the stem of the top lid open and a face etched into it. Th e bowl is decorated with zigzags, straight lines, crosshatching, and other designs, per- haps representing clothing for the body of the face or perhaps simply intended to please the eye. It may have been meant for use in religious rites, but it may simply refl ect the human tendency to beautify even everyday objects.

Romania has proved a rich site in sculpture from the 3000s b.c.e. Its fi gurines tend to be female and spare in ap- pearance, with sharp angles. Many female fi gures also were produced in Ukraine during the 3000s b.c.e. Two ceram- ic fi gures of a woman and a man were found in a grave in Cernavodă, Romania. Although they are nearly abstract, they seem very human. Th e woman is fat in the stomach and thighs, with small, sharply angled breasts; a long neck; a cir- cular head with impressions for eyes; a fl at nose; and a pursed mouth. Th e man is seated on a small stool, his knees high, with his elbows pressed into his thighs and his hands pressed into his cheeks. His head is more oval than the woman’s, with the same sort of eyes, nose, and mouth. Th ey come across as ordinary people at rest, both looking a little weary. Th ey rep- resent a tradition of geometrical sculpture that would survive until the era of classical art.

Between 3000 and 2500 b.c.e. the Únĕtice culture in what is now central Poland learned to make bronze by com- bining tin and copper. Th is development did not occur until about 2300 b.c.e. in Greece and the Balkans, 1800 b.c.e. in Britain and Iberia, and 1500 b.c.e. in southern Scandinavia. Bronze would give artists an important new medium for their sculptures.

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By about 2000 b.c.e. the Indo-Europeans had come to domi- nate Europe. Within Europe they had fragmented into the Celts of central Europe, the British Isles, and Iberia; the Ger- manic peoples, possibly from the east, occupying southern Scandinavia; the Slavs of northeastern Europe; the Italics of southern Europe; the Illyrians of the Balkans; and the Th ra- cians of eastern Europe. Of these groups, the Celts would de- velop the most distinctive style of art. Th e most important outside infl uence on Indo-European art came from Mycenae, Greece, in about 2000–1200 b.c.e. Mycenaean art has been

found in northern Europe, and northern European art has been found in Mycenae. One of the most interesting paint- ings of the era is a mural from the Mediterranean island of Th era in the 1500s b.c.e. that depicts what appears to be a boat from Scandinavia.

Numerous rock paintings and carvings from 2000 to 500 b.c.e. were created in Scandinavia, by Germanic peoples sometimes called Nordic by anthropologists. Th ese paintings and carvings have been found in Norway, Sweden, and Den- mark, and they number in the hundreds of thousands. Th e artworks appear on broad rock faces. First they were carved by using an unknown tool to punch chips out of the surface. In the earliest examples a color lighter than the rock was add- ed into the carved lines, giving the fi gures greater defi nition. In later examples ocher—a mineral with iron oxide, colored red, brown, or yellow—was added into the lines. Th e subject matter is varied, showing people dancing, hunting, and even making love, but pictures of ships predominate. Th e interest in ships is indicative of oceangoing trade, perhaps into the Mediterranean, which would help explain the Mycenaean in- fl uence in Britain and northern Europe as well as central Eu- rope. Among the rock carvings from the fi rst century b.c.e. are studies of chariots, depicting various kinds of harnesses, and of spoked wheels, sometimes apart from the pictures of the chariots. In European art of the period wheels with spokes oft en represented the sun. Chariots oft en indicated the pres- ence of an elite warrior class.

By 1500 b.c.e. Mycenaean metalwork, especially in cop- per and gold, had spread across western Europe. A scepter buried with a British chieft ain duplicates one found in My- cenae, dated at about 1600 b.c.e. Mycenaean armor was in central Europe by the 1500s b.c.e. and may have infl uenced the development of helmets and body armor among the Celts. Golden cups from about 1500 b.c.e. that imitate Mycenaean styles and techniques for working gold have been discovered in Britain and in far northwestern Germany. Th e spread of Mycenaean infl uence in Europe cannot be explained fully by oceangoing traders and must have included overland trade routes. Th e Mycenaeans set up trading posts in the Balkans and perhaps farther north to Germany, and they had trading posts in Britain. When the Mycenaean culture abruptly ended in about 1200 b.c.e., their traders may have been stranded in those trading posts, and their artists may have ventured into central Europe to fi nd employment. Th ey brought with them their techniques for metalwork, which may help to account for the fl owering of Celtic metal sculpture that followed.

Th e Celts loved jewelry, and Celtic sites that have not been plundered yield a rich assortment of jewelry. Beads were well loved, and even Egyptian glass beads have been found not only in central Europe but also as far as northern Ger- many, probably imported into Europe through trade routes established by the Mycenaeans. A necklace from Britain from 1500 to 1000 b.c.e. shows the use of shale beads and faience beads. Faience is brightly colored glazed pottery. Bones and antlers also were worked, mostly for decoration. Amber was

mined in Jutland in modern Denmark and exported through- out Europe, where it was used to make beads and strung on necklaces. Eastern Europe, especially Hungary and the Czech Republic, has yielded bracelets and pendants from 1500 to 1000 b.c.e., many with designs that echo Mycenaean ones, yet some show the intricate interlacing of curves and lines as well as the three-pointed swirls, which would set apart Celtic art.

It is in metal that Celtic art from this era fully captivates the imagination. Much of the metalwork seems to have served ritual purposes, sometimes given in sacrifi ce to a local god. For the Celts the world was full of gods; lakes, rivers, mountains, stones, and more had their own gods. Th is means that rivers such as the Th ames in England have yielded fi nely sculpted gold and bronze. Early examples that hint at what was to follow come from the Únĕtice culture, from what is now eastern Ger- many. Th ey produced armlets (bands worn around the arm), earrings, beads, and pins of gold from 1500 to 1000 b.c.e. Th eir designs were simple, sometimes just a winding of strands of gold into circles of wire to form tightly wound beads. Even so, there are hints of what would come. For example a grave in Germany has yielded an armlet from about 1500 b.c.e. that has lines along its length and a twisting design between the lines, somewhat like a simple version of the twisting and looping of lines in later Celtic armbands and torques (neck rings).