Europe: Paleolithic Art

Introduction

In the western peninsula of Eurasia, Paleolithic art is particularly concentrated and is the earliest. It would appear that the migrations of modern humans from the East had to “mark” the geographic extremity and their new territories. Such materialization of oral myths guaranteed their reality and performance by adding the harmony of plastic forms. Based on the opposition between two systems of thought (Neandertal and Cro-Magnon), graphic imagery rendered this difference in supernatural substance and accentuated the two metaphysical worlds. “Images” are not absent during the Middle Paleolithic (Neandertals) in Europe, but follow entirely different paths from that of plastic illusion. Their burials and habitats have remains with a natural connotation, much more realistic than any later images: horns, antlers, skulls, and mandibles, isolated in tombs, designated the animal symbol, status, and the perpetuity of the deceased, like nature itself to which humanity associates...