Paleolithic - Human Way of Life - Art and Music

Art and Music

Early examples of artistic expression, such as the Venus of Tan-Tan and the patterns found on elephant bones from Bilzingsleben in Thuringia, may have been produced by Acheulean tool users such as Homo erectus prior to the start of the Middle Paleolithic period. However, the earliest undisputed evidence of art during the Paleolithic period comes from Middle Paleolithic/Middle Stone Age sites such as Blombos Cave in the form of bracelets, beads, rock art, and ochre used as body paint and perhaps in ritual. Undisputed evidence of art only becomes common in the following Upper Paleolithic period.

According to Robert G. Bednarik, Lower Paleolithic Acheulean tool users began to engage in symbolic behavior such as art around 850,000 BP and decorated themselves with beads and collected exotic stones for aesthetic rather than utilitarian qualities. According to Bednarik, traces of the pigment ochre from late Lower Paleolithic Acheulean archeological sites suggests that Acheulean societies, like later Upper Paleolithic societies, collected and used ochre to create rock art. Nevertheless, it is also possible that the ochre traces found at Lower Paleolithic sites is naturally occurring.

Vincent W. Fallio interprets Lower and Middle Paleolithic marking on rocks at sites such as Bilzingsleben (such as zig zagging lines) as accounts or representation of altered states of consciousness though some other scholars interpret them as either simple doodling or as the result of natural processes.

Upper Paleolithic humans produced works of art such as cave paintings, Venus figurines, animal carvings and rock paintings. Upper Paleolithic art can be divided into two broad categories: figurative art such as cave paintings that clearly depicts animals (or more rarely humans); and nonfigurative, which consists of shapes and symbols. Cave paintings have been interpreted in a number of ways by modern archeologists. The earliest explanation, by the prehistorian Abbe Breuil, interpreted the paintings as a form of magic designed to ensure a successful hunt. However, this hypothesis fails to explain the existence of animals such as saber-toothed cats and lions, which were not hunted for food, and the existence of half-human, half-animal beings in cave paintings. The anthropologist David Lewis-Williams has suggested that Paleolithic cave paintings were indications of shamanistic practices, because the paintings of half-human, half-animal paintings and the remoteness of the caves are reminiscent of modern hunter-gatherer shamanistic practices. Symbol-like images are more common in Paleolithic cave paintings than are depictions of animals or humans, and unique symbolic patterns might have been trademarks that represent different Upper Paleolithic ethnic groups. Venus figurines have evoked similar controversy. Archeologists and anthropologists have described the figurines as representations of goddesses, pornographic imagery, apotropaic amulets used for sympathetic magic, and even as self-portraits of women themselves.

R. Dale Guthrie has studied not only the most artistic and publicized paintings, but also a variety of lower-quality art and figurines, and he identifies a wide range of skill and ages among the artists. He also points out that the main themes in the paintings and other artifacts (powerful beasts, risky hunting scenes and the over-sexual representation of women) are to be expected in the fantasies of adolescent males during the Upper Paleolithic.

The Venus figurines have sometimes been interpreted as representing a mother goddess; the abundance of such female imagery has led some to believe that Upper Paleolithic (and later Neolithic) societies had a female-centered religion and a female-dominated society. For example, this was proposed by the archeologist Marija Gimbutas and the feminist scholar Merlin Stone who was the author of the 1978 book When God Was a Woman. Various other explanations for the purpose of the figurines have been proposed, such as Catherine McCoid and LeRoy McDermott’s hypothesis that the figurines were created as self portraits of actual women and R.Dale Gutrie's hypothesis that the venus figurines represented a kind of "stone age pornography".

The origins of music during the Paleolithic are unknown, since the earliest forms of music probably did not use musical instruments but instead used the human voice and or natural objects such as rocks, which leave no trace in the archaeological record. However, the anthropological and archeological designation suggests that human music first arose when language, art and other modern behaviors developed in the Middle or the Upper Paleolithic period. Music may have developed from rhythmic sounds produced by daily activities such as cracking nuts by hitting them with stones, because maintaining a rhythm while working may have helped people to become more efficient at daily activities. An alternative theory originally proposed by Charles Darwin explains that music may have begun as a hominid mating strategy as many birds and some other animals produce music like calls to attract mates. This hypothesis is generally less accepted than the previous hypothesis, but it nonetheless provides a possible alternative. Another explanation is that humans began to make music simply because of the pleasure it produced.

Upper Paleolithic (and possibly Middle Paleolithic) humans used flute-like bone pipes as musical instruments, and music may have played a large role in the religious lives of Upper Paleolithic hunter-gatherers. Like in modern hunter-gatherer societies, music may have been used in ritual or to help induce trances. In particular, it appears that animal skin drums may have been used in religious events by Upper Paleolithic shamans, as shown by the remains of drum-like instruments from some Upper Paleolithic graves of shamans and the ethnographic record of contemporary hunter-gatherer shamanic and ritual practices.