Paleolithic Art

For the first section of study for this course, you are going to be introduced to the beginnings of art and you will begin to tackle some of the bigger questions about why human beings make art and how we perceive those images.

The first era of art we will be studying is called the Paleolithic Era (literally "New Stone Age") . In this era from around 40,000 BCE to around 12,000 BCE, humans are mostly nomadic hunters and gathers living in the last stages of an ice age. While lives are short and difficult, during this period humans begin to create images of the world around them. Humans now have the ability to make visual copies and interpretations of their surroundings. This seismic change in the way we view our world will forever be altered.

Around 9,000 BCE, the worse effects of the ice age began to lessen, which led to a warming that raised sea levels and caused the extinction or migration of the main food source animals that kept Paleolithic people alive in Europe.