Paleolithic people made portable art to adorn the spaces in which they lived. This prehistoric portable art is opposed to parietal art in that it is not associated with the walls of caves (parietal art) nor on rocks in an open environment (rock art). Portable art is indeed theart objects, these could, by their small dimensions, be transported over the course of human movements. It includes a variety of objects such as, for example, figurative statuettes of animals or humans or even carved staves and weapons. This portable art can be produced on several supports such as drinkbone and stone and demonstrate mastery of several artistic techniques such as engraving, sculpture and painting.
The pads made of stone with engravings are a type of portable art that is mainly found on Magdalenian sites. These pads of Paleolithic may be present in several thousand copies on certain sites, which raises questions about their potential usefulness. Some of these plates, when they are particularly well preserved, indeed show traces of use and in particular of heating and fragmentation. When such marks are not visible, however, research focuses on understanding and interpreting the engravings present on the surface of these plates. The authors of a study published in the journal PLoS One therefore took an interest in around fifty engraved plaques from the Paleolithic period in an attempt to uncover the mystery of their use.
Engravings that come alive near the flames
The pads are made of rock limestone and come from the Magdalenian site of Montastruc, in Tarn-et-Garonne. This site has been dated to between about 13,000 and 12,000 years ago. The engravings they carry represent horses, ibexes, bison, a wolf and human silhouettes. The largest pads are the size of a sheet of A4 paper, but most are half the size and their thickness does not exceed three centimeters.
For this study, the authors placed limestone slabs near a foyer or in it, measured the temperature that emanated from it and recorded the visual effects produced by the light of a fire nocturnal on these pads.
The authors first explain that limestone changes color and fractures depending on the high temperatures to which it is exposed (red color between 100 and 300°C and gray discoloration at more than 600°C), which could constitute interesting properties for Paleolithic artists. Moreover, the fact of placing plates engraved near a fire reinforces the blurring of the natural characteristics of the limestone slabs as well as those of the engraving. At a time when men gathered in caves under cover of the night and when the hearth seemed, at first glance, to be used only for heating and cooking food, the prehistoric men of Montastruc also had to use the games shadows and light near the flames to stimulate their visual system, trigger perceptual psychological responses and awaken their imagination.
On video: was Paleolithic rock art also cinema?
Cartoons would not date from yesterday, according to the work of Marc Azema. Nearly 41% of parietal representations painted in decorated caves, such as Lascaux or Chauvet, would exhibit movements. More surprisingly, the techniques used to give life to rock works (successive images, superimposition) are still used in cinematography and comics.
Article by Quentin Mauguit, published on 02/26/2013
The Chauvet caves and Lascaux, to name but a few, contain many Palaeolithic works. They mostly represent animals (mainly large mammals), the rest being composed of signs (i.e. abstract motifs) and rarely of Men (an exception is visible in the scene of the Lascaux well). These depictions have always been seen as still images, but this approach may have been inappropriate in many cases.
This is the assumption made Marc Azema after more than 15 years of work. This researcher from the University of Toulouse II-Le Mirail (also a member of the scientific team studying the Chauvet cave) has adopted an ethological approach in his surveys. In other words, he first sought to understand the behavior and biology of the mammals represented before interpreting the parietal works. Thus, approximately 41% of the animals painted in the decorated caves are actually represented in motion (figure published by Marc Azéma in the journal For Science).
According to him, several graphic methods have been used by aurignacian artists to animate their creations, at the very beginning, 32,000 years ago. Surprisingly, they are still used today in comics and cinematography. Let us not forget an important point: these works were painted on deformed volumes by the light of torches, grease lamps or lights. Now, the flickering nature of the emitted light has a certain animating power.
Do these animated sequences present the first animations in history? They were made by breaking down cave paintings made of superimposed images and then assembling them in a montage. © Marc Azema, YouTube
Paleolithic movements and perspectives
The movement can in particular be created by the production of successive images. A fine example is shown to us on the large panel in the hall of the bottom of the cave Chauvet (see the photograph, below). We see a complete hunting scene involving lions caves, horses, bison and mammoths. The right end of the fresco consists of two superimposed rows of 16 lion heads connected to a bust piece.
Animation is created with the eyes: reading them from right to left gives the impression of movement. We can then see an attack on a herd of bison, which tend to flee. Moreover, in this movement of the gaze, the felines of the upper row become smaller than those they overhang, which gives an effect of perspective to the scene.
The superimposition or juxtaposition of images has also been used to animate animals either in whole or in part (in particular to move ears, tails or heads). A good example is presented in the Abri du Colombier in Ardeche. An ibex was indeed represented there 12,000 years ago with several series of legs, which suggests a movement.
Real Aurignacian cinema?
It is possible to go even further. The work can be broken down into a succession of images representing different phases of a movement. This appears clearly when all the shots are projected one after the other. Notable fact: this approach, like the previous one, also includes a notion of time.
Thus, the representation of movement in art was already mastered during prehistory. This observation implies several important points. The artists of the time, at least those who animated their works, would have exploited one of the major properties of visual perception: retinal persistence. L’eye human remembers an illustration for about 50ms, which means that we observe a continuous movement when jerky images are projected with a shorter time interval. Moreover, the actions observed in these parietal works would not have existed without the reflex of recomposition of the movement that our brain. Were the first cinemas built in caves ?
Interested in what you just read?