Cave Paintings

People have been making art for a long time. The oldest art that we know about is cave paintings. When people used to live in caves, they would paint pictures on the walls. Cave paintings have been found in many places all over the world. Nobody is sure why people used to make cave paintings. But people today have many different ideas about the meanings of these paintings.

Cave paintings have been found in places like India, Africa, and Asia. But the oldest cave paintings found so far are in Europe. The Chauvet cave in France has paintings of animals that are around 35,000 years old. Other very old cave paintings have also been found in places like Germany and England. Some paintings in other caves around the world are much younger, some only 1200 years old.

Cave paintings usually show four different kinds of things. The most common kind of things. The most common kind of painting is pictures of large animals that people ate. The second is pictures of other animals, like lions. Another thing people usually painted on cave walls was people’s hands. Other kinds of pictures on cave walls include shapes that do not look like animals or people. These shapes have been called “macaroni” because they look like the food macaroni.

We do not know why people painted these things or what they meant. One idea is that all of these things were painted to help people. Maybe the pictures were painted by special men to help sick people or to help the group find food. Another idea is that the paintings were not made for any special reason. Maybe people just liked to look at them.

Whatever the reason, man has always liked to create art. We can see that this need for art existed over 30,000 years ago.