Palaeolithic Age (Old Stone, Flint Stone)

• Definition: Period of human history that

includes from the first human species until the discovery of agriculture & livestock (Ca.8000 B.C)

• Characteristics & Skills

• Paleolithic Tools

• Cave Painting

• Predators: They could not produce their own food. They hunted

and collected fruit

• Nomads: They moved from one place to another, looking for

their food. They lived in groups in order to scavenge.

• Fire: They discovered fire (Homo Erectus- Ca 1.800.000 years ago)

• Tools: They learned to make tools: At first, sharpened stones, then

scrapers and spear heads.They use hard stones as silex but also other materials as horn or bones

• Habitat & Dress: They lived in caves and they wore leather

and animal-skin clothes.

Palaeolithic Age: Characteristics & Skills

Palaeolithic Age: Mammoth hunting

Palaeolithic tools

Materials: Stone (flint, obsidian)

Purpose: •Weaponry •Hunting •Everyday tools

Fabrication technique: Knapped stone

Paleolithic Tools: Knapping technique

Steps: 1. The flintknapper starts from a flint stone, hitting it with other stone until the core of it appears

Paleolithic Tools: Knapping technique

Steps: 2. The flintknapper hits the core with another stone, a piece of wood or bone (antlers are used very often), to break off stone flakes

Paleolithic Tools: Knapping technique

Steps: 3. The flintknapper used these stone flakes to make small tools, and the inner part of the core to make larger tools. The final shape is achieved using bone or wood on the stone

flake Remaining core

Paleolithic Age: Tools types

The most common tool types are:

Burin: to carve wood, bone or stone

Chopping tool: to chop meat

Handaxe: to chop meat, hunt or as a weapon

Arrowhead: to hunt or as a weapon

Paleolithic Age: Cave Paintings

•Earliest artistic manifestations

•Why? Probably to attract animals to their hunt or just to express what they have seen.

•Topic: Animals (mammoth, deer, bison, linxes and horses)

•Where? On ceiling and walls of caves

•How? Fingers, brushes made of animal hair or spatulas.

•Colours: red from iron or blood, black from coal

•Style: Realistic

•Examples: Cantabrian Area. Altamira

Bison in the Altamira cave

Paleolithic Age: Cave Paintings

Lascaux

Paleolithic Age: Venus Statues & Portable Art

•Venus statues are particulary famous. They are feminine figures and probably represented fertitity.

•They also carved small pieces of bone and horn in the shape of a horse or deer.

Venus of Willendorf

Paleolithic Age: Venus Statues & Portable Art

Venus of Laussel, an Upper Paleolithic carving Venus of Willendorf Venus of Lespugue