SHORT OUTLINE OF TWO-DIMENSIONAL PALEOLITHIC ART

Museum of the Origins of Man

SHORT NOTE ABOUT TWO-DIMENSIONAL PALEOLITHIC ART

Two-dimensional art starts in Far East at the same time as three-dimensional art in Europe and Africa.
The oldest forms of two-dimensional art were discovered in China by Father Theilard de Chardin and J. Pivoteau in 1923 (published in 1930) at the site of the Nihowan lake layers (near Beijing). Those finds were attributed to the ancient Villafranchian culture, which is equivalent to the european Villafranchian. This discovery was published in 1930, in France.
At the same site, remains of ancient animal life, and some man-made engravings on reindeer horn were also found.
The two great palethnologists did not say they found "art" but simply "engravings made by man on reindeer horn".
As a result of the research on the evolution of art, and considering that later in the lower Paleolithic, engravings on bone and ivory with geometric patterns were found, and with a certain complexity, I personally believe that the engraved bones found in Nihowan constitute the origin of two-dimensional art.
Engraving is the working technique with which man began to draw on bone and ivory simple lines and geometric figures and, later, natural figures, such as animals, human and plant figures. Later, the same subjects are found in painting
The engravings on bone and ivory of the lower Paleolithic in Eurasia are "geometric signs" that seem simple, and that had a function in the spiritual life of the people who produced them. We can define such function as "religion", as they are defined "art" both the engravings themselves, and the Euro African sculptures just sketched, that are not at all beautiful for our present aesthetic taste.
The first depictions of animals on the wall in the cave, both with engraving and painting technique, appear in the Paleolithic period around 27,000 years ago. They are the work of Homo sapiens sapiens, but not the Cro-Magnon type, which paleoanthropologists say came to Europe from Africa, but the Chancelade type, which seems to have come from East Asia, as archaeological evidence suggests
It is important to consider that the skeletons found in French Magdalenian sites belong to Homo sapiens sapiens, type of Chancelade, considered the author of Magdalenian art (paintings and zoomorphic engravings) of the Upper Palaeolithic.
The Chinese origin of the Chancelade type was discovered in 1983 by the Chinese palethnologist W.C. Pei in a cave excavated in the limestone rocks of the hill of Chu-Ku-t'ien, China. There are seven skeletons with Mongolian characters, which resemble the type of Chancelade and the current Eskimos, according to many authors derived from the type of Chancelade, which at the end of the last ice age migrated from France to the North, in the current regions inhabited by the Inuit people. The Magdalenian men of the type of Chancelade would be the current Eskimos or Inuit, who have the cult of the protector spirits of animals.
We are not aware that the Chancelade type was found in Africa in the Upper Paleolithic. In the Upper Paleolithic man spread all over the world and namely in North and South America, Australia and many uninhabited areas of Eurasia and Africa.
At the end of the Upper Paleolithic (dating for only Europe about 12,000 years ago), as a result of further numerous migrations in all directions and from all sides, cultural and racial crossbreeds were formed that have different evolutions of many kinds, as documented by photographs of works of art on this site.
In some civilizations the sculpture is connected from the religion to the represented anthropomorphic deity, while in other civilizations engraving and zoomorphic painting are inserted in a tradition with religion and connected to a philosophy of the nature.
About the evolution of two-dimensional Paleolithic art, we will analyze only its developments in China.
Neolithic period began in China before 6000 years ago (Lung Shan culture), already with widespread agriculture. In the religion there are no anthropomorphic divinities depicted in art, and the religion is based on the cult of the spirits of the dead and the rivers that received the offerings due to them. This religion in the people of villages continues in the later era of the Shang Dynasty and the cult of Heaven and Earth is added to it.
In the Neolithic Age enormous quantities of "polished bones" of animals have been found. The farmers of the nineteenth century, finding them, considered them "bones of the dragons", but the archaeological interest was due to Fan Wei-ch'ing. They are shoulder blades of oxen, sheep, pigs and sometimes shells of turtles, which the various authors call "oracular bones" or "divinatory bones".
In our interpretation, the "divinatory bones" are the evolution of a cult of engraved and painted animal bones of the Upper Paleolithic.
With the Bronze Age, 3500 years ago, China was ruled by the Shang Dynasty, and at that time writing was invented, and the "divinatory bones" are often covered with inscriptions with questions and answers of soothsayers (Fig. F25).
The ideograms painted on the bones recall geometric painting and some signs in the Upper Palaeolithic, but instead are at the origin of today's Chinese writing.
Questions about "oracular bones" ranged from weather conditions to requests for advice on military campaigns.
The art consisted of engravings of animals on wooden tablets. The Shang Dynasty produced the most beautiful bronze vessels of all Antiquity, with decoration with arabesques and zoomorphic motifs, with cicadas, oxen, sheep, snakes and dragons of great artistic richness. In them we can see an exclusively Chinese way of artistic expression: the t'ao-t'ich, consisting of representations of animals (Fig. F26), that are transformed, depending on whether they are looked at straight or backwards, on one side or the other: the horns of the ox become then the body of the dragon, while the leg of the dragon will be a bird, etc..
The origin of the evolution of Chinese two-dimensional art is closely linked to religion, which in turn is linked to nature.
It has to be thought that in the Bronze Age rivers, for their benefits to humanity, were valued as civil heroes.
In the first century AD the Buddhist religion was introduced into China, and then began the construction of giant Buddha sculptures, but the great tradition of two-dimensional Chinese art is always flourishing, and continues to evolve and transform with the new fashions that man invents.

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