Art did not begin at a specific moment in time. It gradually grew out of non-art, developing and changing along with the people who created it.

Denis Vialou believes that prehistoric art, even before sapiens, was born from the ancient complicity between humans and the tools they manipulated and perfected. Beauty, a certain aesthetic impulse, is already present in the very form of the spearhead.

The aesthetic principle is present in any concise thing, but this activity cannot yet be called pictorial, that is, conveying an image of the world.

The earliest finds date back to the Upper Paleolithic. The Upper Paleolithic man (40-12 thousand BC) was homo sapiens (wise man). They walked upright, had articulate speech, and knew how to make complex tools from stone, bone, wood, and horn. Tribal groups lived by hunting wild animals and began to unite into tribes.

Art already existed in the most prehistoric eras, as confirmed by archaeological finds. In hidden rocky caves, archaeologists have found entire art museums, not just in one place on Earth, but in different corners of the world.

Scientific archaeology began to develop actively in the 19th century. In Western Europe, about 300 caves have been discovered with Paleolithic art preserved on their walls. About 70 of them are classified as “giants.” The largest number of caves were discovered in France (about 150 monuments), 130 caves in Spain, 25 in Italy, and 3 in Portugal.

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The northernmost cave is located in Britain. In Russia, Paleolithic art, mainly portable (bone carving, engraved and painted pebbles, ivory sculptures), has been found in the Upper Volga basin (Zaraysk, Sungir) and the Middle Don (Kostenki), beyond the Ural Mountains in the Upper Yenisei basin, Transbaikalia, and on the Angara.

Almost everywhere on earth, centers of material culture from time immemorial have been discovered and uncovered: cave dwellings, where, among other things, silhouettes of animals, patterns and mysterious symbols carved on pieces of deer antlers, bone plates and stone slabs, human figures made of stone and bone, large animal sculptures, drawings, carvings and reliefs on rocks have been found. We can only describe these objects as works of art.

Paleolithic art in Europe is represented by two types of monuments:

● Paintings and engravings on cave walls, known as monumental art.
● Mobile or portable art includes bone carvings, engraved or painted pebbles, and three-dimensional sculptures made of mammoth tusks, soft stone, and fired clay.

Line, contour, silhouette.

The line as a phenomenon was already mastered at the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic.

Altamira, Spain. Frieze of winding lines.
Linear, non-figurative drawings made with fingers using diluted ochre or engraved with special tools have been preserved. Researcher Abbé Braille jokingly called them “macaroni,” and this term subsequently entered the vocabulary of researchers of prehistoric art. Curvilinear, or meandering, drawings cover the walls of caves, sometimes over a very large area (up to 6 meters). The meanders carried a certain meaning. Perhaps they were signs of the colonization of cave space and the routes taken by ancestors or human souls. Australian Aborigines have similar drawings that symbolize the wandering of the soul during dreams.

Ochre handprints are often found. Analysis of such phenomena has led archaeologists to conclude that ochre handprints belonging to women and men of different ages, children, and even people with no fingers (disabled people) are nothing more than the authors' signatures on a primitive canvas. This eloquently testifies to the fact that creativity was so collective that all members of the community took part in it.

Little was known about early drawings until a certain period—single figures outlined in contour had correct proportions but lacked volume. Over time, primitive artists began to use impressionistic techniques, softening sharp lines by showing wool and hair, making the contours more blurred.