
Prehistoric art

Newgrange is part of an area that contains one of the largest collections of neolithic and megalithic art and culture in the world

Paintings in the rock shelters in Bhimbetka are the oldest art of South Asia.
Bhimbetka cave paintings

Between 6000 and 1000 B.C.E., thousands of nomadic Native Americans travelled and lived along the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, making enigmatic, carefully carved stones.
Bannerstones, North America

The first clear evidence of human activity in North America are spearheads used to hunt large game.
Clovis culture, North America

The cave paintings, rock carvings, and archaeological sites record the skills and way of life of the region’s inhabitants.
Carvings and paintings, Kakadu

The late prehistoric rock-art sites of the Mediterranean seaboard of the Iberian peninsula form an exceptionally large group.
Rock art on the Iberian coast

These prehistoric carvings reveal the life and beliefs of people in Europe during the Bronze Age.
Rock carvings in Tanum

The monuments at Orkney give a graphic depiction of life in this remote archipelago in the far north of Scotland some 5,000 years ago.
Orkney

This is Europe's largest and most important concentration of prehistoric megalithic art.
Brú na Bóinne

Valcamonica, situated in the Lombardy plain, has one of the world's greatest collections of prehistoric petroglyphs
Rock drawings in Valcamonica

Seventeen decorated caves of the Paleolithic age were inscribed as an extension to the Altamira Cave
Cave of Altamira and Paleolithic Cave Art ...

These enigmatic artworks are among the world’s oldest examples of figurative depiction.
Figurative cave art in Borneo

A team of Griffith University archaeologists has shared in the discovery of what may be the world’s oldest known cave painting, dating back to at least 45,500 years ago.
Oldest cave art found in Sulawesi, Indonesia

Rock art is one of the best records of the life of past peoples who lived across the Sahara.
Rock Art in the Green Sahara (Neolithic)

In the most important development in human history, Neolithic people took the first step toward civilization.
The Neolithic revolution

One of the defining traits of humans is our drive to make art, and this desire to create is as old as our species.
Paleolithic art, an introduction

Fire, clothing, or the wheel: was this humble hand axe the earliest human technology?
Our earliest technology?

All evidence points to Africa as the origin of our species … is Africa also the birthplace of art?
Apollo 11 Cave Stones

Is the plaster face on this skull modeled after a real person? Is it one of the world’s oldest portraits?
The Jericho Skull

The cave lion was the fiercest animal of the ice age, and this mammoth ivory carving combines human with lion.