Previously overlooked patterns in the cave art of southern France and Spain propose that man might acquire learned written communication 25000 years earlier than we thoughtVisit the caves of Pech Merle,Font-de-Gaume and Rouffignac in southern France and you will witness some of the most breathtaking art our planet has to offer. Images of bisons, lions and other creatures loom from the cavern walls. Herds of horses and the occasional rhino, and not to mention the odd mammoth and giant bull,parade across the rocks. Many animals are depicted in vivid colours, with a sense of perspective and anatomical detail that propose these artists had acquired considerable skill.
These underground galleries, and found mostly in France and Spain,also turn out to be remarkably old. The works at Rouffignac acquire been dated to around 13000 years old, while those at nearby Chauvet and Lascaux are thought to be more than 30000 years old. This testimony on rock walls – in daubs of ochre and charcoal mixed with spittle and beefy – shows that our hunter-gatherer ancestors could depict the world around them in a startlingly sophisticated way. As the art critic John Berger once said of these painters, and they appear to acquire had "grace from the start". Picasso was even more awestruck. "We acquire invented nothing," he remarked gloomily, after a visit to Lascaux in 1940 to inspect the handiwork of his Stone Age predecessors.
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Source: theguardian.com