Prehistoric art

Humans have been making images for at least 40,000 years – long before they could write.

The oldest known images are handprints and animals painted on cave walls in Europe and Indonesia. In the caves of Lascaux, Chauvet and Altamira, horses, aurochs and bison move across the walls, painted with ochre, charcoal and manganese in the flickering light of fat-burning lamps.

At the same time, small figures were made in stone, bone and ivory, such as the Venus of Willendorf. We do not know what they meant: hunting magic, fertility rites or stories. The only certainty is that the images were important enough to be made with great skill.

When farming arrived around 10,000 years ago, art changed. People built megaliths such as Stonehenge, decorated pottery and carved images into rock surfaces – in Sweden too, where the rock carvings of Tanum in Bohuslän are a World Heritage Site.

• The discoveries that changed our view of humanity
• How the cave paintings were made
• Sculptures to carry
• What did the images mean?
• Monuments in the landscape – and in the Nordic countries
• Close reading: Lascaux from hall to shaft
• The artists of the Ice Age
• When farming came: houses, graves and villages
• The gleaming metal of the Bronze Age
• Cave art and the modern eye