Cave and rock art

The earliest examples of art, consisting of paintings and engravings on the walls of caves and rock shelters, produced by Upper Paleolithic hunters. In Africa and Australia these traditions continued into modern times. In Upper Paleolithic Europe, cave art is associated with modern humans, dating mostly from about 25,000 to 10,000 ya, and is dominated by representations of animals (some of them highly naturalistic), human figures, hand prints and abstract symbols. Especially impressive friezes survive at Lascaux (France) and Altamira (Spain). These paintings are believed to have had considerable religious and social significance.