Performing Arts

Bone flute fragments in Geissenklösterle Cave date back to around forty-two thousand years.

The Venus of Hohle Fels (also known as the Venus of Schelklingen), an Upper Paleolithic “Venus” figurine found near Schelklingen, Germany, is dated to between forty thousand and thirty-five thousand years ago.

Belonging to the early Aurignacian, at the very beginning of the Upper Paleolithic, which is associated with the assumed earliest presence of Homo sapiens in Europe (Early European Modern Humans), it is the oldest undisputed example of Upper Paleolithic art and figurative prehistoric art in general.

The figurine is a representation of a woman, putting emphasis on the vulva and the breasts.

Consequently, it is presumed to be an amulet related to fertility.

It is made of a woolly mammoth tusk and had broken into fragments, of which six have been recovered, with the left arm and shoulder still missing.

In place of the head, the figurine has a perforation so that it could have been worn as a pendant.

Archaeologist John J. Shea suggests it would have taken "tens if not hundreds of hours" to carve the figurine.

A four-hole flute, excavated in September 2008 from a German cave, is the oldest handmade musical instrument ever found, according to archaeologist Nicholas Conrad, who assembled the flute from twelve pieces of griffon vulture bone scattered in the Hohle Fels, a cave in the Swabian Alps of Germany.

At a news conference on June 24, 2012, Conrad said the 8.6-inch flute was crafted thirty-five thousand years ago.

The flutes found in the Hohle Fels are among the earliest musical instruments ever found.

The Swabian Alb region has a number of caves that have yielded mammoth ivory artifacts of the Upper Paleolithic period, totaling about twenty-five items to date.

These include the lion-headed figure of Hohlenstein-Stadel and an ivory flute found at Geißenklösterle, dated to thirty-six thousand years ago.

This concentration of evidence of full behavioral modernity in the period of forty to thirty thousand years ago, including figurative art and instrumental music, is unique worldwide.

Nicholas J. Conard speculates that the bearers of the Aurignacian culture in the Swabian Alb may be credited with the invention, not just of figurative art and music, but possibly, early religion as well.

In a distance of seventy centimeters to the Venus figurine, Conard's team found a flute made from a vulture bone.

Additional artifacts excavated from the same cave layer included flint-knapping debris, worked bone, and carved ivory as well as remains of tarpans, reindeer, cave bears, woolly mammoths, and Alpine Ibexes.

A lion headed figure, first called the lion man (German: Löwenmensch, literally "lion person"), then the lion lady (German: Löwenfrau), is an ivory sculpture that is the oldest known zoomorphic (animal-shaped) sculpture in the world and one of the oldest known sculptures in general.

The sculpture has also been interpreted as anthropomorphic, giving human characteristics to an animal, although it may have represented a deity.

The figurine was determined to be about thirty-two thousand years old by carbon dating material from the same layer in which the sculpture was found.

It is associated with the archaeological Aurignacian culture.

Its pieces were found in 1939 in a cave named Stadel-Höhle im Hohlenstein (Stadel cave in Hohlenstein Mountain) in the Lonetal (Lone valley) Swabian Alb, Germany.

Due to the beginning of the Second World War, it was forgotten and only rediscovered thirty years later.

The first reconstruction revealed a humanoid figurine without head.

During 1997 through 1998, additional pieces of the sculpture were discovered and the head was reassembled and restored.

The sculpture, 29.6 centimeters (11.7 inches) in height, 5.6 centimeters wide, and 5.9 centimeters thick, was carved out of mammoth ivory using a flint stone knife.

There are seven parallel, transverse, carved gouges on the left arm.

After this artifact was identified, a similar, but smaller, lion-headed sculpture was found, along with other animal figures and several flutes, in another cave in the same region of Germany.

This leads to the possibility that the lion-figure played an important role in the mythology of humans of the early Upper Paleolithic.

The sculpture can be seen in the Ulmer Museum in Ulm, Germany.

South Africa, still in the grip of the world's last Ice Age roughly twenty thousand years before the present, is occupied by people now known as San.

Remnants of San communities still survive today in the Kalahari Desert.

The San, who develop their society over thousands of years in isolation, speak a language that includes unique "click" consonants, are smaller statured, and have lighter skin pigmentation than the Bantu speakers who will later move into southern Africa.

San obtain a livelihood from often difficult environments by gathering edible plants, berries, and shellfish; by hunting game; and by fishing.

Gathering is primarily the task of women, who provide approximately eighty percent of the food-
stuffs consumed by the hunter-gatherer communities. Men hunt, make tools and weapons from wood and stone, produce clothing from animal hides, and fashion a remarkable array of musical instruments.

San also create vast numbers of rock paintings—South Africa contains the bulk of the world's
prehistoric art still extant—which express an extraordinary aesthetic sensibility and document San hunting techniques and religious beliefs.

The rock paintings also demonstrate that considerable interaction took place among hunter-gatherer communities throughout southern Africa.

The primary social unit among the San is the nuclear family.

Families join together to form hunter-gatherer bands of about twenty to fifty people. Men and women have equal status in these groups and there is no development of a hereditary chiefdom, although the male head of the main family usually takes a leading role in decision making.

Such bands move about the countryside seeking foodstuffs, sometimes remaining for long periods in particularly productive environments, sometimes splitting apart and joining other groups when food is scarce.

Because they make such limited demands on their environment, San manage to provide a living for themselves for thousands of years.

Population numbers remain small, however, and settlement is generally sparse.

A farmer at Mezhirich, a village (selo) in central Ukraine, will dig up the lower jawbone of a mammoth in 1965 while in the process of expanding his cellar.

Further excavations will reveal the presence of four huts, made up of a total of one hundred and forty-nine mammoth bones.

These dwellings, dating back some fifteen thousand years, will be determined to have been some of the oldest shelters known to have been constructed by prehistoric man, usually attributed to Early European Modern Humans.

Also found on the site were a map inscribed onto a bone, presumably showing the area around the settlement; the remains of a "drum", made of a mammoth skull painted with a pattern of red ocher dots and lines; and amber ornaments and fossil shells.

Many of the caves and rock shelters of central India contain rock paintings depicting a variety of subjects, including game animals and such human activities as hunting, honey collecting, and dancing.

Together with the art have come increasingly clear indications that some of the caves were sites of religious activity.

Hunter-gatherers begin rock paintings at the Tassili n'Ajjer, a plateau in the Saharan area of southern Algeria, around 8000 BCE.

The literal English translation of Tassili n'Ajjer is 'Plateau of the rivers' referring to a time when the climate was repeatedly far wetter than today, with savanna rather than desert.

The art depicts herds of cattle, large wild animals including crocodiles, and human activities such as hunting and dancing.

The art has strong stylistic links to the pre-Nguni Art of South Africa and the region, executed in caves by the San Peoples before the year 1200 BCE.

China’s Hemudu culture flourishes in Jiangnan, in modern Yuyao, Zhejiang, just south of the Hangzhou Bay.

The site at Hemudu, twenty-two kilometers northwest of Ningbo, was discovered in 1973.

Hemudu sites were also discovered on the islands of Zhoushan.

The Hemudu culture coexisted with the Majiabang culture as two separate and distinct cultures, with cultural transmissions between the two.

Two major floods caused the nearby Yaojiang River to change its course and inundated the soil with salt, forcing the people of Hemudu to abandon its settlements.

The Hemudu people lived in long, stilt houses.

The Hemudu culture is one of the earliest cultures to cultivate rice.

Most of the artifacts discovered at Hemudu consist of animal bones, exemplified by hoes made of shoulder bones used for cultivating rice.

The culture also produced lacquer wood.

The remains of various plants, including water caltrop, Nelumbo nucifera, acorns, beans, Gorgon euryale and bottle gourd, were found at Hemudu.

The Hemudu people likely domesticated pigs, water buffalo, and dogs.

The people at Hemudu also fished and hunted, as evidence by the remains of bone harpoons and bows and arrowheads.

Music instruments, such as bone whistles and wooden drums, were also found at Hemudu.

The culture produced a thick, porous pottery.

The distinct pottery was typically black and made with charcoal powder.

Plant and geometric designs were commonly painted onto the pottery; the pottery was sometimes also cord-marked.

The culture also produced carved jade ornaments, carved ivory artifacts and small, clay figurines.

Fossilized amoeboids and pollen suggests Hemudu culture emerged and developed in the middle of the Holocene Climatic Optimum.

A study of a sea-level highstand in the Ningshao Plain from 7000 – 5000 BP shows that there may have been stabilized lower sea levels at this time followed by frequent flooding, from 5000 to 3900 BP.