Although the best known cave painting sites are from the Upper Paleolithic of France and Spain, paintings, art in caves and rockshelters have been recorded throughout the world. Here are a few examples. This list was built as part of the glossary entry for Cave Art.
Nawarla Gabarnmang (Australia)
© Jean-Jacques Delannoy and the Jawoyn Association; published in Antiquity, 2013
The vivid paintings on the ceiling and pillars of the rockshelter called Nawarla Gabarnmang in Arnhem Land were started at least 28,000 years ago: and the shelter itself a work of thousands of years of reshaping and redecorating.
El Castillo (Spain)
Image courtesy of Pedro Saura
The caves that lie within the mountain in the Cantabrian region of Spain called El Castillo are known to contain more than 100 different images painted in charcoal and red ochre. Most of the images are simple hand stencils, red disks, and claviforms (club shapes): and at least some of them are 40,000 years old, and may have been the work of our Neanderthal cousins.
Abri Castanet (France)
©Raphaëlle Bourrillon
Dated between about 35,000 and 37,000 years ago, Abri Castanet is one of the oldest of the cave art sites, located in the Vézère Valley of France, where a collection of animal outlines, pecked stone circles and sexual images were painted on the ceiling, where the residents of the cave could see and enjoy them.
Chauvet Cave (France)
At 31,000 years old, Chauvet Cave is the oldest cave painting in the world yet discovered.Located in the Pont-d'Arc Valley of Ardèche, France, the cave extends nearly 500 meters into the earth, with two main rooms separated by a narrow hallway. The cave's art is complex and thematically exciting, with groups of lions and horses in action poses: too complex to fit into theories of how cave paintings evolved over time.
Lascaux Cave (France)
Lascaux is probably the best known cave painting in the world. Discovered in 1940 by some adventurous boys, Lascaux is a veritable hall of art, dated stylistically to Magdalenian period of 15,000-17,000 years ago with depictions of aurochs and mammals and deer and bison and birds. Closed to the public in order to save its delicate artwork, the site has been reproduced on the web.
Altamira Cave (Spain)
Billed as the "Sistine Chapel" of the rock art world, Altamira includes paintings dated stylistically to the Solutrean and Magdelanian periods (22,000-11,000 years ago). The cave walls are decorated with multi-colored paintings of animals, stenciled hands, and sculpted humanoid masks.
Kapova Cave (Russia)
Kapova Cave is a rockshelter in the southern Ural Mountains of Russia, where a mile-long gallery of cave paintings includes over 50 figures, including mammoths, rhinoceros, bison and horses, combined human and animal drawings and trapezoids. Indirect-dated to the Magdalenian period (13,900 to 14,680 RCYBP).
