LibGuides: Prehistoric Art: Media

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BBC How Art Made the World: the Day Pictures Were Born (59:19) The discovery of prehistoric cave paintings in the last century led to the shocking realisation that humans have been creating art for over 30,000 years. We reveal how the very first pictures ever made were created, and how images may have triggered the greatest change in human history.
The Caves of Altamira (26:29) The 20,000-year-old caves of Altamira are among the greatest and the least known of the monuments of prehistory. Closed to visitors to prevent disintegration through pollution, the caves are known only through a replica located in the Archaeological Museum in Madrid. This tour of Altamira shows the cave paintings in their extraordinary power as they depict the daily life of Magdalenian people seeking to bend animal life to their will, while themselves at the mercy of magical powers they sought to placate. The camera is able to clarify what the naked eye cannot—the artistic relationship between the caves themselves and the art with which these proto-Spaniards decorated them.
Lascaux: The Prehistory of Art (1:08:51) One of the world’s most fascinating museums is by far one of the oldest. But can the paintings there really be called art? This program goes inside the Lascaux cave complex to examine the richest and most beautiful collection of Paleolithic cave drawings in France. Who were the artisans who rendered those arresting images, and how exactly did they do it? Different theories are presented as the cameras capture a site that never ceases to amaze and intrigue.

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Cave of Forgotten Dreams