Civilizations: The Second Moment of Creation is the movie presenting the development of human creativity, visual elements, and subject matter of artworks. It describes the works created by prehistoric tribes found in caves worldwide, explaining how they changed over time. Prehistoric cave art progressed from carved ornaments on stones to the anatomically correct painted depictions of animal bodies.
The first found traces of human art in caves belong to people living in South Africa’s Cape Coast nearly 77000 years ago (Niel, 2018). This art is presented in the form of lines carved on the mineral stone. They could be the signs of language or numbers used by people of that time. Spanish paintings can represent the next stage in the development of cave art. The region of El Castillo has one of the oldest rock art places, which is dated to be more than 37000 years old (Niel, 2018). It contains such visual elements as dots and lines painted on the wall rather than carved. Moreover, the subject matter changes because these works of art represent human forms.
Mainly, these prehistoric artists used human hands as the subject of art, creating images with the imprint of their body parts. Later, prehistoric art developed to demonstrate the mastery of depicting animal bodies. In the caves of Altamira, the 35000 years old images of horses and bison display how the artists used different colors and their memory to create anatomically correct depictions of animals.
Thus, the visual elements and subject matter of cave art progressed from the depiction of lines on mineral stones to the images of anatomically correct animals painted on the walls using different colors. The art of prehistoric tribes can be divided into two stages. The first stage includes the artworks depicting lines carved on the stones, representing the language or number signs. The second stage can be represented by the painted images of animal bodies that are correctly depicted. Consequently, prehistoric art experienced the changes that reflect the improvement of artists’ skills.
Reference
Niel, T. (2018). Civilizations: The second moment of creation [Film].