Under this section we will list out significant facts about
PREHISTORIC ROCK PAINTINGS
The distant past when there was no paper or language or the written word, and hence no books or written documents, is called prehistory.
Painting and drawing were the oldest art forms practised by human beings to express themselves, using the cave walls as their canvas.
They may have drawn and painted to make their homes more colourful and beautiful or to keep a visual record of their day-to-day life, like some of us who maintain a diary.
The subjects of their drawings were human figures, human activities, geometric designs and symbols.
Remnants of rock paintings have been found on the walls of the caves situated in Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Bihar.
The rock shelters on banks of the River Suyal at Lakhudiyar in Uttarakhand bear these prehistoric paintings. Lakhudiyar literally means one lakh caves. The paintings here can be divided into three categories: man, animal and geometric patterns in white, black and red ochre.
Humans are represented in stick-like forms.
Wavy lines, rectangle-filled geometric designs, and groups of dots can also be seen here.
One of the interesting scenes depicted here is of hand-linked dancing human figures.
There is some superimposition of paintings. The earliest are in black; over these are red ochre paintings and the last group comprises white paintings.
The richest paintings are reported from the Vindhya ranges of Madhya Pradesh.
Among these the largest and most spectacular rock-shelter is located in the Vindhya hills at Bhimbetka in Madhya Pradesh.
The themes of paintings found here are of great variety, ranging from mundane events of daily life in those times to sacred and royal images.
Painting showing a man being hunted by a beast can be found at
The paintings of the Upper Palaeolithic phase are linear representations, in green and dark red, of huge animal figures, such as bisons, elephants, tigers, rhinos and boars besides stick-like human figures. The green paintings are of dancers and the red ones of hunters.
- Mesolitihic Period :
- The largest number of paintings belong to Period II that covers the Mesolithic paintings.
- During this period the themes multiply but the paintings are smaller in size. Hunting scenes predominate.
- Elephant, bison, tiger, boar, deer, antelope, leopard, panther, rhinoceros, fish, frog, lizard, squirrel and at times birds are also depicted.
- In some pictures, animals are chasing men. In others they are being chased and hunted by men.
- Though animals were painted in a naturalistic style, humans were depicted only in a stylistic manner.
- Women are painted both in the nude and clothed. The young and the old equally find place in these paintings. Children are painted running, jumping and playing. Community dances provide a common theme.
- In many of the rock-shelters we find hand prints, fist prints, and dots made by the fingertips.
- Chalcolithic Period
- The paintings of this period reveal the association, contact, and mutual exchange of requirements of the cave dwellers of this area with settled agricultural communities of the Malwa plains.
- Pottery and metal tools are also shown. But the vividness and vitality of the earlier periods disappear from these paintings.
- The artists of Bhimbetka used many colours, including various shades of white, yellow, orange, red ochre, purple, brown, green and black. But white and red were their favourite colours. The paints were made by grinding various rocks and minerals. They got red from haematite (known as geru in India).
- The green came from a green variety of a stone called chalcedony.
- White might have been made out of limestone.
It is believed that the colours have remained intact because of the chemical reaction of the oxide present on the surface of the rocks.
The artists here made their paintings on the walls and ceilings of the rock shelters. Some of the paintings are reported from the shelters where people lived. But some others were made in places which do not seem to have been living spaces at all. Perhaps these places had some religious importance.
One may wonder why early human beings chose to paint on a rock in such an uncomfortable position. The paintings made at these places were perhaps for people to be able to notice them from a distance.
At Bhimbetka, in some places, there are as many as 20 layers of paintings, one on top of another. Maybe, this was because the artist did not like his creation and painted another painting on the previous one, or some of the paintings and places were considered sacred or special or this was because the area may have been used by different generations of people at different times.
