While cave paintings, dating as far back as 20,000 B.C. are the first evidence of recorded pictures, true written communication is thought to have been developed some 17,000 years later by the Summerians, around 3500 B.C.

They are known to have recorded stories and preserved records using simple drawings of everyday objects, called pictograms.

Sumerian pictogram for mountains

As civilizations become more advanced, they experienced a need to communicate more complex concepts. By 3100 B.C., Egyptian hieroglyphics incorporated symbols representing thoughts or ideas, called ideograms, allowing for the expression of more abstract concepts than the more literal pictograms. A symbol for an ox could mean food, for example, or the symbol of a setting sun combined with the symbol for a man could communicate old age or death.

Egyptian ideogram for “weeping”

The Roman numerals we use today are considered to contain ideograms:
I, II, and III representing fingers of the hand, V the open hand, and IV the open hand minus one finger.

By 1600 B.C., the Phoenicians had developed symbols for spoken sounds, called phonograms. For example, their symbol for ox, which they called aleph, was used to represent the spoken sound “A” and beth, their symbol for house, represented the sound “B”. In addition to sounds, phonograms could also represent words.

Phoenician “aleph”

Today, our own alphabet contains many such phonograms:
% for percent, ? for question, and $ for dollars.

The alphabet

It is the Phoenicians who are generally credited with developing the first true alphabet— a set of symbols representing spoken sounds, that could be combined to represent spoken language.

Primarily a seafaring merchant society, they traded with many cultures, spreading their alphabet throughout the Western world. Around 1,000 B.C., the Phoenician alphabet was adapted by the Greeks, who developed the art of handwriting in several styles. The word “alphabet” comes from the first two Greek letters alpha and beta.

Pictograms evolved into the letters of the alphabet

Several hundred years later, the Romans used the Greek alphabet as the basis for the uppercase alphabet that we know today. They refined the art of handwriting, fashioning several distinctive styles of lettering which they used for different purposes. They scribed a rigid, formal script for important manuscripts and official documents and a quicker, more informal style for letters and routine types of writing. By A.D. 100, the Romans had developed a flourishing book industry and, as Roman handwriting continued to evolve, lower case letters and rough forms of punctuation were gradually added…

for more http://graphicdesign.spokanefalls.edu/tutorials/process/type_basics/history.htm

The Discovery of the Niaux Cave

Niaux Cave is located in the northern foothills of the Pyrenees, just south of the French town of Foix. The cave is one of many in this region, but is one of Europe’s most impressive Palaeolithic rock art galleries. Its massive cave entrance is set high up in the mountainside above the Ariege River that runs through the Tarascon basin, characterised by its compact, steep-sided valleys. This topography creates a warmer micro-climate than that of the rolling landscape to the north, just as it would have at the end of the last great ice age, enticing and sheltering both animals and hunter-gatherers alike.

Niaux Cave has been visited since the 17th century – as shown by the graffiti, dated as early as 1602. The curiosity continued in to Victorian times when considerable plundering of its stalagmites took place. It was not until 1906, once the paintings in the main chamber of the cave – Salon Noir – were acknowledged as prehistoric, that the preservation of the cave and the study of the paintings began. Now, through radiocarbon dating of the charcoal, we know the art is at least 14,000 years old…

Niaux Bison                        Detailed Ibex

The Galleries of the Niaux Cave

The main entrance to Niaux leads into a large and even-floored cavern, wide and high-ceilinged. The cave walls are smooth and clear – and empty. For the first 400 metres there are no paintings or engravings; simply no rock art whatsoever. But at a particular point the open cavern becomes restricted, caused by an ancient collapse of enormous jagged boulders from the ceiling. As Jean Clottes remarked, one can continue into the cave by climbing with considerable difficulty over the debris, or squeeze through a narrow passage to the left. As one emerges from this, and on either side of the opening, the paintings begin – as symbols. Simple linear lines in red seem to mark the beginning of the painted cave, the beginning of the experience.

These enigmatic and understated decorations continue, with a hundred or so red and black geometric signs – dashes, bars, lines, and series of dots – some painted using tools, some using fingers. The red is hematite, the black is either manganese dioxide or charcoal, both ground and mixed with water or fat. Precisely what the symbols represent is hard to say, but they are not random. They have been daubed strategically, sometimes opposite each other, sometimes on either side of a conspicuous fissure…

Bison & Ibex                         Detialed Horse

for more and more http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/france/niaux_cave.php

Prehistoric Images and Medicines Under the Sea

The Cosquer Cave (Marseille, France) was discovered in 1985 by a diver, Henri Cosquer, deep under the sea (the original entrance is about 115 feet below present-day sea level) but its paintings were not mentioned until 1991 after three divers died in the cave when they got lost.

The gallery slopes up for about 360 feet under water before reaching a huge chamber that partly remained above the sea and where many prehistoric paintings and engravings are preserved on the walls, as well as remains on the ground (charcoal from fires and torches, a few flint tools). This is the only painted cave in the world with an entrance below present-day sea level where cave art has been preserved from the flooding that occurred when the seas rose after the end of the last glaciation (Clottes & Courtin 1994, 1996).

Right from the start, it was obvious that the discovery of the Cosquer Cave was both an important and original art find.

   

The Paleolithic Cave Paintings of Prehistoric France

  The Chagall Horses

    Megaceros

Extinct genus of deer

Chauvet Cave is exceptional – despite being recently discovered in 1994, it contains the world’s oldest rock art ever found. The Chauvet Cave is located near Vallon-Pont-d’Arc in the Ardèche region of southern France, its chance discovery by a trio of speleologists revealed not only the fossilized remains of many animals, including some that are now extinct, but one of the most extensive Palaeolithic rock art galleries ever recorded….

…Not only was the art likely to prove extremely old, it was very extensive, highly varied, and very skillfully executed. But perhaps most importantly, the cave and its contents were more or less perfectly preserved – untouched for many thousands of years. For this reason, whilst the investigation of the cave took place and the age of the rock art was verified, the cave was locked down. Since 1994, more people have been to the top of Everest than into the Chauvet Cave…

…Hundreds of animal paintings have been recorded, depicting at least 13 different species, including those which have rarely or never been found in other Ice age paintings. Rather than the more usual animals of the hunt that predominate in Paleolithic cave art, such as horses, cattle and reindeer, the walls of the Chauvet Cave are covered with predatory animals – lions, panthers, bears, owls, rhinos and hyenas. As one would expect, there are no human figures, except at the very end of the gallery where there appears to be a Venus figure – the legs and genitals of a woman – attracting the attention of the figure now known as the ‘Sorcerer’ – the lower body of a man with the upper body of a bison. The scene would suggest a ritual, shamanic or magical aspect to these paintings…

for more http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/chauvet/index.php

LASCAUX Cave Paintings

Red Cow and First Chienese Horse         

 photograph N. Aujoulat  

Great Black Bull     

photograph N. Aujoulat                

Lascaux is famous for its Palaeolithic cave paintings, found in a complex of caves in the Dordogne region of southwestern France, because of their exceptional quality, size, sophistication and antiquity. Estimated to be up to 20,000 years old, the paintings consist primarily of large animals, once native to the region. Lascaux is located in the Vézère Valley where many other decorated caves have been found since the beginning of the 20th century (for example Les Combarelles and Font-de-Gaume in 1901, Bernifal in 1902). Lascaux is a complex cave with several areas (Hall of the Bulls, Passage gallery) It was discovered on 12 September 1940 and given statutory historic monument protection in december of the same year. In 1979, several decorated caves of the Vézère Valley – including the Lascaux cave – were added to the UNESCO World Heritage Sites list. But these hauntingly beautiful prehistoric cave paintings are in peril. Recently, in Paris, over 200 archaeologists, anthropologists and other scientists gathered for an unprecedented symposium to discuss the plight of the priceless treasures of Lascaux, and to find a solution to preserve them for the future. The Symposium took place under the aegis of France’s Ministry of Culture and Communication, and presided over by Dr. Jean Clottes…

for more http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/lascaux/index.php