The Cave Paintings at Lascaux, France

Essential Questions
• What kinds of marks do you remember making from when you first started to draw or paint?
• Do you have a very young sibling or other relative who likes to use markers, crayons, or paint? What do their pictures look like?
• What appeals to you about drawing?
• Why do you think people painted and scratched pictures on cave walls during the Paleolithic era?
• What might we suppose about their lives by looking at and studying these pictures at Lascaux?

Enduring Understandings
• One of humankind’s fundamental impulses is to leave one’s mark
• The cave paintings at Lascaux are not an anomaly, they are one component of evidence found globally that it is innately human to desire to draw, paint, and etch images that represent and communicate something about the world or ourselves.
• These paintings are about 17,000 years old, and should be preserved for future generations to see and study
• Appreciate the methods used by ancient civilization to create cave and rock art
• Identify some of the animals that roamed France in prehistoric times

Activities:
• View and discuss video of the Caves at Lascaux
• Draw images seen in video, and images inspired by looking at the cave art at Lascaux, using pencil and/or Sharpie marker
• Compare and contrast images at Lascaux to Native American rock art of the Southwest
• Create mixed media artworks (paper, pencils, watercolor, chalk and oil pastels, etc.) inspired by our video field trip to Lascaux

Vocabulary
Aurochs—long-horned wild ox, pictures of which exist at Lascaux and in other caves, thought to be an ancestor of today’s domestic cattle

Bison—similar to an ox, but with larger head and shoulders, and a humped back; once prolific in North America; often mistakenly called “buffalo”

Buffalo—type of horned cattle, most commonly found in Africa; Asian water buffalo

Paleolithic—early Stone Age, from 750,000 to 15,000 years ago, when human beings made chipped-stone tools, and used flint to etch images and marks into stone

Speleology—the scientific study of caves (begun in France by Edouard Martel)

Third Grade Unit:
Creating Our Own Rock Art Symbols


Guiding Questions:
• What types of animals and people and places were portrayed, represented, or made special note of in ancient rock art (pictographs/petroglyphs)?
• Where did “the people who came before,” the people who settled/ made their homes here in NM many thousands and hundreds of years ago, get the inspiration for their rock art?
• What animals, people and places are important to us today?
• What are our favorite places to go out hiking, camping, and wilderness-watching?
• How do we make simple drawings to represent the animals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, fish, bugs and insects, and places we want to include in our artwork?
• Why is it alright to copy rock art when we are studying it, but wrong to “just copy it" and use it in our own artwork?

Objectives/Goals:
• Understand how to simplify a drawing
• Know pets/pics (rock art) made by the ancestors of today’s local Indian nations
• Begin to understand the ideas of intellectual/cultural property rights (copyright)
• Learn how to make own simplified/stylized drawings of the world around us
Activities:
• View and discuss “If Rocks Could Talk” video
• Discussion using “Guiding Questions”
• Pencil drawings of wilderness subjects
• Simplify/stylize sketches, as needed
• Make final composition on 12”x18” paper using craypas/oil pastels and water colors

Vocabulary:
• Pictograph: a simplified or stylized drawing; a symbol
• Petroglyph: a drawing made on rock, often a pictograph rendered on rock
• Indian rock art: petroglyphs made by Native American people
• Native American: The earliest or original people living in North America and the descendants of these original people and tribes
• Ancestor: a relative who lived before
• Descendant: a relative who lives after
• Cultural property: a creation of a certain person, family, tribe or culture; an artwork, song, dance, story or any creation that connects to and belongs to a certain tribe or people

Grade 3
Rock Art of the Southwest

Guiding Questions:
What are: Petroglyphs and Pictographs?
How were they made and why?

Where do we see these ancient images?

How are they used today? By Indians? By non-Indians?

What is intellectual/cultural property?

What is your opinion of using these ancient symbols today?

Goals:
Learn basics of
Rock Art
How traditions change and grow
Intellectual/Cultural property

Demonstrate you know what rock art is, and that you can read some of the more common petroglyphs and pictographs.

Explore a variety of petroglyphs and pictographs in rock, art, pottery, jewelry.

Be neat and organized

Projects:
Make a drawing in Sharpie of petroglyphs and pictographs you see and like while viewing the video “If Rocks Could Talk.”
Draw one or more of the petroglyphs and pictographs, draw it/them with pencil and color with craypas, then watercolor over it to make a relief painting.

Related:
“Mayan Life” in National Geographic Kids (h.w. assigned by homeroom teachers)
Mayan glyphs
Egyptian hieroglyphs

Grade 3
Symbols, Codes, Signs

Guiding Questions:
What are
Symbols,
Codes
Signs
And how do we us them (and why)?
How do you make your own set of
Symbols,
Codes
Signs
And how do you use them (and why)?

Goals:
Learn basics of
Mapmaking
Code design
Signage;
Demonstrate you know and can use
Symbols
Codes
Signs
Be neat and organized.

Project choices:
Make a map with a key or legend
Create a code with a deciphering chart and message
Make a picture using signs