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)
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)
posted by Dr. Annie Nash at 7:10 AM
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