Archaeology & Anthropology - Juniper Publishers Opinion The term Cave paintings, also known as parietal art, refers to painted drawings on cave walls or ceilings, mainly of prehistoric origin, originating roughly 40,000 years ago (around 38,000 BCE) in Eurasia. The term is generally deployed in connection with Stone Age art created during the last Ice Age, between about 40,000 and 10,000 BCE - a period generally referred to as the ‘Upper Paleolithic’. Cave art has been found on every continent except Antarctica. In Europe, about 350 sites have been discovered, from the southernmost tip of the Iberian Peninsula (Gibraltar) to the Russian Urals. Nearly half (about 160) of these paintings are located in France. There are a few ‘hot-spots’, all of which are to be found within the region of Franco-Cantabrian Cave Art (40,000-10,000 BCE), in northern Spain and southern France - either in shallow rock shelters, or in deep caves. Much of the archaeological and a...
