Discovering the humanities 3rd by henry m sayre 2016 chapter 01

Discovering the Humanities
THIRD EDITION

CHAPTER

1

The Prehistoric Past and
the Earliest
Civilizations:
The River Cultures of
the Ancient World

Discovering the Humanities, Third Edition
Henry M. Sayre

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Learning Objectives
1. Discuss the rise of culture and how
developments in art and architecture
reflect the growing sophistication of
prehistoric cultures.
2. Describe the role of myth in prehistoric
culture.

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Learning Objectives
3. Distinguish among the ancient
civilizations of Mesopotamia, and focus
on how they differ from that of the
Hebrews.
4. Account for the stability of Egyptian
culture.

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Wall painting: Horses, Chauvet Cave, Vallon-Pont-d'Arc, Ardèche gorge, France.
ca. 30,000 BCE.
Paint on limestone cave wall. Approx. height: 6'.
Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication. Direction Régionale des Affaires


Major Paleolithic caves in France and Spain.
[Fig. Map 1.1]


The Great River Valley Civilizations. ca. 2000
[Fig. Map 1.2]

BCE.

Agency and Ritual: Cave Art
• Culture encompasses the values and
behaviors shared by a group of people,
developed over time, and passed down
from one generation to the next

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Agency and Ritual: Cave Art
• Most scholars believe that the cave
paintings in southern France and
northern Spain possessed some sort of
agency (i.e., they were created to
exert power or authority over those
who came in contact with them).
• The agency could be connected to
hunting.

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Agency and Ritual: Cave Art
• The caves could also have served as

ritual spaces intended to serve the
common good (i.e., connected to
religious or quasi-religious contexts).
• The different artistic styles in the
various caves suggest that the choice
between naturalistic and nonnaturalistic was driven by cultural
factors.
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Agency and Ritual: Cave Art
• The artists of Chauvet cave seemed to
understand perspectival drawing, or a
sense of three dimensions in a twodimensional space.
 This cave also demonstrated modeling,
or shading that gives volume and
dimension.
 The artists strove for naturalism, or a
representation imitating the actual
appearance of the animals.
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Wall painting with bird-headed man, bison, and rhinoceros,
Lascaux Cave, Dordogne, France.
ca. 15,000-13,000 BCE. Paint on limestone cave wall. Approx. length: 9'.

© Ministère de la Culture - Médiathèque du Patrimoine, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais/image


Paleolithic Culture and Its Artifacts
• The Paleolithic era is the period of
Homo sapiens' ascendancy.
• Homo sapiens were hunter-gatherers
whose survival depended on animals
they could kill and foods they could
gather.
• People carved stone tools, weapons,
and small sculptural objects.
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Woman (Venus of Willendorf), found at Willendorf, Austria.
ca. 24,000-21,000 BCE. Limestone. Height: 4".
Naturhistorisches Museum, Vienna. akg-images/Erich Lessing. [Fig. 1.3]


Paleolithic Culture and Its Artifacts
• Female figurines vastly outnumbered
representations of males, which
suggests that women played a central
role in Paleolithic culture.
• Most likely, women had considerable
religious and spiritual influence.
• The Paleolithic culture may have been

matrilineal and matrilocal.
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Woman seated between two felines, Çatalhöyük, Turkey. ca. 6850–6300 BCE.
Terra cotta, height 4-5/8".
Museum of Anatolian Civilizations, Ankara. The Art Archive/Museum of Anatolian
Civilisations Ankara/Gianni Dagli Orti. [Fig 1.4]


Reconstruction of a "shrine," Çatalhöyük, Turkey. ca. 6850–6300 BCE.
Museum of Anatolian Civilizations, Ankara. The Art Archive/Museum of Anatolian
Civilisations Ankara/Gianni Dagli Orti. [Fig. 1.5]


The Rise of Agriculture
• A culture of farming gradually replaced
hunting as the primary means of
sustaining life.
• Great rivers of the Middle East and Asia
provided a consistent and predictable
source of water, and people were able
to develop irrigation techniques that
fostered organized agriculture and
animal husbandry.
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Neolithic Pottery Across Cultures
• The transition from cultures based on
hunting and fishing to cultures based
on agriculture led to the increased use
of pottery vessels.
• The pottery vessels were used to carry
and store water, and to store and
prepare certain types of food.

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Neolithic Pottery Across Cultures
• In most Neolithic societies, women
made and decorated the pottery.
• By 3000 BCE, the potter's wheel was
in use in the Middle East as well as in
China, which is seen as the first
mechanical and technological
breakthrough in history.

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Beaker with ibex, dogs, and long-necked birds, from Susa, southwest Iran.
ca. 5000–4000 BCE. Baked clay with painted decoration. Height: 11-1/4".
Musée du Louvre, Paris. © RMN-Grand Palais/Droits réservés. [Fig. 1.6]


Neolithic Ceramic Figures
• While there are examples of Paleolithic
figurative sculptures, these were never
fired.
• Among the fired Neolithic sculptures,
the approximately life-size animal and
human figures created by the so-called
Nok peoples (modern Nigeria) are
most interesting.

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Neolithic Ceramic Figures
• The high level of technical and artistic
sophistication suggests older artistic
traditions in West Africa that have not
yet been discovered.

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Head, Nok.
ca. 500-200 BCE. Terracotta. Height: 14-3/16".
Werner Forman Archive/National Museum, Lagos, Nigeria. [Fig. 1.7]


The Neolithic Megaliths of
Northern Europe
• Megaliths, the most basic form of
architectural construction, were built
without the use of mortar.
• The constructions built merely with
upright posts are called menhirs.

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The Neolithic Megaliths of
Northern Europe
• The megalithic construction that
consists of two posts roofed with a
capstone is called a post-and-lintel
structure.
• The megalithic construction that is laid
out in a circle is known as a cromlech.

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