cave art

American  

noun

1. paintings and engravings on the walls of caves and rock-shelters, especially naturalistic depictions of animals, produced by Upper Paleolithic peoples of western Europe between about 28,000 and 10,000 years ago.

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Etymology

Origin of cave art

First recorded in 1920–25

Example Sentences

Spectacular Ice Age cave art in places like Altamira and El Castillo encouraged the idea that symbolism and art switched on almost overnight in Ice Age Europe.

From BBC • Jan. 21, 2026

During this period, new cultural elements emerged in various realms, including tool technology, food acquisition, seafaring, and artistic expression in ornaments and cave art.

From Science Daily • Feb. 7, 2024

Haring made uninflected linear drawings almost exclusively glyphs and pictographs, like Paleolithic cave art with an agitated urban edge.

From Los Angeles Times • Jun. 6, 2023

“Murujuga is the most important rock art site in the world,” says Michel Lorblanchet, an archaeologist at CNRS, the French national research agency, who is noted for his work on European cave art.

From Science Magazine • May 11, 2023

Apart from large-scale cave art, the people of the Upper Paleolithic also produced small, hand-sized drawings and carvings in bone, horn, or stone, skillfully cut by means of flint tools.

From "History of Art, Volume 1" by H.W. Janson