Art of Prehistory and Early History: The actual period under consideration

Art historians usually define the theoretical period of consideration somewhat differently, but purely logically, the prehistory and early history of art begins with the beginning of art, with the first work of art created by a human being.

Since art and culture are assigned a crucial role in the process of human development, one could also say that man became human through this first work of art.

This chicken-and-egg problem poses practically no problems for art historians, because the first work of art created by humans that has survived to posterity was created “only” around 40,000 years ago.

The prehistory and early history of art transitions into the art history of antiquity with the development of the first advanced civilizations, around 3100 BC in world history terms. Our ancestors were a little later:

What lived in caves or wooden huts in our region and further north had so little to do with high culture that during the conflicts with the Romans a few centuries after Christ, they still “absorbed real culture” (which a discerning Roman would no longer have agreed with, as Roman culture was already quite decadent at that time).