Primary and early history of art and art history of antiquity

Classification must be, regardless of whether it is slightly annoyed as "typical German" or very pragmatically accepts it as a welcome help: divided into eras by art historians , with good reason.

As an active work, art itself is "a bit" older than the history of art, more likely to take part in the incarnation itself.

The origin of the first "homos" is traditionally usually attached to the use of stone tools (scree device). This is strongly controversial in terms of the delimitation from humans to monkeys today, and tools are also suitable for art in human hands and in monkey hands: Homos started 2.6 million years ago, and the monkeys probably also.

The results can also be seen in the monkey when the tool is a brush- compare for yourself whether you find it fair that these pictures: www.affenbrut.de/galerie-shop cost to 240,- euros and this sculpture (by the way a monkey): www.focus.de 24 million euros.

In any case, there is most likely much longer than we have handed over. In particular, new radio bells were showed that the oldest preserved works of art in the world-jewelry, figurative art with mythical-symbolic visual language and musical instruments from the Geißenklösterle cave in the Swabian Alb-up to 43,000 years old are again a good bit older than the 40,000 years, from which one has so far been assumed.

Was older art found elsewhere in the world? Will be experienced, after all, the 1st epoch of art history begins, the original and early history of art , 600,000 BC. Chr.:

1. Epoch of Art History: Art of Primary and Early History

600,000 BC BC to the first high cultures around 3,100 BC. Chr.

Quite rough: every work of art that was created before the script was developed belongs to the original and early history of art.

Video recording: origin and function of art in the primal company

2nd epoch of art history: art of antiquity

As soon as a high culture has formed somewhere, early history is ending that antiquity begins.

The leap from primary and early history in the history of antiquity is not only significant in art history: with the first high cultures, prehistory becomes world history, the world history of people.

Actually illogical, the emergence of Homo sapiens , the anatomically modern person, as it still exists today, is in anthropology (science of man) to 200,000 years BC. Chr. Dated. The human artists decided with a rather biological-anatomical look that some “homos” showed a feature structure at that time that they turned into a “homo sapiens”.

Sapiens is Latin = understanding, convincing or wise, clever, clever, reasonable. These characteristics were seen in an upright gait, shorter and little bit bit, later entry of sexual maturity, an enlarged brain and thus first cultural and social achievements, etc. etc.

The historians obviously see it a little differently when they date the actual historiography of humanity at the beginning of the first high cultures. The crucial indication of why this is so give us the characteristics that a high culture distinguish from the historian's point of view:

The high culture is a social order that forms a more complex culture than its predecessors and neighbors, with the following characteristics:

• Agriculture with plan (irrigation, storage, trade)
• Cities as the center of trade and rule (fertile location, trade nodes, military security, organizational unit)
• Political organization of society with a centralized administrative system (planning, hierarchy, government, legal and administrative system, military system)
• Division of labor, social classes with specialization
• Produce demanding artistic achievements (writing culture, music, visual art, architecture)
• Development of sciences, uniform calendar system, religion
• All the factors mentioned together lead to the fact that common thinking and feeling develop in such a society
• Important prerequisite is the development of a writing, without which everything that has just been mentioned would not be possible

It is only possible with writing to be recorded, and so it is only logical if the (dark) early history ends for historians as soon as a high culture formed somewhere.

When antiquity begins with a high culture, antiquity would have to begin at different times at different points in the world. So it is, at least in relation to the beginning of "antiquity in the broader sense".

Surprising for all those who see the "cradle of human culture" in ancient Egypt and in the Zweigromland: the oldest high culture may have been in Europe: from approx. 5,000 BC. BC, the pre-Indo-European Chalcolithic Danubezivilization, also known as Old Europe, is dated.

However, with the crucial shortcoming that this civilization has not handed over any interpretable sources of written sources, whether the Vinča signs are a font or only symbols to decorate objects artistically.

The oldest high cultures in Asia and Africa are certainly occupied:

• From approx. 4,000 BC The first high cultures in the Mesopotamian two -power land between Euphrates and Tigris (today Syria + Iraq, a little bit of Türkiye, Iran + Kuwait) were created
• From approx. 4,000 BC The beginning of the Egyptian high culture is set on the Nile
• From approx. 3,500 BC The Elam in Chuzestan (today Iran) performed amazing cultural achievements
• From approx. 2,900 BC The city of Mari in the Zweigstromland took over the rule (today Tell Hariri in Syria and in the middle of looting by terrorists)
• From approx. 2,800 BC In India along the Indus, the Indus culture flourished (also called Harappa culture after its main excavation site))
• From approx. 2,800 BC BC rose to the city state and cultural center (today excavation Tell Mardikh in northern Syria, 55 km SW of Aleppo, is also being destroyed)
• From approx. 2,340 BC BC, the realm of battery with the capital of Akkad developed along the Tigris into the first organized area of ​​human history in human history
• From approx. 2,200 BC The oasis or oxus culture had its wedding (in Central Asia, on the area of ​​the Karakum desert in Turkmenistan/Afghanistan)
• From approx. 2,000 BC BC, the Erlitou culture on Hung He (yellow river) in the Chinese province of Henan was too high cultural flower

In America you were (at least with the tradition of records, for the "culture in real life" we only close it) a little later:

• From approx. 3,000 BC BC brought the Maya a lot of culture to the area of ​​Mexico and Guatemalas
• From approx. 2,900 BC The city of Caral in Peru (Valle de Supe near Lima) had its main flowering period
• From approx. 1,500 BC BC provided the Olmeken on the Gulf Coast of Mexico astonishing cultural achievements.
• Only from around 1,250 (AD) brought the Inca to the continent again, mainly in the field of today's Peru and Chile
• From around 1,350, the Aztecs dominated the surrounding areas from the Mexico City area

Only Australia and the Antarctic are still missing on the "Map of Art of Antiquity" . They are also really missing in the areas that produced the first high cultures:

Aboriginis about 50,000 years ago , one of the last stages in the great spread of the Homo sapiens of Africa. The Aboriginis did not produce a high culture, but were unlucky with the populated country and had to cope with an ice age -like cold around 20,000 years ago.

Those who almost freeze constantly have no time for high culture; When they later recovered/increased, the Europeans were already there (late 18th century), so it was the end of local culture. A gene examination just showed that a lot of 4,000 years ago that a lot of Indians moved to Australia, they probably gave Australia the dingos but no high culture.

Even though the Antarctic was once called Terra Austral (where a huge southern continent was suspected, a precise counterweight to the land masses of the northern hemisphere), there is of course nothing to get here in terms of high culture; As I said, freezing and culture do not go together (and before 1911 there was no one).

"In the narrower sense", the historians simply let the A ltertum begin to develop the first writings, around 3,200 BC. BC independently of one another in Mesopotamia and in ancient Egypt.

Speaking of writing: There is still air for future explorers, as with the Danube civilization, is also controversial in the indus culture, whether it is really a high culture because of the writing. The longest known inscription of the Indus script includes 26 characters, and even if that is reminiscent of our alphabet at least from the number of symbols, you could not discover any logic behind it.

Since the first publications in the 1920s, the researchers in the deciphering of the Indus script hardly continued until the turn of the millennium, which is why they were first spotted from the fund of conventional writing in a healthy defense.

By 2009, when a computer -aided study insisted that the logical structure was a font, but it also did not decipher it.

It has remained the case to this day, the indus script with its triangles, circulars with cross-like signs, plant-like pictures, animal symbols and other puzzling signs is still as mysterious as in their discovery-a real case for a highly gifted nerd with knowledge in mathematics, statistics, analysis, art history, the grammar of several languages ​​and probably more.

The art history of antiquity is further divided, traditionally like this:

• Ancient art - did not bring about every high culture after the time -honored art historians, they alone call the works of art of the "ancient Greeks" and the "ancient Roman".
• Ancient Egyptian art -is what was produced in Egypt at this time in art, also an early high culture in the Mediterranean area, but on the non-European side, that "was not the case".
• The art of the old orientation is the third great block of antiquity art, it includes the art of all cultures/high cultures in the old Orient. Without a uniform definition of space and time, under "Old Orient" Mesopotamia, Persia (Iran), Anatolia (front -Asian part of Turkey) and the Levante (the "Orient" on the eastern Mediterranean coast, i.e. today's states of Israel, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, Syria) are subsumed.

This antiquity in the narrower sense ends for the historians in the west with the beginning of the Middle Ages, in the east with the Islamic conquests, between 500 and 700.

And it ended for the traditional European historian at the gates of the Mediterranean; All of Africa under the Sahara, Asia from the upper tips, America in front of Columbus and something exotic like Oceania (Australia and Co.) was not an object of his consideration.

However, expeditions to these areas were (if at all conceivable) a life performance, who came back, had many adventures to tell; Stories with potential to say, but not for the ongoing examination by scientists.

Today, thanks to the Internet and traffic technology, we have a few more options and can linen outside this marine edge (the lenses are now invented), and in the "Kleine Rest of the World" we still have some discoveries in front of us, artistic and others ...