It will probably come as a surprise that humans learnt to paint before they learnt to write!
Yes, cave paintings as old as the Stone Age have been found in many parts of the world and they survive to this day!
Simple vegetable dyes were used by early Man to create these paintings. Most of them have animals and hunting scenes, documenting the hunting or hunter-gatherer stage of our history.
Slowly, these paintings gave way to symbols and symbolic scripts, which then evolved into formal scripts or writing, as we know today. If we observe closely, we will find that the paintings are very detailed in their depiction of animals, indicating a very close relationship with our environment.
Further, they are also very elaborate, pointing, perhaps to a stage where our forefathers were understanding and trying to express the complexity of human life as compared to the life of other species.
We also find evidence of some form of primitive clothing and domestication of animals in some of the later cave paintings.
All images in this feature are from Bradshaw Foundation.
