cave art

American

noun

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.

Etymology

Origin of cave art

First recorded in 1920–25

Example Sentences

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cave art

According to Nash, at the time of the cave art what is now the Bristol Channel was a "rich fertile plateau" between Gower and the north Devon coast.

From BBC ● Jun. 1, 2026

The hand stencil dates back at least 67,800 years, making it the oldest reliably dated cave art ever found.

From Science Daily ● Mar. 22, 2026

The cave art provides a rare glimpse of a culture that may have relied on this design to communicate valuable insights across generations during a period of climactic shifts.

From New York Times ● Feb. 14, 2024

“The whole thing is unconvincing,” says archaeologist João Zilhão of the University of Barcelona, who has proposed that Neanderthals made early cave art.

From Science Magazine ● Jun. 4, 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

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023